Book Review: Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons

 reviewed by Sam Cowling, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Denison University

Phil Witte and Rex Hesner. Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons. Globe Pequot, 2024. US$29. https://www.prometheusbooks.com/9781633889804/funny-stuff/

     In the event of aliens arriving on this planet, they could do scarcely better than consulting Funny Stuff in their perhaps-less-than-urgent quest to understand the cultural institution of the single-panel gag cartoon. (“Aliens encounter Earthlings” is cliché #1 in the authors’ appendix of cartoon cliches.)

Over the course of a breezy ten chapters, Phil Witte and Rex Hesner draw upon a broad and deep familiarity with the form. For years, the two have been writing an online column, “Anatomy of a Cartoon,” to “look behind the gags to debate what makes a cartoon tick,” which is currently hosted by CartoonStock at https://www.cartoonstock.com/blog/category/anatomy-of-a-cartoon/ . The ambition of the book is similar: to “talk about what makes single-panel gag cartoons work, offer insights into the underlying humor, and provide a backstage look at the profession itself.”(ix) On this front, Witte and Hesner are quick to note a key constraint on their pursuit of this ambition—namely, to avoid “crush[ing] the humor out of the cartoons under the weight of excess analysis.”(ix) As they put it later, “[o]ur approach is refreshingly not academic.”(12) There is every reason to think that Witte and Hesner have succeeded in their aims. Their commentary is credible, lively, and appreciative. The menu of single-panel gag cartoons (“cartoons” from here on out) on display is wide-ranging and capably chosen. The efforts to detail the production-side of the practice of cartooning are interesting and illuminating. There are other books that seek to demystify the practice of cartooning—often through more intensive autobiography and individual reflection—but Funny Stuff engages enough cartoonists to throw cold water on the notion that there is a single method common among cartoonists.

Like any book peppered with Thurber, Booth, Chast, and Steinberg, the cartoon enthusiast will find half-remembered gems brought back onto the stage. The reader who happens upon this book with only a limited sense of the form will be treated to a survey of pieces in the orbit of The New Yorker parceled out in a topical ordering. Some chapters discuss formal features, touching upon the role of captions or upon the drawing style of cartoonists. Others map out (to whatever extent possible) the creative process of cartoon-making and idea-summoning. Several chapters focus on the general pursuit of humor and then give pride of place to the notion that humor stems from incongruity, which is then discussed via a happy hodge-podge of examples. Two concluding chapters examine the extent to which a sense of a cartoonist’s “psyche” might be on display in their oeuvre and then take up the question of how the practice of cartooning and pantheon of cartoonists is informed by questions around diversity and identity. Throughout, Witte and Hesner are keen to let the voices of cartoonists shine through in the form of judiciously chosen quotes or via concrete examples from specific creative processes. Readers will find their general sense of the cartoon form, as well as their critical repertoire much expanded, and, of course, they will also have a handful of new cartoonists whose work they are eager to track down.

The most delicate audience for the book is the diehard, the aficionado, or the connoisseur. Such a reader, if unable to summon suitable patience, will find themselves vexed that a favorite cartoon is omitted or that a preferred cartoonist receives insufficient (or, heaven forbid, no) attention. As an intermittently patient reader, I was regularly reassured by Witte and Hesner’s sense of things and, in most cases, the usual and helpfully unusual suspects are touched upon in due course. (Even so, I am unable to resist the urge to commend Mary Petty to those interested in what the authors describe as “lavish” styles, and Sam Cobean as a maestro of captionless, yet thought balloon-bearing, cartoons.)

There is a broader and perhaps thornier sort of complaint well-versed readers might make: where are the kindred, British cartooning voices like Pont and Fougasse? Witte and Hesner plausibly cite The New Yorker as the center of gravity for this art form since mid-century, but, despite this, there are ways to usefully gesture towards the broader history of the cartoon, especially at Punch, without collapsing into the drearily academic. Given the quality of their commentary in this edition of the book, one expects Witte and Hesner would have valuable observations about the differences between a quintessentially American cartoonist like Thurber and his British counterpoint, Pont.

Early on, Witte and Hesner describe Funny Stuff as “a tribute to a unique art form.”(ix) This is a laudable aim, especially in what seems to be an era of declining regard for the form. Even so, there is a tension that emerges from the conflict between, on the one hand, the hope of extolling the virtues and power of cartoons and, on the other hand, the project of deepening our understanding of the form. Even while Witte and Hesner disclaim their discussion as “non-academic,” their efforts are regularly taxonomic, intellectual, and inquisitive—e.g., partitioning out different kinds of humor, sorting cartoonists into rough categories, and cataloguing the kinds of interactions between drawing and caption. Due to the former aim, there is an understandable urgency in this book to showcase as many lovely cartoons as possible. Left unchecked, that would simply deliver another cartoon collection. But, in keeping with the latter aim, there is a clear commitment on the part of the authors to get to the bottom of things (as much as one might). I suspect, however, that this can’t be done solely through attending to the good and the excellent. This reader was unable to find a cartoon in Funny Stuff about which the authors didn’t have a kind word. So, as awkward as it might be in practice and as strange as it might sound in theory, I suspect this book would have been well-served to include a handful of clunkers, coupled with Witte and Hesner’s commentary upon them. As the authors’ discussion of the practice of cartooning makes evident, failure—typically, in the form of cartoons rejected as leaden or inscrutable—is an invisible yet inevitable part of the cartooning world. Partly for this reason, in our pursuit of understanding how cartoons work, it seems that the misfires, the duds, and the clunkers may prove no less instructive than successes.

Then again, who wants to waste time on bad cartoons when there are so very many good ones?

Exhibit Review: Chris Ware

reviewed by Martha Kennedy

Chris Ware. Julien June Misserey and Benoît Peeters. Paris: Bibliothèque publique d’information, June 8-October 10, 2022.   www.bpi.fr/exposition-chris-ware-bpi/

 

An outstanding exhibition that featured the work of Chris Ware ran June 8 – October 10, 2022, at the Bibliothèque publique d’information (Bpi) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. It was developed in partnership with the Angoulême International Comics Festival, which honored him with the Grand Lifetime Achievement Award in June of 2021. The exhibition, developed in close collaboration with Ware, celebrated his prodigious talent and inventiveness in comics, an area in which he has pushed expressive and formal boundaries. Prior to this major international honor during his nearly 40-year career, Ware had already received many other prestigious awards including: several Ignatz, Harvey, and Eisner awards, the Guardian First Book Award, an American Book Award, the Prize for the best album at the Angoulême Festival and Critic’s Prize, and Grand Prize of the city of Angoulême.

 

I had the pleasure of viewing this impressive retrospective in person this past summer. The show gave a window into Ware’s prolific, multi-faceted work for which he has won great international acclaim. The exhibition was for anyone interested in his work including those highly versed in it as well as those beginning to discover it.

 

The overarching arrangement was chronological with the following sections: issues of the Acme Novelty Library; three groups that largely feature selected drawings and color enlargements for each of Ware’s graphic novels; and Comics & Co., an area that presents examples of the artist’s work for magazines, posters, and short animated films. Exhibit texts were in French but included some portions in English in smaller type. French editions of Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth, Building Stories, and Rusty Brown, attached to stands, were easily browsed and helped anchor each group of items related to each graphic novel.

 

On entering the Bpi, it was easy to find the exhibition. Just inside the entry were large cases containing numerous issues of The Acme Novelty Library, the ongoing series that Ware began in the 1990s. The differing sizes, formats, and stylistically-changing cover designs hinted at the contents within and several examples were opened to display some of the highly varied comics stories (unsigned and purporting to be by multiple creators), cutouts with instructions for assembly, and articles addressed to readers. Some issues presented versions or portions of comics that eventually became parts of Ware’s graphic novels including Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth.

 

The section devoted to Jimmy Corrigan (2001) included drawings and enlargements that primarily highlight the feelings and musings of Corrigan, the middle-aged, highly introverted protagonist and his eventual meeting with the father long absent from his life. The work is semi-autobiographical in that Ware draws upon his own experience of meeting his own absent father while he was working on his novel. In one drawing Ware shares Jimmy imagining what his father looks like by depicting multiple images of older men’s bald heads shown sequentially in a grid. In an online tour, curators Misserey and Peeters commented that making such use of the page at this time was highly innovative formally. They also mentioned Ware’s interest in evoking nostalgia tinged with sadness and detailed rendering of such architectural settings as the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, for example. Such interest continued into his work that followed.      

 

The section on Building Stories underscored the unconventional nature of this graphic novel that consists of fourteen separate printed works cased in a box that tell stories about people living in one building.  An exhibit case containing multiple notebooks relating to the graphic novel gave a glimpse into Ware’s creative process. As noted in the exhibit brochure, the stories of people in the building gradually build a portrait of one resident, a woman florist and aspiring artist with one leg. One of the most striking original drawings in this section featured a life-size rendering of the artist’s daughter based on her actual size at the time he drew it. This presented formal challenges in balancing the large form with smaller visual units, a challenge that he handled with impressive skill in composing the double page spread. Misserey and Peeters observed that the drawings and color enlargements in this section demonstrate that Ware had moved beyond a semi-autobiographical milieu to create a world that reflects increasing engagement with others.   

 

Some of the most compelling pieces in the section on Rusty Brown portray the character Joanne Cole, a Black teacher at the school attended by Rusty. To this reader, she is also one of the most interesting and sympathetic characters in the novel. The drawings on view included key scenes in her professional and personal history: we see her seeking to connect with her students, her strong engagement with playing the banjo (an interest shared with Ware), her careful interactions with white colleagues (much of which require repression and self-containment), qualities so well captured in Ware’s depictions. His imagery conveys a broadening of his relationships with others in the world. I agree with Misserey and Peeters who pointed to a growing sense of empathy and compassion toward others that is seen in this work.  

 

Midway through the show, a video of Ware being interviewed in his home and studio provided an engaging interlude. A clip that showed him at work using his straight edges and fine tipped pens conveys some of the intense focus required to achieve the precision, care, and thoughtful deliberation so evident in his work.

 

The section Comics & Co. presented examples of such additional work as a beautifully drawn cover for The Ragtime Ephemeralist, covers for The New Yorker, architectural drawings, and short video animations. Ware’s designs for The New Yorker, in particular, stand out not only as visually arresting but also as full of nuanced, thoughtful perspectives on the state of American society that reference the impacts of heightened socio-political divisions, the pandemic, threats of mass shootings at schools, and more. His architectural drawings also reminded me of how he uses this well-honed skill in rendering Midwestern architecture in Omaha and Chicago, in particular, to evoke a sense of place that contributes to narrative atmosphere and immediacy in his graphic novels.  

 

Further evidence of Ware’s multi-faceted interests and talent could be seen in several cases that displayed small wooden objects--figures and toys that he fashioned by hand. While some of these playful objects portrayed characters in his comics, others in a case near the end of the show were made for family events such as birthdays. Including such objects underscored the importance of family as well as work in his life.

 

When interviewed in conjunction with this exhibition, Ware agreed that he identifies as a “full ‘book artist.’” As he draws, writes, and designs his books, he tries to keep in mind the ways in which a human being is like a book in that it has a spine, is “bigger on the inside that the outside,” and can convey the truth about itself (or not.) He also said that a book is “also the only art which pretty much anyone can afford and own.” While the original drawings in the exhibition are one-of-a-kind, Ware also says that they represent “simply one step” in his creative process: “the finished, printed object is the art itself.” This emphasis on the book made the Bpi seem the perfect venue for this artist’s superb retrospective. No matter what aspect of Ware’s work you find most compelling or admirable or challenging, this exhibition shed light on your understanding of his art, him as an artist, and a human being.