Wisconsin Funnies Shows Comic’s Deep Roots in the American Midwest: A Review (updated)

by Chris Yogerst

Wisconsin Funnies: Fifty Years of Comics. James P. Danky, J. Tyler Friedman, and Denis Kitchen with contributions by Paul Buhle. West Bend, WI: Museum of Wisconsin Art and Milwaukee, WI: MOWA-DTN, August 8-November 22, 2020. $15 (MOWA) / Free (MOWA-DTN).   https://wisconsinart.org/exhibitions/wisconsin-funnies-fifty-years-of-comics.aspx

In 1973, Denis Kitchen purchased a farm in Princeton, Wisconsin, to house the headquarters of his growing publishing company Kitchen Sink Press. The eventual 2015 Eisner Award recipient would use this rural location to shepherd independent artists by providing a platform of free expression without the strings attached to a major publisher. The farm would be immortalized in a drawing by R. Crumb in 1985. A life-long defender of boundary-pushing comics, Kitchen helped found the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in 1986 and took the debate to the national stage on Larry King Live in 1989.  

 

This staunch defender of the artform now has his collection of Wisconsin comics on display, along with work loaned from ten other artists, in Wisconsin Funnies: 50 Years of Comics which is split between the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) and Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel in Milwaukee. I was only able to visit MOWA for an exhibit preview of the half of the exhibit described on their website as “a comprehensive overview of comics in Wisconsin” (The other half is “comics with a political bent.”) The parent museum is gorgeously placed along the banks of the Milwaukee River. Masks were required and everyone remained respectfully socially-distant. The price of admission is $15, which will also get you access to the museum for an entire year.

Nearly 200 works by 31 artists are featured, all of which are included in a 250-page catalog with high resolution images of each piece in the exhibition ($45 + shipping, ISBN 978 -0-9994388-5-5). The exhibit opens with a mural on the second floor that was not yet completed when I was there. [Curator Tyler Friedman explains, "We commissioned three 30x30" panels for the exhibition lead-in wall to give the appearance of a giant comic strip. Peter Poplaski, Jeff Butler, and John Porcellino contributed a panel a piece."] Through the glass doors you will find expertly framed artifacts, a mixture of comic books and original art, complete with historical descriptors that add context to every piece. (I was told a couple cases of other ephemera will be going up but they were not installed when I was there.) One not need be an expert in independent comics to find value here. The exhibit offers a wonderful learning experience and each section provides a nicely bracketed story. Wisconsin Funnies was co-curated by Kitchen, director of the print culture center at UW-Madison James P. Danky, associate curator of contemporary art at MOWA Tyler Friedman, with contributions by historian Paul Buhle.

The exhibit is intended to mesh with the political passions accompanying the Democratic National Convention slotted to begin on August 17^th in Milwaukee. With that sprit in mind, Wisconsin Funnies does not disappoint. Coming into the exhibit one can find a series of hand sketched originals as well as printed pages from comic books and strips. The exhibition offers an opportunity to learn about not only the history of Wisconsin comics, but also an opportunity to see the evolution of an art form. The artists featured in this collection serve as a primer for the political and social struggles of the postwar era through the Reagan years.

Kitchen Sink Press not only championed independent artists, but also collaborated with industry giants. Stan Lee and Marvel collaborated with Kitchen on Comix Books, which featured work by Trina Robbins and Art Spiegelman. Selections of original art from Robbins’ One Flower Child’s Search for Love is featured in Wisconsin Funnies and serves as an illuminating exploration of love and relationships during the 1970s, pushing back on preceding generations of conservative social strictures. Kitchen also published reprints of classics such as Harvey Kurtzman’s The Grasshopper and the Ant as well as Will Eisner’s The Spirit and A Contract with God. Selections of original art from these important works are included. 

 

One series of panels that particularly stood out to me are from Dan Burr’s Harvey and Eisner awards winner Kings in Disguise. The story is about a kid during the Great Depression searching for his father. The feelings of despair and longing jump off the panels. The imagery is stunning and reminiscent of the Hollywood films made in the early 1930s that were depicting the economic destruction as it was happening. One film in particularly that shares the aesthetic of Burr’s art is William Wellman’s Wild Boys of the Road (1933), which follows young teens who leave their burden-ridden families. Burr’s story, published in 1988, is just as moving as the images created and distributed during the Great Depression. Original pages by Burr from Kitchen’s underground newspaper Bugle (1975-1976) are on display as well.

 Peter Poplaski’s original cover art for Corporate Crime Comics #2 is of special interest for its nod to classic Dick Tracy comics. A quick glance will remind one of the “round up the usual suspects” line from Casablanca. What makes this cover special upon deeper reflection is how Poplaski depicted not standard supervillains or street thugs. Instead, the lineup is full of white-collar criminals guilty of tax evasion, pollution, and unsafe work environments. In 2014, Poplaski sketched Kitchen with Stan Lee as they appeared in 1974, which is also featured in Wisconsin Funnies.

Additional artists featured in Wisconsin Funnies are Al Capp, Ernie Bushmiller, Lynda Barry, Jim Mitchell, and many others. There is plenty to learn in this wonderful exhibit. I come to comics from the film studies world and could not pass up an opportunity to learn more about influential comic writers and artists who shook up the industry from right here in Wisconsin. Anyone in the Milwaukee area interested in the history of comics, politics, and popular culture should visit MOWA and absorb the power of this historic collection.

Educational activities included, or will include, the following:

Teen Masters: Become a Zinester | Tuesday, August 4.

Virtual Artist Talk with Denis Kitchen | Thursday, August 13.

MOWA Masters: Comic Illustration with Jeff Butler | Saturday, August 19.

MOWA Masters: Sketchnoting with Mike Rohde | Saturday, September 12.

Virtual Artist Lecture with Paul Buhle | Thursday, September 17 | More Info to Come.

Virtual Panel Discussion with The Nib | October 2020 | More Info to Come.

A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 22:2 (Fall/Winter 2020). Updated on August 18, 2020 with one sentence explaining the 'mural.'

Exhibit Review: Underground Heroes: New York Transit in Comics

Underground Heroes: New York Transit in Comics. Jodi Shapiro. New York: New York Transit Museum. June 21, 2018-March 17, 2019. https://www.nytransitmuseum.org/

(all photographs are courtesy of the Museum and images of the exhibit are by Filip Wolack)

 

Though the New York Transit Museum may not be an immediately obvious location for a comics exhibition, it is currently home to one that looks at the way that New York City transit has been represented in comics through the years. Highlighting works going back to the 1880’s, the exhibition includes many types of comics, including political cartoons, superhero comic books from major publishers, and sequential art that was created specifically for the MTA Arts & Design, which is a program of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to commission art for the area’s transportation systems.

 

Much of the exhibit is in the form of reproductions mounted on foam core, but this is far from all that is on display. There are dozens of individual comic book issues to show specific examples of the New York City transit trains and stations across the years, including very recent examples such as 2017 issues of Marvel’s The Unbelievable Gwenpool that show creatures in MTA stations. Though Marvel and DC are very well-represented in the exhibit, as might be expected, other publishers and artists are not overlooked. Jodi Shapiro, the Associate Curator at the Museum and the curator of this exhibition, notes that “the show required that we include as many different styles of art and storytelling as possible, and we wanted to feature diversity in both characters and creators. The most important thing was to have good and compelling work that would draw people to visit the exhibit. The show has a whole range of material from the straight-ahead superhero stories, to some very abstract conceptual work. There are some pieces that have a lot of text, and some that are wordless. Some work is very traditional, and some is highly experimental.” Comics experts will find plenty of works that they immediately recognize. An issue of Will Eisner’s The Spirit from 1951 is on hand to show how Eisner incorporated the local trains into his own work, and an example of Dave Berg’s satirical “The Lighter Side...” comic strip for MAD Magazine that focuses on commuting is included in a section focused on commuter woes. But there are also enough unusual items that most visitors will probably find works they have not seen before. In fact, Concetta Bencivenga, Director of the Museum pointed out that many of the artists featured in the exhibit had told museum staff that their works have never been featured in a curated show before. 

The exhibition does a good job of representing a diversity of types of comics and of authors, but there is an unsurprising focus on creators who lived and worked in New York City. Original artwork by some well-known artists are on display, including a piece by Jillian Tamaki that was commissioned by MTA Arts & Design, drawings of New York City subway stations by Julia Wertz, and comic strips created by Stan Mack. This brings a local flavor to the exhibit that is particularly fitting, given its location, and highlights the way that local artists have been influenced by the same public transportation system that all New Yorkers use on a regular basis. In addition to paying particular attention to local creators, the exhibit also looked within the Museum’s existing collections for content as well. Shapiro said that “The Transit Museum’s archives are vast, and our job is to make it publicly accessible, so we wanted to include works of [art] from our collection, including materials from Amelia Opdyke Jones. She had a long career in comics and in illustration, but the most recognizable work she created as a staff artist for the Transit Authority was called the Subway Sun, a courtesy campaign that was developed to be posted in buses and subway cars.” Beyond her work for public transportation, Jones was the creator of the syndicated comic strip “The Young Idear.” Including pieces by artists who may be primarily known as comics creators gives local visitors a chance to understand artwork that they may have seen on their commute in a different way and also offers comics experts a chance to see works by established comics artists that they may not have previously considered.

In curating the exhibit, Shapiro did extensive research and worked closely with comics creators and experts alike. She also had the materials reviewed by two comics experts, Karen Green, who is the Curator of Comics and Cartoons and a librarian at Columbia University, and Charles Brownstein, who is the Executive Director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF). While the content in the exhibit is interesting and well-researched, unfortunately, the labels on the items do not always include sufficient details to allow visitors to easily find copies of the works on display if they wanted to further examine them. For example, many labels only have the name, author and year, without month or issue number available. It would have been nice if there was a bit more information about each item on display, perhaps even including additional analysis. Overall though, this is a minor quibble given the breadth of content that is on display. 

Though the exhibit is only one part in a museum with many different exhibits, it includes over one hundred pieces in total and represents works from more than 120 artists. It is an interesting look at how comics and transit have intersected over the years and it will likely have you noticing public transit in comics in a whole new way. Originally, the exhibit was scheduled to close on January 6, 2019, but it has been extended until March 17, 2019, in part because they are hoping to have more visitors from the comics community see it before it closes. The museum is hosting a range of programs to complement the exhibition, featuring Shapiro, comic artists, scholars, and experts.

Carli Spina

(This review was written for the International Journal of Comic Art 20:2, but this version appears on the IJOCA website on December 14, 2018, while the exhibit is still open for viewing.)

Newspaper Comics Council ad campaign, 1962 [Walt Kelly (left) holding a Pogo strip]

New York Transit Museum NYCTA Photo Unit Collection

Newspaper Comics Council ad campaign, 1962 [Milt Caniff (right) holding a Steve Canyon strip]

New York Transit Museum NYCTA Photo Unit Collection

    

 

The Vault of Horror No. 30, 1950

Art by Johnny Craig

Vault of Horror and the EC Logo are trademarks and the displayed artwork is copyrighted material owned by William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Platform, 2015

Jillian Tamaki

New York Transit Museum Collection

 

 

Walt McDougall, 1893

 San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection, 

The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

 

 

Little Sammy Sneeze, April 23. 1905

Winsor McCay, 1905

San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection, 

The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

 “Quarantine the Gumbug!”, 1948

 Amelia Opdyke Jones

 New York Transit Museum

William J. Jones Collection

Gift of William J. Jones and Margaritta J. Friday

Excerpt from Minimum Wage, 2014

Bob Fingerman

Courtesy of the artist

 

Excerpt from The Red Hook, 2016

Dean Haspiel

 Courtesy of the artist

Excerpt from The System, 1995, 2014

Peter Kuper

 Courtesy of the artist

Frank Moser, c. 1920s

Collection of Mark Newgarden

 

Harry Hershfield, 1930

Collection of Mark Newgarden

“190^th/181^st Sts.”, 2016

Julia Wertz

 Courtesy of the artist

“Shadow Play”, 2012

Bill Griffith

 Courtesy of the artist

“In The Soul Crush”, 1909

Art Young

 Flagler Museum Archives

 “Keep Your Feet Off The Seat!”, 1949

 Amelia Opdyke Jones

 New York Transit Museum

William J. Jones Collection

Gift of William J. Jones and Margaritta J. Friday

“Our Omnibusses” , 1881

Frederick Burr Opper

 Flagler Museum Archives

“The Streets of New York”, 1884

Frederick Burr Opper

 Flagler Museum Archives

“Too Elevated Altogether”, 1880

Frederick Burr Opper

Flagler Museum Archives

“Watch Out!”, 1944

Alfred Andriola

New York Transit Museum Collection