Book Review - Strong Bonds: Child-animal Relationships in Comics

reviewed by Chris York

Maaheen Ahmed, ed. Strong Bonds: Child-animal Relationships in Comics. Presses Universitaires de Liege, 2020. 295 pp. ISBN 978-2-87562-259-4.  http://www.presses.uliege.be/jcms/c_22440/acme-6

http://www.presses.uliege.be/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-02/acme_6_free.pdf (open access link to entire book)

  Maaheen Ahmed notes in her introduction to Strong Bonds that there is a disproportionately small amount of scholarship on the child-animal relationship in comics, despite its prevalence throughout comics history, across publication formats, and across cultures. Strong Bonds addresses this need with a collection of essays that are engaging and insightful, and show the range and complexity of the child-animal relationship in comics.

The book is structured around five sections: The Alternative Family, Queered Relationships, Childhood Under Threat, Politics, and Poetics. Each section consists of two or three chapters, which, at times, felt inadequate. The section Queered Relationships, for instance, consists of essays that focus on two runs of superhero comics, Supergirl in Action Comics, and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. While the chapters themselves are well-conceived, having only two essays focusing on comics from major American publishers, DC and Marvel, seemed inadequate for expressing the range of the theme across the spectrum of comics.

The essays throughout the volume find common ground in their assessment of the child-animal relationship’s ability to disrupt conventional dichotomies such as queer/straight, self/other, adult/child, and civilized/savage. Laura Pearson, a contributor of one of the more compelling chapters in the book, notes that dualisms “devalue” the side that is implied to be inferior. The child-animal relationship, as each of these essays attest, is an effective vehicle for exploring these dual conceptions because it is not really dichotomous at all; the adult/parent is always, either implicitly or explicitly, a third contributor to the relationship’s dynamic. Thus, the child-adult relationship is disrupted by the addition of the animal, and the human-animal relationship is disrupted by the child. It is in these fissures that the concepts of the family, gender, identity, and society, among others, are scrutinized and reformulated. The strength of this anthology is that it demonstrates the versatility of the child-animal-(adult) relationship in addressing social conventions.

It is almost inherent in the nature of the anthology that the quality of the chapters will be uneven. Strong Bonds is no exception. However, the majority of chapters in this volume are well-written, show a strong understanding of the field, and add to the conversation in interesting ways. While many of the chapters focus on narrative, I found that the most compelling contributions addressed how the formal elements of comics are able to uniquely represent the child-animal relationship. Pearson’s essay on Matt Forsythe’s Jinchalo, for instance, notes how the sparse use of language, in the form of onomatopoeia, inspires a sense of readerly curiosity and destabilizes a variety of boundaries (linguistic, cultural, generational, species). The instability of the text, Pearson concludes, encourages the reader to explore “[t]he idea of attempting to imagine another.” Elsewhere, the visual structure of comics informs Shiamin Kwa’s exploration of Brecht Evens’ Panther. The unsettling shifts in the illustration of the panther from panel to panel, Kwa notes, is integral to exposing the ambiguity and compounding the tension within the narrative. Both of these essays, and many more within this volume, are aided by attractive, high-quality color reproductions of their subjects.

As I suggest above, the primary critique of this collection is that it does not completely deliver on its intent to show the range of the child-animal relationship in comics. In her introduction, Ahmed states that the anthology covers “a historically and culturally diverse corpus”(10). The comics that are the focus of this collection do touch upon nearly every decade of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Little Orphan Annie to Jommeke to Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.  However, the collection does not venture beyond the western tradition. All of the chapters deal with comics by British, European or North American creators. The closest the book comes to engaging non-western traditions is the chapter on Matthew Forsythe’s Jinchalo. Forsythe is Canadian, but draws upon Korean culture and language in the narrative. His essay’s play with cultural borders is fascinating, but it left me all the more aware of the absence of other comics traditions in the volume. The child-animal relationship spans all traditions, and it would have been interesting to see non-Western comics in dialogue with the other essays in this collection. With that caveat in mind, Ahmed has assembled a valuable collection of essays for anyone interested in exploring child-animal relationships in comics.

A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 23-2 (Fall/Winter 2021).

 

Table of Contents

Introduction
Maaheen Ahmed
Child-animal Relationships in Comics: A First Mapping ................................... 9

Alternative Families
Peter W.Y. Lee
The Maternal Arf!: Raising Canines in the Roaring Twenties in Harold Gray’s
Little Orphan Annie .............................................................................................. 29
Gert Meesters and Pascal Lefèvre
Towards an Unexpected Equivalence: Animals, Children and Adults
in the Popular Flemish Strip Jommeke ............................................................... 51
Jennifer Marchant
Hergé’s Animal Sidekicks: The Adventures of Snowy and Jocko ....................... 71

Queered Relationships
Olivia Hicks
(Super) Horsing Around: The Significance of Comet in Supergirl ................... 91
Nicole Eschen Solis
A Girl and Her Dinosaur: The Queerness of Childhood in Moon Girl
and Devil Dinosaur ............................................................................................. 109

Childhood under Threat
José Alaniz
“Winner Take All!”: Children, Animals and Mourning in Kirby’s
Kamandi ............................................................................................................... 129
Mel Gibson
“Once upon a time, there was a very bad rat…”:
Constructions of Childhood, Young People, Vermin and Comics .................. 149
Shiamin Kwa
The Panther, the Girl, and the Wardrobe: Borderlessness and Domestic Terror
in Panther ............................................................................................................. 165

Politics
Michael Chaney and Sara Biggs Chaney
Animal-child Dyad and Neurodivergence in Peanuts ..................................... 183
Fabiana Loparco
The Most Loyal of Friends, the Most Lethal of Enemies: Child-animal
Relationships in Corriere dei Piccoli during the First World War ................ 195

Poetics
Emmanuelle Rougé
A Poetics of Anti-authorianism: Child-animal Relationships in Peanuts
and Calvin and Hobbes ...................................................................................... 225
Benoît Glaude
Child-animal Interactions in Yakari’s Early Adventures:
A Zoonarratological Reading ............................................................................. 239
Laura A. Pearson
Graphic Cross-pollinations and Shapeshifting Fables in Matthew Forsythe’s
Jinchalo ................................................................................................................. 257

Postscript
Philippe Capart
Boule & Bill: Unwrapped .................................................................................... 279

List of contributors ........................................................................................... 287
Index ............................................................................................................................ 291

Exhibit Review: Comic Art: 120 Years of Panels and Pages

Comic Art: 120 Years of Panels and Pages. Sara W. Duke and Martha H. Kennedy, Prints and Photographs Division and Georgia M. Higley and Megan Halsband, Serial and Government Publications Division. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. September 12, 2019- September 2020. https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/comic-art/about-this-exhibition/

Since I am friends with all four of the curators of the exhibit, consider this more of an exhibit overview rather than a review. Located in the historic Jefferson Building, the site of many fine exhibitions besides those of comic art, the Swann Gallery’s exhibits are always interesting and this one is no exception. The exhibit showcases highlights of the Library’s collection of comic art, meaning in this exhibit at least comic strips and comic books, including its very latest forays into collecting.

The exhibit is divided rather arbitrarily into five sections – “Early Years: 1890s-1920s,” “Mid-Twentieth Century: 1930s-1960s,” “Late-Twentieth Century and Onward: 1970s-2000s,” “Comic Books and Beyond: 1940s-2000s,” and “Webcomics.” Although the sections are clearly delineated on the website, this is less true for the actual exhibit except for the comic books which are displayed in cases in the middle of the gallery, and the webcomics which are on a screen by the exit door.

 

 

  

Taking the three original art sections first, there are some very good original cartoons on display, beginning in Early Years with the copyright drawing for the Yellow Kid, and originals from Winsor McCay, Frank King’s Gasoline Alley, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, and some tearsheets from the Geppi Collection. The next section has a fine Batman & Robin page, a lovely Burne Hogarth original of Tarzan, and an early Peanuts original, although the Hulk page by Marie Severin has been shown too many times in recent exhibits. The latest section definitely plays into the interests of the two curators. There are two 9-11 pieces, one from Will Eisner and one from Alex Ross that were collected after that tragedy, a Sunday strip from local cartoonist Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac, a page from the New Yorker's Chris Ware, items from women cartoonists Trina Robbins, Lynn Johnston and Marguerite Dabaie, and posters and prints from the Small Press Expo collection.

 

 

The comic book section is limited by both space and the difficulties in displaying bound printed matter, (as the Post Office classified comics when they were sent through the mail to subscribers). Again reflecting the interests of this sections curators, there are some rare pieces such as the recently-acquired All-Negro Comics no. 1 and DC’s World Best Comics no. 1, along standards such as a Disney issue of Dell’s Four Color Comics, EC’s Weird Fantasy, Lobo (an uninspired Western distinguished only by having an African-American hero), Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, Mad no. 6, Twisted Sisters no. 1 and an fanzine among others. The Webcomics section just shows strips on a computer screen, made up from some of the electronic comics that the Library has begun collecting digitally including Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics, Randall Munroe’s XKCD and Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant. It is nice that the curators are including this new form, but seeing them on a large computer screen in an exhibit gallery does not add anything to the understanding of the strips.

 

 

The exhibit will be switched out around February to preserve the paper items. In a small room next to the exhibit, Sara Duke’s selection of Herblock cartoons from fifty years ago is worth looking at, especially since the topics he drew and she selected are still problems and in the news.

Mike Rhode

(This review was written for the International Journal of Comic Art 22:1, but this version appears on both the IJOCA and ComicsDC websites on January 8 2020, while the exhibit is still open for viewing.)

Exhibit review: Superheroes at the National Museum of American History

by Mike Rhode


Superheroes. Washington, DC: National Museum of American History. November 20, 2018 to September 2, 2019. http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/super-heroes

The Smithsonian museum has mounted a small, but choice, exhibit made up of some extremely surprising pieces. The terse description on their website only hints at it:

This showcase presents artifacts from the museum's collections that relate to Superheroes, including comic books, original comic art, movie and television costumes and props, and memorabilia. The display includes George Reeves's Superman costume from the Adventures of Superman TV program, which ran from 1951-1958, as well as Halle Berry's Storm costume from the 2014 film X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Of the five exhibit cases, two concentrate on comic books and original art, while the other three contain props from movies and pop culture ephemera. Surprisingly, the Black Panther costume from the Marvel movies which the museum collected this summer is not included, but as noted above they have displayed George Reeve's Superman costume (since it is in color rather than grey shades, it came from the later seasons of the television show), Halle Berry's Storm uniform, along with Captain America's shield, Wolverine's claws and Batman's cowl and a batarang. Those three cases are rounded out with the first issue of Ms. Magazine which had a Wonder Woman cover, two lunchboxes (Wonder Woman and Marvel heroes), and a Superman telephone.

courtesy of Grand Comics Database

 Surprisingly, the two cases of comic books and original art include a very wide variety of comic books including some that just recently came out such as America (Marvel) along with older issues such as Leading Comics from 1943 which featured Green Arrow among other heroes such as the Crimson Avenger and the Star-Spangled Kid. The existence of an apparently extensive comic book collection in the Smithsonian comes as a surprise to this reviewer and will need to be researched more in depth. Even more of a surprise were the four pieces of original art on display – the cover of Sensation Comics 18 (1943) with Wonder Woman drawn by H.G. Peter, a Superman comic strip (1943) signed by Siegel and Shuster, a Captain Midnight cover that the curators did not bother to track the source of (it appears to be an unused version of #7 from April 1943), and a April 27, 1945 Batman comic strip. Actually, none of the creators of any of the works are credited, although the donors are.

The small exhibit lines two sides of a hallway off the busy Constitution Avenue entrance of the Museum, but the location has the advantage of being around the corner from a Batmobile from the 1989 Batman movie that was installed earlier this year. The car may be tied into the nearby installation and branding of a Warner Bros. theater showing the latest Harry Potter spin-off movie which seems like a true waste of space in the perennially over-crowded and under –exhibited (i.e. they have literally hundreds of thousands of items worthy of display in storage), but one assumes that besides the Batmobile, the theater came with a cash donation or promise of shared revenues.

Notwithstanding that cynicism, the Batmobile and the superheroes exhibit are fun to see, although most people quickly passed them by during this reviewer's visit. Also of interest may be a bound volume of Wonder Woman comics and a reproduction of an unused idea for her original costume, around the other corner from the Batmobile in the Smithsonian Libraries exhibit gallery. The museum has recently acquired some Marston family papers.

Bruce Guthrie has an extensive series of photographs including the individual comic books at http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/keys/2018_11_22D2_SIAH_Superheroes

 

(This review was written for the International Journal of Comic Art 20:2, but this version appears on both the IJOCA and ComicsDC websites on November 23, 2018, while the exhibit is still open for viewing.)