Exhibit Review: Moomin Animations – Thrills and Cuddles

Moomin Animations – Thrills and Cuddles, Minna Honkasalo. Washington D.C.: National Children’s Museum on September 3, 2021-January 9, 2022. https://nationalchildrensmuseum.org/

 reviewed by Mike Rhode

In 1945, Finnish writer and illustrator Tove Jansson created her Mumintrolls for a children's book. The Moomins look like hippos crossed with the Pillsbury doughboy, but have proved popular enough to make her the Scandinavian equivalent of Walt Disney. She eventually wrote or drew 9 books about them. In 1947 she started a comic strip with the characters, which started appearing in English in 1954. Her brother Lars Jannson joined her on the strip from 1959-1961 and then he took the strip over until 1975 when it ended. Reprints have been published by Canada's Drawn & Quarterly. There have been multiple animated versions of her characters, and that is what this exhibit focused on.

The NCM has had some rough years, closing off and on while searching for new locations. In 2020, it finally wound up just off Pennsylvania Ave, NW in a plaza behind the Reagan building. They had to shut again almost immediately due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but reopened in September 2021 with the Moomin exhibit among others, and are aiming for an attendance of a half million people per year. Note that you have to visit with a child; unaccompanied visitors need to make an appointment, and throughout my tour of the exhibit, I was accompanied by a staff member. The museum is actually largely underground; one enters at ground level and then moves downward through an unfinished concrete warren. The guide is probably necessary for more than the main reason.

The Embassy of Finland has brought over a version of Honkasalo's original exhibit from the Moomin Museum that is completely composed of reproductions. It has several sections - a wall on Jansson's life, stills from various animations, 4 screens showing cartoons, and several activity areas for children. An average American viewer might have no knowledge about the Moomins, in spite of the fact that there have been so many adaptations. This exhibit focuses on animated versions and includes episodes from 1959 (West Germany), 1969 (Japan), 1977 (Poland), 1990 (Japan). Obviously, none of these would be particularly easy for an Anglophone to find, but the 1969 one in particular was surpressed by Jansson, as noted in the exhibit catalog - "She felt that Momin was too far removed from her stories' world and atmosphere. Elements foreign to Moominvalley had been inserted into the tales, including cars, money and weapons. For example, a few episodes show Snork driving around in a car, Moomintroll makes money by busking, and weapons feature in several episodes." "She did not want them to reach international distribution, so they have never been broadcast outside Japan. Today, they are hard to find even in Japan, on account of complicated copyright issues connected with the [1900s series]." The exhibit catalog is unfortunately not available, except for a few copies lying in the exhibit, but I recommend it highly if you can find it.

Jansson has been the focus of recent attention including a documentary, two biographies, and an edition of her letters. The wall on her life is written for children, but includes the basics necessary to have an idea about her as a person and as a creator. To the exhibit's credit, the segment on her life does not shy away from her love of another woman, even though it was socially unacceptable at the time. "A soul mate. Amid the hustle and buslte, Tove meets Tuulikki, the woman who will become her life partner for the rest of her life..." reads part of the panel.

The wall of stills would probably have been of more interest in the original exhibit, as it apparently included some actual artwork by her. Here, understandably, it's all reproductions and screen captures. A fan of the characters might be interested in seeing how they evolved in different animations. There are also some areas for children to draw, hang things on a tree, or take a picture with cardboard standups. There is also a small selection of gifts in the giftshop. Also of interest from a cartoon perspective are a STEAM-centric exhibits about creating animations featuring SpongeBob and his cast, and another on Paw Patrol.

All the images, except for "Exhibition space 4" and "Tove Jansson," are courtesy of the Embassy of Finland in Washington, D.C. The two are courtesy of the NCM. The exhibit catalog cover is taken from the copy the staff gave to me. A version of this review also appeared on the ComicsDC blog. My photographs can be seen here.

 

Book Review - Is Superman Circumcised? by Roy Schwartz

Roy Schwartz. Is Superman Circumcised? McFarland, 2021. 374 pp. $45. ISBN 978-1-4766-6290-9.  https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/is-superman-circumcised/

Reviewed by Leonard (“Labe”) Rifas

Despite its catchy title, Is Superman Circumcised?, Roy Schwartz’s “complete Jewish history of the World’s greatest hero,” says almost nothing about the possibility that Superman’s genitalia had been ceremonially trimmed. The title serves simply as a different way of asking whether Superman is Jewish, a question which has been raised and investigated, jokingly and seriously, briefly and at book-length, since at least 1979. (15)

Even with a question so tightly circumscribed, it would be impossible to keep up with all the pertinent literature. McFarland Press, the publisher of Schwartz’s book, currently lists another 158 books of comics scholarship in its catalog, including ten little-known titles that seem directly relevant to Superman’s possible roots in Biblical mythology, but which Schwartz does not mention. Out of that unending flood of publications, I chose to read Is Superman Circumcised? for three reasons. First, as someone who teaches and studies comics history, the topics of Superman and the superhero genre that he inaugurated seem both obligatory and inescapable. Also, as a circumcised American Jew (whose Jewish grandparents had immigrated from Russia and Poland to Chicago about a hundred years ago), I find discussions of Jewishness in relation to comic books interesting. Finally, and most importantly, when my sister alerted me to this book, I looked to see whether it mentioned anti-comic book activist Fredric Wertham (whose work I have championed), and this book elaborates on a dunderheaded theory that I was eager to look at more closely. I read the entire book because the subject of Superman’s ethnic identity raises so many important questions.

Schwartz introduces himself as an Israeli-born, lifelong Superman fan who grew up on Superman movies, television shows and comic books. Then he moved to New York to attend college and became an immigrant. After writing a senior paper on “Superman as a Christ Figure,” he was electrified to discover that Superman, rather than a Christ figure, was Jewish, and that revelation led eventually to his graduate thesis and this book. (2)

Although Schwartz’s “central thesis – that Superman is a Jewish character” seems old hat, he makes three claims to originality: that he examines evidence of Jewish content in Superman up to the present rather than stopping in 1960 (or sooner) as earlier writers had done; that he explores the Jewish parallels more deeply; and that he focuses exclusively on Superman. (3, 5) The books that he acknowledges as the foundation on which he built Is Superman Circumcised? are well-known studies by Danny Fingeroth, Rabbi Simcha Weinstein, and Arie Kaplan. 

Although too much has been written about Superman to read it all, one book stands out as conspicuously missing from Schwartz’s sources: Martin Lund’s Re-Constructing the Man of Steel (2016, based on Lund’s dissertation of 2013). Lund’s scholarly, foundation-shaking research directly and cogently challenges Fingeroth, Weinstein and Kaplan’s arguments about the “so-called Jewish-Comics connection” behind Superman’s original creation. Unfortunately, Schwartz’s book repeats examples that illustrate the entire list of methodological pitfalls that Lund had catalogued.

***

Is Superman Circumcised? has a chapter “Superman vs. The Mad Scientist” which casts Fredric Wertham as the “mad scientist.” Understandably, Schwartz seems particularly outraged when Wertham “missed the point entirely” about Superman, and interpreted his comics as promoting fascism. Schwartz quotes Wertham’s snide expression of gratitude that at least Superman is not a member of Nazi Germany’s SS (Schutzstaffel). (191, 194) He proposes that Wertham must have been a calumniator with a defective personality who harbored an elitist scorn for comic book publishers because they were descended from East European Jews rather than German Jews like himself. (194-6)

The SS in Nazi Germany had published their own article about Superman in April 1940. It responded to the two-page story “How Superman Would End the War” which Superman’s creators had done for Look magazine. (115-118) Schwartz helpfully includes both that two-page story (as one of the book’s 85 black and white illustrations), and the SS column about it. The unnamed SS author asserts that the comic book Superman originated when the “circumcised… Israelite” Jerry Siegel heard about “the resurgence of manly virtues” in Italy and Germany, and “decided to import” these ideals “and spread them among young Americans.” (115) Then, like a nitpicky comics fan, the reviewer criticizes Siegel and Shuster for showing out-of-date military uniforms, an unconvincingly posed figure, for making the German pilot sound like “a Yid,” and for ignoring the “laws of physics, logic, and life in general.”

What I enjoyed most about reading Is Superman Circumcised? were the small discoveries that I made while studying its source materials closely and not Schwartz’s interpretations. The SS piece had quoted Superman as crying “Strength! Courage! Justice!”, but I noticed that none of these words appeared in that two-page story. The rallying cry of “strength, courage, justice” had been the motto of the “Supermen of America Club” which the early issues of Action Comics and Superman’s radio show promoted. Apparently, the SS writer had based his opinion of Superman on more than those two magazine pages.

Looking at some forgotten articles and book reviews that Fredric Wertham wrote in the years when he was also studying comic books would have revealed how deeply Wertham had been shaken by the recent Holocaust in his native land, and his fear that nothing seemed to rule out the possibility that the United States would also succumb to fascism. Seeing Wertham as centrally motivated by anti-fascism (rather than as “monomaniacally fixated” on comic books) would have brought into sharper focus how his so-called “crusade” against comic books fit with his other concerns. Comparing Superman’s methods to fascism, though, was Wertham’s least original contribution to the anti-comic book movement.

The argument that vigilante superhero comics were conditioning their young readers to prefer quick and effective fascist solutions over the slowness and imperfections of democratic law and order had been a central part of the anti-comic book movement from the moment it started with Sterling North’s May 8, 1940 column “A National Disgrace.” Schwartz quotes from North’s column, but, like other scholars, overlooks that North’s criticism of comic books grew from his response to Superman. North begins by describing comic books as “a poisonous growth of the last two years.” Two years earlier, Superman had first appeared, in Action Comics #1. North calls the comics that he criticizes “the action ‘comics’” and criticizes that genre’s “Superman heroics.” During those two years between 1938 and 1940, American newspapers had warned repeatedly against the current crop of “supermen” dictators (especially Adolf Hitler) and the Nazi ambition to build a race of “supermen.” Beginning with North’s widely republished column, American opposition to anti-democratic real-life “supermen” expanded to opposing lawless comic book supermen as well.

Schwartz interprets North’s reference to “cheap political propaganda” in that seminal column partly as a complaint against Superman’s “interventionist” support for fighting the Nazis. (165.) Last week I was surprised to discover that in March 1940, a Superman comic strip was banned from appearing in Canadian newspapers because it made war look ridiculous at a time when Canada (but not yet the United States) was at war against Nazi Germany. Superman’s first comic book stories had similarly expressed the mainstream, American resistance to getting sucked into another war. I have not found any evidence that Sterling North opposed interventionism. To the contrary, North thought that anyone foolish enough to try to appease Hitler had not read Hitler’s book Mein Kampf.

Roy Schwartz admits that the identification of Superman as a fascist has a superficial plausibility and agrees that superheroes arose out of despair with the apparent inadequacy of democracy and the rule of law. (169, 92, 175) Notwithstanding these concessions, he strenuously counter-argues that Superman was the opposite of a fascist and the enemy of the Nietzschean übermensch. For example, Superman “never kills, maims or employs [violence] beyond what is necessary to stop an aggressor – […]  he’s no more a fascist than any agent of law enforcement.” (171)

***

Anti-comic book activists, in addition to their concerns about Superman supplanting the legal system in the manner of the Ku Klux Klan’s “hooded justice,” also occasionally expressed a worry about Superman usurping the place of religion.  Schwartz celebrates the ways in which Superman “took the place of” Bible stories in American popular culture. (12-16, 23, 47, 218) He does not dwell on possible downsides of substituting a secularized commercial product (an intellectual property) for Judaism’s and Christianity’s traditional teachings. He does, though, briefly mention a few instances of Christian resistance to Superman becoming a religious figure. For example, when the Jewish writers, director and producers of the 1978 film Superman: The Movie played up Superman as a Christ allegory, the director received serious death threats for this “sacrilege.” (244-246) In 2013, when the Jewish director and Jewish writer of the Man of Steel made that film into a blatant retelling of the gospels featuring Superman in the role of Jesus, and the studio aggressively marketed the film to “the Christian faith-based demographic,” some Christians “found the equivalence of Superman and Jesus in a movie saturated with violence disconcerting.” This equivalence became especially “disconcerting” when Superman broke the neck of his adversary, Zod. (41-2) 

As a source of ethical teachings, Superman has a major shortcoming. As Schwartz says, “Superman can’t be made to face the complex issues of the real world without the fantasy falling apart. Realism is his true Kryptonite.”  (173) Is Superman Circumcised? describes a rare instance in which DC abandoned its editorial policy of deliberate disengagement from reality and let its superheroes comment on a real-world leader. In a 1989 comic book:

“Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini himself […] rewards the Joker by appointing him as the Iranian ambassador to the UN, under full diplomatic immunity (a twist that, given the regime, only slightly strains credulity). The Clown Prince of Crime gives a rambling speech at the General Assembly […] then predictably tries to kill everyone with his laughing gas. Superman, attending undercover, saves the day.”

Although this comic book, Batman: A Death in the Family, received major news coverage, as I remember it, no one in the mass media challenged its propaganda content. In actuality, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had invaded Iran in 1980 and began using poison gas in 1983, eventually causing tens of thousands or more Iranian deaths. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Iran responding with its own chemical weapons, and chose instead to use diplomacy at the United Nations in an attempt to bring Iraq’s war crime to an end.  A person does not have to be a fan of Khomeini’s theocratic regime to worry about the effects of this kind of twisted comic book story on young readers’ understanding of complex world events.

Like most authors of nonfiction, Schwartz keeps himself out of the picture. He never reveals his own religious background or beliefs. He does make plain, though, that he had found in Superman stories, beginning with Superman: The Movie, the kind of hope that religions have offered, and found in stories about a character with a secret identity a way of working through issues regarding his public self and private self. He explains with evident feeling how Superman expressed concerns that had been especially acute for Jewish immigrants and their children.

***

The main changes beginning in 1960 have been that the popularity of Superman’s comic books sank; the comic book industry became less Jewish; superheroes starred in many blockbuster films; and the indicators that linked Superman stories to specifically Jewish (and Christian) experiences, traditions, and beliefs became more overt. In this turn toward including explicitly Jewish characters, superhero comic books participated in a larger cultural shift from assimilation to identity politics.

Schwartz sees the current resurgence of anti-Semitism and White nationalism as an argument for Superman’s continuing relevance and value, as the embodiment and promoter of the values of pluralism, tolerance, co-existence, and inclusion. The superhero is “by definition a celebration of difference.” (311-2) Schwartz imagines that notwithstanding the comic book industry being “now almost entirely owned by multinational corporations,” it nevertheless has “continued to be transgressive, at the vanguard of social justice advocacy.” As evidence, the industry now includes “more women, people of color and LGBTQ readers, creators and characters, demonstrating its continued role as a tool of inclusion.” (311-2)

Even restricting our gaze to matters of inclusion, though, the superhero genre has not held a vanguard position. Fortunately, many years ago the gentile-led underground comix movement reinvented the comics medium as a personal form of artistic and literary expression. This led to works like Maus (the “pinnacle of Jewish subject matter in comics”), which in turn helped to inspire today’s thriving global market in graphic novels and webcomics, through which cartoonists from many backgrounds have been exploring the issues at the heart of Schwartz’s book: how to grow up and take part as a member of a broader society while maintaining a particular immigrant, ethnic, religious, (or gender, sexual, disability-related, body-size, or other) identity. The old, homogenized, white American society that Superman was portrayed in for the first half century of his life does not represent a historical reality that could be recovered,

but an assimilationist’s fantasyland. Nevertheless, it does imagine a world that white ethnonationalists might yearn for.

***

For those who feel the need for an “icon” to guide us through these times of fear and despair, Superman does not seem like a particularly Jewish solution. Judaism has been anti-iconic, all the way back to when Abraham smashed the figurines in his father’s shop (Midrash Bereishit 38:13). Still, we do need some powerful story if we are to revive the American dream of a government of, by and for the people; to unite across our differences; or to get through the atomic age, the Holocene extinction and the climate crisis with the least lasting damage. In an image-saturated society, for better or worse, we want to know what that story would look like.

I did enjoy that Roy Schwartz commands a larger working vocabulary than mine, including in Yiddish, which like me, he uses one word at a time. He employs his writing skill to explain how the character of Superman incorporates some fundamental tensions, between “red” and “blue,” insider and outsider, vigilante and upholder of the law, role model and savior, which have provided raw material for eighty plus years of storytelling. As he admits, the results have often (but not always) been stiff, stodgy, tedious, dull, or corny, and yet talented writers and artists continue to rework the character of Superman as an important part of an unfinished mythology. 

 

A version of this review will appear in IJOCA 23:2.

International Journal of Comic Art super back issue package sale returns for Black Friday

Beginning November 26, 2021, the International Journal of Comic Art will offer  65 percent off for back issues, if and when bought as a package. Of the 46 issues published through Vol.23, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2021, 40 are available for purchase. Out of stock are: Vol. 1, No. 1; 1:2; 4:2; 5:1, 6:2; 7:1. A reprint of 1:1 can be purchased from lulu.com. Tables of contents can be seen at http://www.ijoca.net/.

            Normally, 40 issues would sell at a total US $ 2,000 for U.S. institutions; US $900 for individuals in the U.S.; US $2,500 for outside of U.S. institutions; US $1,200 for foreign individuals.

            With a 65 percent discount, the price for 40 issues are:

U.S. Institutions:       US $ 700 + postage

U.S. Individuals:       US $ 315 + postage

Foreign Institutions:  US $ 875 + postage

Foreign Individuals:  US $ 420 + postage

            There are limited numbers available of some very early issues; they will be offered on a first-come basis.

Orders should be sent to:     John A. Lent

                                                IJOCA

                                                669 Ferne Blvd.

                                                Drexel Hill, PA 19026 USA

                                                jlent@temple.edu

http://www.ijoca.net/

 

 Payments can be made by check on a U.S. bank, PayPal, or bank transfer; transfer fees on PayPal and bank transfers must be paid by the purchaser. Offer good while supplies last, and may be modified to reflect stock; or until cancelled by the publisher via notice on the IJOCA blog.

IJOCA 23-1 Table of Contents

The new issue is arriving in people's mailboxes now.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMIC ART

Vol. 23, No. 1 Spring/Summer 2021

In Support of Their Fathers' and Mother's Legacies: 13 Offspring of China's Prominent Cartoonists Explain
John A. Lent with Xu Ying
1

Coping with Conflict: Boxing Heroes and German Comics in the Aftermath of the First World War
William Hamilton
79

"Any Children?": "The Family Circus" and the Problems of Parenthood
Michele Ann Abate
138

"Fragging" The Afghan War: Red Blood
Jose Alaniz

168

All You Need Is Kill, Not Love -Considering the Romantic Relationship in the Manga and Film Adaptations of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's Novel
Artur Skweres
204

Jason Little Discusses The Vagina, His NSFW Webcomic
Mike Rhode
229

The Border Separating Us: Autobiographical Comics of an Australian World War I Internment Camp
Aaron Humphrey and Simon Walsh
254

Tintin and the Jews (of Contemporary Literature)
Toby Juliff
271

Within and Between the Visual Metaphoricity of Comics: A Semiotic Approach to the Mahabharata in Amar Chitra Katha
Shivani Sharma
288

Dramatizing Ontology in 18 Days: Grant Morrison's Mahabharata
and the Battle to Save Eternity!
Jeff S. Wilson
313

The Role of Fox Feature Syndicate in the Implementation of the Comics Code Authority
Ignacio Fernandez Sarasola
334

An Interview with 2021 Oscar Nominee: Icelandic Artist, Gisli Darri Halldorsson
Alexandra Bowman
Edited by Michael Rhode
374

Remembrances of Things Past: Childhood in Graphic Memoirs
Kirsten Mollegaard
385

The Social Functions and Impacts of Popular Manga in Contemporary Japan: A Case of GOLDEN KAMUY
Kinko Ito
403

Slaying the Monster: Heroic Lesbian Narratives in World's Finest
Chadwick L. Roberts
Anita K. McDaniel
421

Poems, Comics and the Spaces Between: An Examination of the Interplay between Poem and Page
Angelo Letizia
447

The Oriental Superheroes: Political Questions in G. Willow Wilson's Cairo: A Graphic Novel and Ms. Marvel
Noran Amin
458

The Maternal-Feminine and Matrixial Borderspace in Megan Kelso's ''Watergate Sue"
Alisia Grace Chase
471

Morpheus Aeternorum: Dreams, Androgyny, and Their Characteristics in Sandman (Preludes & Nocturnes), by Neil Gaiman
Felipe Rodolfo Hendriksen
492

When Le Chat Was Put Among the Pigeons
Musings by Wim Lockefeer
509

Obituary & Remembrance of Manga Historian Shimizu Isao
Ronald Stewart
513

On the Passing of Comics Scholar Tom Inge
Mike Rhode
Marc Singer
Jose Alaniz
Charles Hatfield
Joseph Witek
Vijay Shah
Joe Sutliff Sanders
Michael A. Torregrossa
Randy Duncan
Brian Cremins
John A. Lent
520

Research Prompts
John A. Lent
531

New Light on the Soon-to-Be Famous Marie Duval
A Review Essay
David Kunzie
536

Book Reviews
Hector Fernandez L'Hoeste
Stephanie Burt
John A. Lent
Jean Sebastien
Charles W. Henebry
John A. Lent
Maite U rcaregui
Michael Rhode
John A. Lent
John A. Lent
Chris York
Laura Sayre
John A. Lent
553

International Journal of Comic Art Manuscript Preparation Guide
John A. Lent and Jaehyeon Jeong
592

Book Review - The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim. The Waiting. Montreal:  Drawn & Quarterly, 2021. 246 pp. 978-1-77046-457-5. US $24.95. https://drawnandquarterly.com/waiting

  reviewed by John A. Lent

South Korean graphic novelist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim has a knack for digging up personal stories related to historical tragedies of her country. She is truly what I call an “investigative cartoonist.” Gendry-Kim has used these reportorial skills over and over during the past decade. They are evident in her many awards-winning graphic novel, Grass (2019), the story of the “comfort women,” enslaved East Asian girls used to sexually service Japanese soldiers during World War II, as told to her by one surviving Korean comfort woman and backed up by nine other victims. Gendry-Kim found an elderly Korean man still living in Japan who experienced one of the atomic bombings while working in Japan in the 1940s, willing to explain how he and fellow Korean laborers were passed over and denied reparation funds by the Japanese government, in her A Day with Grandfather (2017).

Mixing fiction and fact, Gendry-Kim continues to bring attention to Korean national tragedies through the personal experiences of those who endured them. Among her 20 or so books, all completed since 2012, are Jiseul (2015), an account of the massacre of civilians by the South Korean army during the Korean War, and her latest title, The Waiting (2021).

The marginal status of women in a patriarchal society such as Korea is a common theme in Gendry-Kim’s books, as it is in The Waiting. In fact, very few men appear in this story inspired by her mother’s personal experiences at the end of the Korean War, and a few men who do show up are not desirable characters--the neighbor who steals a child’s dog and cooks it; a slothful male who abandons his sister-in-law and her child under terrible conditions.

During and after the Korean War, many families were separated, as were Gendry-Kim’s mother and her mother’s sister (Gendry-Kim’s aunt), who never made it out of North Korea. The Waiting weaves between Gendry-Kim’s present feelings of sorrow and guilt for having to leave her mother in Seoul and moving to Ganghwa Island; her mother’s anxiety about her sister’s fate in North Korea and her disappointment at continually not being chosen for the regularly-arranged separated family reunions, and the fictional character Gwila’s sorrowful tale of being separated from her husband and son during the war.

Gendry-Kim based her story on her own feelings, her mother’s testimonies, the tales of two elderly people she interviewed who had been able to meet their North Korean family members, and her further research. In a two-page textual afterword, “A Lifetime of Waiting,” the author begins with, “This is my mother’s story,” and ends it by dedicating the book to her mother. In between, she shares a bit about her own career and the fears and wishes of her two interviewees and asks questions others have asked for millennia--“How many people in this world have been wounded by war?” and “How many have had their loved ones torn from them because of war?” As the song says, “the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.”

The Waiting is a full package of emotions:  hope and despair, love and hate, joy and sorrow, kindness and cruelty, guilt and relief, and the terribleness of war without a positive corollary. The book is true to Gendry-Kim’s standard--a great read, first-hand researched, and filled with penetrating thoughts relatable to the many who have experienced war firsthand, and sobering to those who have romanticized, sanitized, and glamorized notions of war.

Exhibit Review: Beano: The Art Of Breaking The Rules

 Beano: The Art Of Breaking The Rules. Andy Holden. London: Somerset House, October 21, 2021-March 6, 2022. https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/beano-art-of-breaking-the-rules

Reviewed by Mark Hibbett

There are two separate exhibitions happening at once in Somerset House's Beano: The Art Of Breaking The Rules, one of which is significantly more successful than the other.

The first is a fascinating retrospective of Beano strips going all the way back to the comic's beginnings in 1938, with original artwork sitting next to vintage comics. The curator, Andy Holden, has done a great job of bringing together rarely-seen originals that still fizz with life decades later. The work of established greats like Leo Baxendale and Dudley Watkins sing with excitement, and Jim Petrie's Minnie The Minx similarly bursts from the pages, even when those pages are browned with age. Seeing the work up close like this is a real thrill, especially when you notice margin notes such as the conversation between Leo Baxendale and his wife about the need to get the page inked and round to DC Thomson offices by the next day.

Throughout the show the original artwork is treated with respect, with artists properly credited and captions which tell the story of how The Beano became such an entrenched part of British life. The discussion on how a "slap-up feast" came to be such a constant of the comic during wartime was especially illuminating, and anyone who has ever been a child in the UK is bound to get a few rushes of nostalgic joy. For me it was seeing original cover art for Plug, a comic I've not thought about for at least 40 years, and the sight of those much-coveted Dennis and Gnasher fan club badges and "smart wallet."

It's also surprisingly funny. Like many, I gave up on The Beano as a surly twelve-year old ready for the more "grown-up" delights of Marvel and 2000 AD, and so was surprised by how many times I laughed out loud. There's a cheeky, mildly subversive sense of humour that is highlighted throughout, in the showcased strips as well as other parts of the exhibition. Favorites here were a handwritten letter to the editor from 1948 ("Will you please stop Lord Snooty") and the caption for a Banksy screen print which says "Banksy declined to be in the show but we ... included him anyway, because Dennis and his pals never accept an authoritative 'no’."

The second exhibition could have done with a lot more of this sort of attitude. As with the Good Grief Charlie Brown show in 2018, Somerset House does not seem to be confident enough to do an exhibition just about comics, and has to drag in some “Proper Art” as well. There are some commissioned works which in theory are responses to The Beano, but mostly it's pre-existing art that only has a very tenuous link with the main theme, and appears to be there as way to guide children away from comics and towards something more culturally acceptable.

Honourable exceptions to this include Horace Panter's answer to David Hockney's Splash and David Litchfield's Lowry-inspired Beanotown, but most of the rest of this part of the exhibit looks rather dull and pompous next to the exciting, dynamic and witty world of the Beano strips. A piece inspired by "The Numbskulls," for instance, looks like a dreary exercise in stating the obvious next to the wild invention of the actual comic, and seeing expensive, ponderous fine art  described as "playful" or "witty" just seems daft in a room full of cheap, accessible, and genuinely funny Beano strips down through the years.

 

Despite all that, this remains a beautifully put together exhibition showing off a wildly inventive part of British culture that does not get anything like enough attention. It's a shame that Teacher had to get involved so much, but in the end Dennis, Minnie and all the others are the real stars of the show.