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I’m back in Cali after an xmas jaunt to the UK, hence the lack of recent updates, and it’s all kicking off. I’ve just finished next month’s Bash piece on Nigerian beggars, and am putting to bed the latest issue of Archcomix, which contains all of my recent non-fictional work. The Chile strip will be picking back up now, so be sure to stay tuned. I’m aiming to get it all done and dusted by Jan 28th. Fingers crossed.
I’ve joined the Stanford Graphic Novel Project as a TA of some description, where I’ll be contributing my artistic insights into what will be the follow-up to the highly successful Shake Girl graphic novel they made during last year’s class. Today’s assignement was a crit of Nick Abadzis’s Laika, which blew me away. Fantastic storytelling, great characters, excellent use of colour – well, why don’t you just read my 2 cents below:
For a story that is so tightly paced and heavily research-driven, there is a great looseness to the style of the book. Abadzis’s use of two techniques – drybrushing (using a paintbrush caked with dried ink to create a jagged, scratchy line) and drawing with a china marker (again, leaving a crayon-like mark) are both clearly visible on the cover and lend a real hand-crafted, impressionistic feel to the book. Both of these rely on being combined with colour to bring them to life, and the first sequence of Korolev’s escape from the Gulag shows just how crucial colorist Hilary Sycamore’s contribution to the book was. One subtle effect is the use of colour in the page background (in between panels) to reflect the change in temperature and mood – from the bleak black desperation of the first shot of Korolev, which gradually lightens with the presence of moon, until changing to normal white when he arrives at the inn. In a nice parallel, characters or backgrounds are reversed to their black and white negatives in moments of extreme emotion – such as p.14 when Korolev comes close to death, or p.143 when Yelena is told about Laika’s tragic fate.
Abadzis seems well aware of his own weaknesses, hence the scarcity of large panel close-ups on chracters’ faces – one such jarring example being the old lady’s face on p26. However, when he gives up on accurate representation and instead aims to convey raw emotion, the faces get really interesting – see Mikhail’s anger on p37 or his demagogic Dad’s on p.31. When he does go in for a close-up, Abadzis ramps up his use of blacks and the grease pencil, like p.14, 119, 137, although I think he’d have been better off preserving the consistency of his ‘less is more’ style for the sake of heightening the drama.
Certainly, page layouts carefully consider their setting – p11’s vertical panels to emphasize the starry sky and the expanse between Korolev and the moon; p82 horizontal format and rhythmic ‘to and fro’ contrast of Kudryavka and the technicians testing for G-force, and of course the dream sequences. But one original addition that crops up a few times is Adbadzis’s use of overlapping panels, which work as a full-stop/periods, overriding the authority of the page breaks to jump space/time: p.20’s change of scene from Antonina and Mishin’s chat to Korolev’s meeting with Krushchev; the p.38 jump from Mikhail being outside to his decision later that night to drown poor old Laika; or to show the time lapse in p.147 when Laika’s being operated on. He quickly builds up a visual vocabulary so that we know immediately that a circular, non-bordered panel is a window into Laika’s dream-state (p. 88).
I felt the book started strong, but lost some of its power in the build-up to the launch as it sacrificed its characters to the needs of the plot. The wordless episodes early on where the emphasis was on Kudryavka’s character as she experiences the world around her – foraging for food after surviving being dumped in the river, or experiencing zero gravity for the first time (p.91) – really stood out as we watched the dog’s personality come to the fore against a really rich, vivid background.
Above Panel from Laika by Nick Abadzis, courtesy of First Second Books
I know this throws a spanner in the works with the continuity of my Chile strip, but I’m so excited about it I had to put it up here. It’s the latest piece I’ve done for Bash Magazine on a recent anti-Prop 8 (that’s the recently passed resolution banning same-sex marriage in California) protest I went to in the SF bay area. It was headed by an activist group called The Raging Grannies, who are a lovely bunch of ladies who fight for social justice using street theatre, singing golden oldies and generally causing a fuss. See for yourself – just click here for the rest of the strip, which is hosted on the Bash website. It should hopefully be getting picked up by the folks at Indybay.org, the SF chapter of Indymedia.org.
Apologies for the delay in getting this next page up – as you can see, there’s a lot more going on, panel-wise. This scene shows Hecksher and Atlee Phillips, both CIA operatives based in Santiago, as they report back to Langley/Washington the current plan of action and situation on the ground. Dissatisfaction clearly arose from the diplomatic ‘Track 1’ route that Atlee Phillips mentions here, which refers to the non-confrontational means of preventing Allende’s inauguration as President. DCI Helms, AP’s boss back at the CIA, had proposed this two-track path under the ominous sounding project FUBELT, but as you will see in the next page, a far more harebrained scheme of direct action was already on the cards…
You’ll notice the title has changed too. This is to reflect the change of focus onto what happened before Allende’s inauguration as opposed to the now infamous coup that culminated in his murder.
Courtesy of who else but Burger King. Their new ad campaign in the US, brainchild of some blue-sky nutjob at an uber trendy ad agency, sees unwitting townspeople from remote rural areas of Asia be subjected to a taste test between a Whopper and a Big Mac. It’s like some sort of postcolonial pastiche you’d expect on Saturday Night Live: look at the savages! They haven’t even seen a Whopper before! Bless their virgin tastebuds! Urrrgh.
Here’s the link – the cynics amongst you might see this as propagating the viral contagion of this horrorshow (a big incentive in adland, lest we forget) but this is really something that has to be seen to be believed. Plus it’s part of a larger article predictably drawing similar amounts of bile over at the Guardian.
As a more palatable salve to the above, my interview in The Other Side magazine is now out and online – click here to read the digital edition. I’m on p.8 plug plug (though I’ll consider you one of the converted seeing as you’ve already made it to my site).
I know I’m due pages on the Chile strip – it’s coming, it’s coming – I’ve been backed up with Bash work, of which all I can tell you is my latest piece about raging grannies took longer to put to bed than I expected. You’ll see what I mean in January, honest.
Start at the beginning of this comic by clicking on the right hand nav bar link.The action has now moved to Chile and the CIA station where Field Agents Henry Hecksher and David Atlee Phillips are directing the CIA’s misinformation campaign against Allende.
What a week it’s been. I just got my hands on the comics anthology Paper TV, which was created by the class I taught earlier this semester at 826 Valencia, Dave Eggers’ Writing Center down in the Mission, and looks pretty damn awesome. I’ve also been interviewed in the December issue of The Other Side Magazine, so prepare to pounce on that next month all you Londoners. AND I’ve got a piece in the Spring edition of Memoir (and), which is a literary journal specializing in creative non-fiction. The piece is a colloboration I did with a friend of mine (nice one Olly) about gang violence in Nigeria. You can read it in the Comix section on this very site.
Start at the beginning of this comic by clicking on the right hand nav bar link. This scene depicts the meeting between Richard Helms, Director of the CIA, President Nixon, Secretary of State Kissinger and Attorney General John Helms as they discuss the use of counter-intelligence to stop Salvador Allende’s inauguration as President of Chile in September 1970. The portrait of the Indian is taken from an actual painting hanging in the White House of an indigenous Indian Chieftain, which I thought would serve as a subtle hubristic reminder to the assembled gang of plotters.
Start at the beginning of the story by clicking the link on the right hand nav bar.
You know the drill by now – click on the right hand menu to go to the first page of this story about the 1973 Chilean coup. And thanks for reading! Any comments appreciated.
Start at the beginning of the story about the Chilean Coup of 1973 by clicking the link on the right hand nav bar. Thanks for reading!
