Exhibition Review: Beautiful Monsters: The Art of Emil Ferris

 reviewed by Carli Spina

Kim Munson. Beautiful Monsters: The Art of Emil Ferris. New York: Society of Illustrators’ Museum of Illustration. August 3-October 19, 2024. https://societyillustrators.org/event/beautifulmonsters/

To coincide with this year’s publication of Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters: Book Two, the Society of Illustrators’ Museum of Illustration devoted its main floor and lower level gallery spaces to an exhibition of her work curated by Kim Munson. Munson has ample experience in this arena, having edited the Eisner Award-nominated anthology Comic Art in Museums, curated the museum exhibit Women in Comics, and served as a 2022 Eisner Award judge. Clearly, Munson curated this exhibit with care to ensure that it adds to visitors’ understanding of Ferris and her work. The pieces selected illustrated many aspects of Ferris’ work in My Favorite Thing is Monsters including her character design work, her influences, and the monster magazine covers which feature in both volumes. Pieces from her short work “The Bite That Changed My Life” from Our Favorite Thing Is My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, which was created for Free Comic Book Day in 2019 were also prominently featured in the exhibit.

Where the exhibit exceled most was in placing Ferris’ work in context. This began as visitors entered the first room of the exhibit where the first case and interpretative text focus on Ferris’ father’s work as a toy designer. His work as a designer of iconic toys, including the Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots, the light-up game Simon, and the Mickey Mouse push button landline phone, where Mickey holds the receiver, were highlighted as an important source of inspiration for Ferris’ work and particularly her repetition of shapes. The influence of toys carried into the second room of the exhibit where an illustration of Granny Smith: Super Crime Fighter was paired with an actual doll with an apple in place of the head, and a label explaining how Ferris grew up creating her own toys from 10-cent items found in the Salvation Army bin. Understanding how these childhood experiences carried into Ferris’ work adds a deeper layer to her artwork and her text.

The exhibit also contextualized Ferris’ references to several classic paintings of Judith beheading Holofernes by bringing these pieces, and some initial drafts, together while listing the works Ferris references. Though this section of the exhibit would have benefited from including reproductions of the works referenced for comparison, it was nevertheless helpful in making explicit the connection between these classic works and Ferris’ art. In keeping with this connection to classic art, Ferris created a large-scale piece titled Scary Starry Night specifically for this exhibit. It is described on the accompanying label as a “tribute to Van Gogh’s 1889 painting The Starry Night” and the piece consists of a large, rectangular illustration that is very similar to the original painting, drawn in the style of Ferris’ artwork for this book with cross-hatching in ball-point pen. Eyes are featured in place of the stars found in the original work and a red set of eyes has been added to each of the black towers that rise in the left side of the piece in this adaptation. To the left of this work, a cutout figure of Van Gogh holding a palette and brushes was positioned as if he is in the midst of painting the larger work. This illustration continues Ferris’ practice of reworking classic art works and more modern popular illustrations in her own style and inhabited by her own characters. At the same time, it also served as an interactive element of the exhibit, given that the label specifically suggested that visitors take their picture with this piece and post it on social media. Such photo opportunities are becoming more common in museums, but this one contributed to the exhibit by serving both as a focal point for the eye upon entering the larger of the two rooms of the exhibit and as an original work specifically created for the exhibit.

While the majority of the works in the exhibit were illustrations from My Favorite Thing is Monsters, the exhibit would still have benefited from more detailed labels in places, particularly for those works that are not illustrations from one of the books. A good example of this was one of the few three-dimensional objects in the exhibit, a mask that appears to be a recreation of one found in an illustration. A recent interview with the author seems to confirm that this mask was created by Ferris’ mother when she was a child,^[1] which an adjacent comic in the exhibit described. However, a label with more details about this would have been appreciated, especially given that greater context is given for her father’s creative career and his influence on Ferris. Given that her mother was also a professional artist,^[2] this felt like a missed opportunity to offer a comparative look at her mother’s influence in her work.

This exhibit offered a chance to experience Ferris’ work, often in a new context that added to visitors’ understanding of her novels but could be appreciated by both fans of her work and those who have not yet read it.

 

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^[1] Vitali, Marc. 2024. “Eagerly Awaited Graphic Novel Embraces Chicago, Art and Monsters — Both Real and Imaginary.” WTTW. June 4. https://news.wttw.com/2024/06/04/eagerly-awaited-graphic-novel-embraces-chicago-art-and-monsters-both-real-and-imaginary

^[2] Yood, James. 1991. “Eleanor Spiess-Ferris: Zaks Gallery.” Artforum International. Sept. 1: Reviews 139.

Research Prompt: What is the most panels ever used on a comics page?

 by Mike Rhode (updated 10/14/2024 with additional suggestions as an addendum)

I was at a talk by Jonathan Roth this weekend, who was asking children how many panels a comics page should have. He usually defaulted to 3 or 4 in his Rover and Speck graphic novels. He asked me what the largest number ever used was... so I reached out to some comics scholar friends.

Here's some pages they came up with...

Going back to Jim Starlin's 1970's Warlock with 33 panels...

 

 

This Milo Manara page from Giuseppe Bergman has about 38 panels...

 

 

Longshot Comics by Shane Simmons has 40 panels...

 

 

 A page from Spinoza #3 with 53 panels...

 

 

 Lewis Trondheim's Mr. O has 60 panels... and Darko Macan notes, "Mister O and Shane Simmons differ from the others because their *every* page has the same busy grid."

 

  

 

Possibly 81 panels in Gaiman’s Miracle Man depending on how you define a panel... (I personally would consider this to be 13, based just on dialogue balloons).

 

Joe Matt's "Hell to Pay" from Peepshow has 96 panels...

There’s a page from Paul Chadwick's Concrete where he’s swimming across the Atlantic Ocean with 150 panels...

 

 

 

The What Were Comics? project has this example of 236 panels in Marvel Graphic Novel #6, aka Star Slammers by Walt Simonson... (Andrei Molotiu noted, and I agree: Some of those are a bit iffy, like the Simonson --it may have a grid superimposed on it, but absolutely no one would read the majority of those squares as individual panels.)

 

 

 

Flood, by Eric Drooker has a 16x16 grid for 256 panels, but half are blank...

 

 

Andreas's Rork had 300, according to Will Quinn on Twitter in 2018...

... and that appears to be the winner at the moment, although something by Chris Ware could dethrone it, I suppose. Leave a note in comments if you have other suggestions.

So why use this many panels on a single page? What effect are these cartoonists attempting to show? Does it work? 

Addendum

Paul Gravett linked to this on Facebook, and I posted it to two comics studies lists, and here's some more suggestions.

from Andrei Molotiu: The second page of Bill Griffith's "The Plot Thickens" from Raw no. 2? (60 or 61 depending on how you count "End"- MR)

from Box Brown: There's a Chris Ware page that has 177 panels...

 from Alex Fitch: Apparently Absolute Batman 1 has quite a few; a couple of Liam Sharp’s Hulk issues were pretty packed with panels, and Woodrow Phoenix’s She Lives has 64 panel pages…

from JL Mast: A page I did for one of my webcomics 20 years ago! 400 small panels.

 

from Harry Demetrious (and Nicolas Verstappen agreed and provided an image from the book): Frank Quitely draws panels descending into infinity in Multiversity, thousands if not millions. The "what shall I watch tonight?" page, endless thumbnail choices wiping out narrative immersion....

 

 

from John Bateman: Beyruth, Danilo (2012). Astronauta: Magnetar. São Paulo: Editora Panini. p. 41. I count 424 panels. Paul Gravett followed up on this and provided the image: An interesting example here from Brazil: 'The Astronaut' is a graphic novel from 2015, an adult version of a Maurício de Souza character, but real sci-fi, with lots of physics explaining astronomy. Here a full-page multiplies, first by 4 and then by more... (since it's just copying the same 9 panels multiple times, I think this has to have a qualifier - MR)

 

Lucio Luiz provides considerably more information for the above page's design: 

I’d like to show you a page with 1,224 panels. It’s from Astronauta: Magnetar of Danilo Beyruth (it was published in some countries, but I’m not sure if it was published in English).

To give you context about the narrative, [here's] five pages (38 to 42), but the page with a lot of panels is page 41. This character is stuck in space, alone. In page 38 he starts his “day 1” with his routine. In page 39, he starts “day 2” with the same routine. And this routine goes on with page 40 repeating the same 9 panels, each time smaller. In page 41, there is 136 repetitions (the routine has 9 panels, so 136 x 9 = 1,224  panels in this page). In page 42 the sequence finishes with a single panel with “Day 146”. And that was really the 146th day because the routine appeared exact 145 times in the 4 prior pages. This scan is not very good, but in the comic, all panels, even the smallest, are well defined. I believe it’s a great amount of panels and also a great way to show the loneliness of the character in all these days stuck in space (that was exactly Beyruth's intention, by the way).

 

 

Final update (10/25/24): 

Aaron Kashtan: How about this strip by Mark Newgarden from Raw #6?

This is the one where the one guy has a nosebleed, and he doesn't have a tissue to stop it. And the other guy says to use a rag instead, and the first guy says "The New York Post is considered a rag" and he stuffs the New York Post into his nose.
 

Mark Newgarden: Aaron Kashtan I was trying to outdo Subitzky, so I must have counted.

Book Review: Hurricane Nancy by Nancy Burton, edited by Alex Dueben

Reviewed by Cassia Hayward-Fitch

Nancy Burton. Hurricane Nancy. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2024. 112 pp. US$30 (Paperback). ISBN: 9781683969839. https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/hurricane-nancy

 This retrospective of Nancy Burton’s work, Hurricane Nancy – one of the artist’s pen names – is the first-ever collection of Burton’s work, and the latest in a line of Fantagraphics’ collections of underground comix by female artists, preceded by anthologies such as The Complete Wimmen's Comix (2016) and Tits & Clits 1972-1987 (2023). Like these two earlier publications, Hurricane Nancy attempts to make the work of a pioneering female comix creator available to a broader audience, helping to alter public perceptions of the “boys only” nature of the underground comix movement. The book is split into four sections and begins with an introduction that situates Burton as the first female artist to emerge from the broader underground comix movement. This is followed by a selection of Burton’s comix and artwork, divided into work created between 1965 and 1971, and her new artwork from 2010 to the present. Finally, the edition is rounded off with an all-new interview by editor Alex Dueben. Here, Burton discusses her involvement in protest movements, the impact of her global travels and music on her art, her artistic background, and the factors that led her to cease creating art in 1971 and then to resume in 2010.

The presentation of Burton’s early work has an archival tone; the comix are mounted on a black background, with many of the pages featuring scans of the original artwork; sepia-toned and complete with stains, rips, marginalia notes, correction fluid marks, and faint blue tracing lines. This creates an intimate reading experience, giving the reader the impression that they are being made privy to Burton’s private collection. The selection of work from 1965 to 1971 begins with “Gentle’s Tripout,” a serial comic strip about a group of friends who go on a journey to find the “Wicked Wandering Hag” in the hope of lifting the curse that has rendered one of their number, Vera, silent. After the comic abruptly ends with an incomplete, half-finished strip, it is followed by a selection of artwork that resembles the psychedelic poster art of the time. Similarly, Burton’s artwork from 2010 to the present, which features gigantic figures who peer through house windows, larger-than-life cat heads, lizards, and birds, bears similarities to the Alice in Wonderland-esque poster art of the 1960s. Her style also resembles artists such as Aubrey Beardsley in that, where most psychedelic posters utilized brilliant color, Burton’s artwork, like Beardsley’s before her, is drawn in black ink on white backgrounds. Across both sections, the artwork is unaccompanied by captions, dates (except when this is indicated in the artwork itself), or contextual information. This alleviates the feeling that a critic is breathing down the reader’s neck, dictating the “correct” way in which the art should be interpreted. It is only in the interview that concludes this collection that Burton herself situates her work within the broader context of her life and artistic influences, which, alongside the underground press movement and poster art, she lists as art nouveau, abstract expressionism, and formline art.

Overall, this collection presents a decade-spanning overview of an artist whose career has one foot in underground comix and the other in poster art but who has yet to gain significant recognition within either sphere. Burton's entire career is contextualized through the inclusion of the introduction and interview, and the collection demonstrates the fluid divide between underground comix and other contemporary artistic movements, making it a valuable addition for scholars wishing to broaden discussions of female underground artists and the nature of the underground comix movement itself.

Book Review: The Anxiety Club, a graphic guide to understanding anxiety

 reviewed by Ishita Sehgal

Frédéric Fanget, Catherine Mayer and Pauline Aubry (ill.). Translated by Edward Gauvin. The Anxiety Club, a graphic guide to understanding anxiety. SelfMadeHero, 2024. https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/the-anxiety-club

 

Modern life definitely demands a guide to navigate the daily obstacles and attempts to achieve a sense of composure in the daily grind. The presence of anxiety and other psychological troubles keep creeping in trying to detour oneself from the path of the daily hustle bustle. French creators psychiatrist Dr. Frédéric Fanget, co-author Catherine Meyer and illustrator Pauline Aubry explain how anxiety can manifest itself, how it can cause threatening scenarios, and most importantly how anxiety, in whatever intensity it may show up, can be treated through Anxiety Therapy. The book itself is divided into five chapters that discuss in detail the many aspects of anxiety and how it is imperative to recognize them and find the right kind of treatment.

 

In the authors’ own words, the book is to “decatastrophize anxiety.” This graphic novel is a guidebook about surviving with anxiety as this psychological problem is depicted and then shown being dealt with. In the first two chapters of the book, readers are introduced to the multiple ways of how anxiety can show up and how one can try and identify it. This is done by using day-to-day terms and phrases which makes identifying the problem accessible and easy. The quirky titles of the chapters such as “anxiety’s disaster camera” or the “faces of anxiety” and the lingo the authors use are not only relatable, but also help in retaining information.

 

Even though the authors have fictionalized the anxious people, renamed and anonymized them, the book keeps the character of Dr Fanget as himself. This choice to not fictionalize the doctor gives the reader a sense of security and confidence in receiving correct information. The chapter on anxiety treatment is the key element of this book. It brings together all the questions that people suffering from anxiety might raise and the ways in which they could be answered. The treatments are divided into three parts depending on the intensity of the anxiety one is under.

 

This book is a delightful read about a very serious problem faced by people of all ages as the world is progressing disconcertingly faster technologically. The question one asks of a self-help type of book is about its authenticity and reliability, which Dr Fanget’s presence in the book as a narrator answers. However, those who seek this as self-therapy for anxiety, may or may not find one here, but between the gutters, they may identify their own symptoms.

 

Book Review: Drafted by Rick Parker

reviewed by Nicholas Wirtz, doctoral candidate, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Oregon

Rick Parker. Drafted. Abrams ComicArts, 2024. 256 pp. $24.99 (Hardcover). ISBN 978-1-4197-6159-1. eISBN 978-1-64700-660-0. https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/drafted

 Rick Parker, early in his Vietnam War-era memoir Drafted, reflects on his 1966 induction into the United States Army, indicating his small, uniformed figure among the many marching through the snowy night, and writes “I kept reminding myself that I was just in the army, and not in some prison or concentration camp” (7). Rick the artistic naif has little time for the broader geopolitical tensions or ideologies that demand his conscription after losing his S-2 student deferment. His energy is devoted instead to the effects of his conscription, to surviving his coming-of-age in the military culture, and living under the threat that he will be sent to fight and die for, as one sergeant declares, “motherhood and apple pie!” (47).

Parker illustrates his memoir in a bulbous, gangly, at times grotesquely detailed style reminiscent of EC’s publications, an affinity which should come as no surprise, given his involvement in the 2007 Tales from the Crypt revival. Parker viscerally and vulnerably captures the discipline, bombast, and often painful humor of his experiences through his expressive illustrations. Any sense of their stylistic anachronism, fifty years removed in time, also offers synchrony, drawing us closer to the times and places of those experiences. Parker’s expressionistic cartooning also evokes for me Justin Green’s influential autobiographical Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. Parker shares Green’s emphasis on his own insecurities and abuses by authorities around him, but where Green emphasizes his unique subjectivity, Parker positions himself as an everyman.

Parker’s history and personality are in the foreground of the book, but often his character and narrative focuses on representing a common experience; many sequences, especially in boot camp, approach instruction manuals or montages, and they offer a general image of military life as much they more specifically represent his life. Drafted devotes few pages to Rick’s artistry at the time. His skills occasionally earn him friendship or disapproval, but they rarely mark his role as distinct from his contemporaries. Rick the artist emerges in his attention to rare flashes of silent, natural beauty that emerge in contrast with situations and shouted orders that demand his reaction. Parker is a keen observer, and it is in his observation that Drafted excels as art and finds value as history. He effectively caricatures his own cluelessness or others’ antagonism for sympathy or a laugh, but I find his demonstrative style most engaging when he shows others’ more nuanced distress, resentment, joy, or sympathetic understanding. That soldiers’ emotions are so dramatically cartooned as to be inescapable here, often seems to speak to how unmistakable and unforgettable these emotions are to him, and how he feels their experiences and communicates his empathy and concern, such as when Rick witnesses a sergeant beat a man under his command nearly to death over a practical joke. This empathetic recognition becomes a painful confession of the harm he knows he causes when, for instance, he draws the fearful face of a fellow officer candidate he abuses as punishment, on orders which he is sworn to obey.

The Vietnam War itself is absent from Drafted. Parker’s memoir is occasionally punctuated by references to Vietnam, but because he was never sent abroad, his attention remains with American military culture; the locales of Drafted are domestic, and its depicted violence is American in origin. When soldiers are killed or their rights ignored, Parker identifies with their shared mortality and subjection to a dysfunctional system, but seems to speak from a desire to tell, more than to judge. Parker’s pages are densely packed—with information, detail, texture, with barely contained captions and expressively lettered dialogue—a telling both urgent and claustrophobic, but his commentary remains remarkably restrained. Parker occasionally alludes to, or implicitly critiques, positions or policies, but by refraining from savvy, critical, or sardonic retrospective reflection, these comments, like his expressive cartooning, demonstrate his disciplined commitment to voicing an everyman soldier’s experiences and effectively ground Drafted in Rick’s “present.” Whereas a predictable anti-war moral might have rendered Parker’s emotional—often visceral—telling overwrought or didactic, his mix of personal honesty and ideological restraint instead offers an insightful portrait of this important time in American history. Writing as a teacher, I feel Parker’s dense style may represent a demanding adjustment for students but, with some guidance or in an advanced context, I expect students of history or comics would be well-rewarded by his voice and cartooning that draws us into Rick’s time.

Book Review: Advocate: A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice by Eddie Ahn

 reviewed by Margaret C. Flinn

Eddie Ahn. Advocate: A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice. Ten Speed Graphics, 2024. 208 pp. US$24.99 (Hardcover). ISBN: 9781984862495; Ebook ISBN: 9781984862501. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/729254/advocate-by-eddie-ahn/

 

The subtitle of Eddie Ahn’s Advocate, A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice kind of says it all. Graphic memoirs are numerous and it’s difficult to stand out. Ahn’s book is an engaging look at a particular intersection of identities and experiences: unique in as much as each individual is unique. The book gives insights into Ahn’s family’s trajectory from Korea to Texas (and return visits for various reasons), and Ahn’s own relocation to California, initially as an Americorps volunteer. The book flashes back and forward between different moment of Ahn’s family history, including a mélange of documents (details from diaries, maps, drawings of photographs) as is frequently seen in the graphic memoir. While the story focuses on Ahn’s own journey, it thus includes stories recounted to him by family members, or pieced together between family stories and material in his grandfather’s diary.

            If Ahn’s story stands out, it will probably be for its ordinary weirdness. He shares the quirks of his life, like playing poker and health issues in law school, and the financial struggles through his life that lead to unexpectedly amusing, if melancholy, details like calculating the cost of everything in its burrito math equivalent (a tank of gas equals four or five burritos)—the burrito being the expensive, filling, and nourishing meal of choice for Ahn, particularly through his early years in the Bay Area. Ahn is at once informative and banal, educating the reader through his own story about the vicissitudes of environmental and social justice, the constant challenges of immigration and racism in the U.S. and depicting a quiet passion and dogged labor that allow anyone to imagine that what Ahn has done is doable, although most of us never will. It also documents recent realities such as the way COVID-19 impacted community organizing and social justice work.

            The self-taught artist’s realist lines are clean and clear, with single color washes in a soft palette changing by page or panel and includes a brief annex regarding the making of the book and environmental justice work. In all, the book is readable and informative. Many readers will be able to relate to parts of Ahn’s story, and young readers may even be inspired by the non-glamorized yet dignified representation of doing meaningful work in today’s world.

Book review: The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Cormac McCarthy and Manu Larcenet

reviewed by Luke C. Jackson

 Cormac McCarthy and Manu Larcenet. The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation. Abrams ComicArts, 2024. US $26.99. ISBN:  9781419776779. https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/the-road-a-graphic-novel-adaptation

The Road, released by Cormac McCarthy in 2006, was a publishing sensation, winning several prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. In 2009, it was adapted as a film, starring Viggo Mortensen and directed by John Hillcoat. Now, for the first time, the novel has been adapted as a graphic novel, by French writer/illustrator Manu Larcenet, with the blessings of its creator. Larcenet is known for his work on several comics series, including Cosmonauts of the Future, written by Lewis Trondheim, and Ordinary Victories, which Larcenet wrote and drew. But it is his series Blast that most clearly foreshadows his work on The Road, with its more contemplative pacing, its white spaces, and its silence.

In the endpapers to The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, the reader is presented with a letter, written by Larcenet to Cormack McCarthy. Entitled ‘A plea for The Road’, it represents Larcenet’s attempt to convince the famous author to allow him to adapt his novel. In this letter, he promises that, if he does so, he will ‘not rewrite anything, or change the feel of the story’. Instead, he sought to ‘draw [McCarthy’s] words.’ We cannot know what, in particular, appealed to McCarthy about Larcenet’s plea. Perhaps it was his impressive experience as both a writer and illustrator, his evident humility, or his clear love for the novel. But it is easy to see the throughline from McCarthy’s novel to Larcenet’s adaptation in Larcenet’s claim that ‘I draw violence and kindness.’ This is a story of violence – of murder, and rape, and cannibalism; and of kindness – of charity, and occasional laughter, and the bonds between people brought together by tragic circumstance.

‘You have to carry the fire.’ With these words, an unnamed father communicates his son’s purpose to him. They are the words that drive the narrative forward. The fire that this father speaks of is the belief that the next day is worth living, no matter what it brings. This is a belief that the boy’s mother could not sustain. Her suicide preceded the journey of father and son down The Road. Where they are going is only half-clear. There is the vague promise of the South. Perhaps, if they walk far enough in that direction, they can put the scourge of nuclear fallout behind them. And yet, as they trudge across the landscape, they have embarked on not one journey but two. The second, and more important, is forged not on foot but through the boy’s naïve questions, through his father’s thoughtful responses, and through their long, companionable silences. For the father, the stakes are clear: if his son dies, the world dies. Comparisons with the Christ story are unavoidable, and the temptation to render emotional moments with bombastic sentimentality must have been compelling, yet Larcenet never falls into that trap.

Against backgrounds of grey, brown and beige, his gritty linework stands in stark relief. Litter, ash and dust appear to swirl constantly around the characters and, by extension, around the page, at times almost obscuring the action. Rendered in this way, the remains of buildings and the leafless trees are interchangeable, while skeletons comingle with detritus, forming a landscape that is part-rubble, part-biological, everything dead or dying. The demarcations that once separated people along socio-cultural and political lines are now moot in the face of mass displacement. Presented without chapter breaks, the story is unrelenting, as events representing days, weeks, possibly months, merge into one another. Flipping back and forth through the book produces a kaleidoscopic effect, with one moment nearly indistinguishable from another, and cause and effect meaningless. It is only by pausing on a moment that its import can be fully appreciated.

Exhibiting an admirable combination of artistic bravura and restraint, Larcenet’s graphic novel adaptation perfectly embodies the quiet, profound poetry of McCarthy’s tale. It is a tale that might be viewed either as an elegy to a dying world, or – through its insistence on the resilience of love and hope in the face of Armageddon – as a new Genesis.