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2.09.2006

Masters of American Comics, Part II

Day two of the Masters of American Comics exhibit took us to the Museum of Contemporary Art downtown. The space there is a bit tighter, and the path through is not as linear. Early Sunday afternoon, there was a respectable crowd at the show.

It opens with Will Eisner and a healthy dose of The Spirit. There is artwork for (if I remember) three or four complete stories, along with assorted covers and pages. One is the Gerhard Schnobble story, (about the man who could fly) another is kind of a murder mystery parodying other comic strips, another has a funny "phone contest" framing device around a fistfight in the snow that was a joy to see. My problem was, with all the pages there, to get sucked into just reading them and moving on. There were a couple pages from The Dreamer — and the first pages of A Contract With God, with the character walking in the rain, which was captivating. Interestingly, both of those were done actual size. There were a few covers that showed the clever ways he would present "The Spirit," but overall I was a little disappointed; I thought it was missing some some of the truly innovative storytelling he pioneered.

Jack Kirby. Under glass was (what looked to be reprints) of most of the Silver Surfer saga. Through the yellowing pages and poor printing, it's possible to appreciate the layout, but the real treats were in the original artwork hanging above. However, a fair number of them were inked by someone else (and not credited); those definitely suffered in comparison to the work Kirby inked himself. And, in kind of a "duh" moment, it hit me that his original pencils are gone forever in those instances. There were a few standout splash pages, from The Eternals, Black Panther, and, yes, Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy that just about made up for it — dynamic, exaggerated, wildly imaginative, undeniably all Kirby. A few early examples really hint of what he later accomplished are off on the side. And there is one pencil illustration of Captain America that was pretty much everything a fanboy could want.

Harvey Kurtzman followed. It was a broad exhibit of his breadth and imagination (though it was not always clear exactly what his role in each piece was); I've had exposure to a lot of his material, but the cross section in the show really drove home his range. His work on Mad, though kind of dated, was pretty wild and showed a great gift for caricature and exaggeration. The high point for me was the original art for the short war stories Corpse on the Imjin and Air Burst that I'd first read more than twenty years ago. The writing is dark and brutal and the artwork is frenetic and exaggerated; they combine to create an emotional, gripping comic. And to see them full size only enhanced that. Also interesting was the section on Little Annie Fanny, which showed the extremely tight pencils and then rough colors he created before passing them on to the artists.

Next is a large selection of R. Crumb. To be honest, more than I think I needed to see. I found a lot of his underground work blurring together, and there is a lot of it on display. I was most taken with a bio-comic he did of the blues musician Charlie Patton which, I think, shows his varied skills at their best.

From there I moved on to Gary Panter. I've never cared much for his work, but I tried to give it a shot. There was some really primal art, ink and washes that I was attracted to. But, for the most part, I just kind of swept through his Jimbo comics, including selections from recent Jimbo In Purgatory, which I just can't get into.

I think part of the problem is that he is in the same room as Art Spiegelman. That exhibit showed his amazing range, from the cover experiments and self-referential strips of Raw to his comic commentary in various publications to the New Yorker covers (culminating in the "Towers" cover) to the painting and illustration of Maus and finally to mixed media homage to comics history of In the Shadow of No Towers. It all shows how his work truly expanded the boundaries of the medium; even though I am, at best, mixed about In the Shadow of No Towers, the process sketches and components gave me a stronger understanding of what he's trying to accomplish. And then to spend time with the stark black ink of "And Here My Troubles Began" was pretty amazing. This, too, was done actual size — thinking about it now that should've been more obvious. Its linework does so much work carrying the raw emotion of the story.

Passing back through the whole exhibit took me to the exit by way of Chris Ware. Just as beautiful as I imagined; the inking is as crisp and clean as you would expect. What was missing was any sort of thumbnails or preliminary layouts. Maybe he doesn't use them. Maybe those hints of non-repro blue under the flawless ink is all he starts with. Maybe that layout, that pacing, that lettering springs straight from his pen.

Overall, it was a wonderful overview and retrospective of some of the landmark work in comics. I may quibble with some choices but it undeniably presents the history and some of the finest work in the medium. I discovered aspects of the heritage of comics that I never knew existed, got to see some of my favorites up close and in person, and came away inspired. Hopefully, that experience was shared by attendees who weren't as inclined to like it as as I was.

The exhibition is in Los Angeles for only another few weeks. It then travels to the Milwaukee Art Museum from the end of April to the end of August. It then runs in the New York area at two museums, The Jewish Museum and The Newark Musuem, from mid-September to the beginning of January. The exhibition catalog reproduces just about every piece in the show, has a series of essays on each artist, and an overview by the curators (including some commentary and pieces by artists who didn't make it into the show).

Bram at 11:52 PM  |  link to this     

2 Comments

I'd love to see some original Kurtzman! So which exhibit did you like better?

Dembicki at 2/11/2006 12:20 AM   

Unexpectedly, I think I preferred the first half. Physically, the space and flow were better. But there were more surprises for me (and I grew up visiting the International Museum of Cartoon Art back when it was just over the CT/NY border, which really covered the early and postwar newspaper comics). Overall, there were more happy discoveries in that portion, of which McKay — who I thought I already had seen enough of — was probably my favorite.

I was inclined to like the second half more, but I was disappointed that there wasn't more Eisner and Kirby, and seeing the Ware artwork didn't really add much to my appreciation. The Kurtzman war comics pages and the whole Speigelman experience were treats. In all fairness, we were also on a schedule and kind of rushed on the second day.

Bram at 2/11/2006 5:03 PM   

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