Dienstag, 10. Juli 2012

Imitation as reminiscence (engl.)

by Denis Hundhausen

Please note: This is the slightly altered translated version of the german article I published here a few weeks back. The original can be found here. Unfortunately the image captions couldn't be altered and remain  german (translations below image).


Introduction

It is no secret that comic artists sometimes honor the geniusses of their genre with their own work. One may often find references to famous covers, artwork or scenes in or on recent comic panels or covers[1].
But as of late there was a certain kind of phenomenon to be seen: Flashbacks within a story as imitations of another artist's style to set the flashback in a certain time.
This works as follows: Every comic artist of course has a certain style of his own, some of which gave distinction to an whole era of comics or are a representative for such an era (examples to follow).
If the recent comic artists wishes to make clear that the flashback takes place in a certain era, he can achieve this effect by imitating the style of this era's most prominent artist.
How exactly this works and if this phenomenon only works on the level of image (or the story level as well) will be topic of this essay - on the example of Stormwatch #44[1]. Please note that I will be referring to the German issue of "Stormwatch". Hence, the number of the issue in the foot notes and list of illustrations is "Stormwatch #5" and not #44, since it was published in Germany by that issue number.


I. Stormwatch #5 (a.k.a. US-Stormwatch #44)

In the USA this comic book was published in 1997 and henceforth on August 2003 in Germany. The creative team behind this issue was Warren Ellis as author, Tom Raney as penciller, Randy Elliot als inker, as well as Gina Going and Laura Depuy als colorists[3].

The plot sets off with a conversation between the characters "Jenny Sparks" and „Battalion“, in which Sparks tells him about her life[4]. Since she is born on January 1st 1900, her particular age is coherent with the actual year. At age 20 she stopped aging. The tale, which Sparks now tells, embraces every decade from 1920 to 1990[5]. What is the interesting part in this (at least in the field of humanities) is that every decade is drawn in a different style, eventhough the creative team remains the same. Only the talking parts in the present are drawn in Raneys actual style. But why is that? This question is to be answered in the following chapter:


II. Imitation as reminiscence

Raney's style as well as that of his inker and colorists each time changes, imitating the special style which determined the era in question. Sparks flashback starts in the 1920's with a splash page[6] which is drawn in the style of the "Buck Rogers" comic books:

Image 1: Jenny's Memories of the Twenties.
In the captions, Sparks tells about historic events in the Twenties (Theory of Relativity) and made-up "facts" like Phase Ships - using "Buck Roger's" space ships as determinating element: Rogers brought space themes into comics, and phase ships brought Sparks into space.
The story follows Sparks right into the next decade. Raney here imitates the style of Joe Shuster, the artist behind Action Comics #1 and co-creator of Superman:

Image 2: The 30's resemble Superman's first apperance.

Even other elements from early Action Comics are repeated here, especially the speech ballon's form. An (intentional) clashing with the Zeitgeist of the Thirties is the fact that the protagonist is a woman who stands her own ground and even rejects a man[7]. This very man ("Clarence" as a reference to Clark Kent, both being journalists) is attached with the role of the "damsel in distress", which would usually fall upon Lois Lane.The author mentions in the last panels that Jenny's life feels like it would hover over the streets of the depression as if it was imagined by teenagers[8]. This surely is a reference to the young artists of the earyl "Action Comics" and "Amazing Stories"[9] as well as a commentary on the escapism the superhero comics provided in times of the "Great Depression", where the readers got an easy solution to all problems in form of the Ubermensch, who fought for social justice[10].
The nest step in Sparks' recap are the Fourties, who resemble the style of Will Eisner and his creation „The Spirit“:

Image 3: Obvious Spirit-Innuendos in the Fourties
The character of the police commissioner in „Stormwatch“ seems to be a direct allusion to The Spirit's Dolan. Again we can find an interessting change of cliché here: While Commissioner Dolan has always been worried about the innocence of his daughter, this commissioner here asks Jenny about his son Alan, but doesn't follow up on it[11].

Img. 4: Inspector Dolan and his Doppelganger
from an unknown episode of The Spirirt.

In the 50's, as a reminiscence to the so called „Silver Age of Comics“, a certain "phase door" opens up and sets free a cosmic beam that turns normal people into superheroes. This has to be understood as a parallel to the silver age per se and the "inflation" of the superhero (e.g. Justice League of America, Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man,...).







In the follow-up, the Sixties, we find a panel with imitates Robert Crumb[12], before we see a panel which looks like it could have been drawn by Jack Kirby himself[13]:
Img. 5: Imitation and original

It can be assumed that the original cover of Avengers #4 (1964) was used as a direct pattern for the above panel from Stormwatch. Arrangement and body posture of each figure are very similar - Captain America's (right, no. 1) and Abel Eternity's (left, 1) are one and the same - except for the shield. Same goes for Iron Man (right, 5) and the invisible man in the knight's armour (left, 5).

To point out those similarities between the historic Kirby-Cover and Raney's panel I labeled the similar characters with the same red index number.

After a jump into the Eighties the longest imitation sequence follows: On six pages[14] the whole creative team imitates the "Watchmen" comics by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. This starts with Raneys drawing style, continues with the color and even follows through with the stylistic devises of "Watchmen". The first page of Watchmen #1  (the "call me Ishmael" of comics[15]) gets copied almost 1:1: The zoom-out in more and more steps, the blood on the streets, the setting, the lighting:

Img. 6: The Watchmen allusion is more than obvious.
Raney matches his style to that of Dave Gibbons so closely that Jenny Sparks looks almost like "Silk Spectre":
  

Img. 7: Jenny Sparks Vs. Laurie Juspeczyk a.k.a. Silk Spectre.
(The first image of Sparks on the upper left is mirrored.)

III. Cover

After knowing all those stylistic devises, a second look on the cover is high-producing. Of course, the reader already looked at it, but now, aftzer he knows about the reminiscence technique, it gets a new dimension: The cover itself is a reference as well, a conglomerate of different style elements from the pages of "Horror Comics" and the likes. The blog „Ilovecomiccovers“ reveals all of Raneys sources[16] – here depicted within a single graphic:

Img. 8: The quotes on the Stormwatch-Cover

It is also quite interesting that US-Stormwatch #44 came with three different cover variants. The first is the one shown above (Img. 8), the second one being a reference to Watchmen again (Img. 10) and the last one was done by 70's artist Gil Kane in the style of his earlier works:

Img. 9: Gil Kane's alternative cover of Stormwatch #44

It can be observed that the Watchmen-style cover even copies the narrative device of the original, in which the cover of each Watchmen issue is the first or second panel of said issue (only more zoomed).

Img. 10: Watchmen-style alternative cover of Stormwatch #44 and original Watchmen cover.

IV. Conclusion

To better understand what I just tried to examplify, one has to see whose narration we are following here: Jenny Sparks'.
Sparks is the "spirit of the 20th century". She was born, as stated above, on january 1st, 1900 and died on December 31st 1999. In 1920 she stopped aging. In the 20th century she was present at any important historic event or even triggered them: Her parents died on the Titanic, her godfather was Albert Einstein, and so on[17]. Her biography is interwoven with real events, but also with fictional elements such as parallel worlds and superhero initiatives of governments.
As said before, Jenny experienced the dawn of the superhero as an eyewitness - from the first phase ships over the colorful costumes of the 60's up to the grim anti hero of the 80's. So the technique of imitating certain important styles to illuminate each era is a well understandable artistic decisison of the creative team. Not only do Ellis and Raney pay tribute to geniusses such as Eisner, Kirby and Moore/Gibbons, but also do they show that imitation can work as a vehicle of reminiscence, far off from plagiarism. This proofs that they have understood the variety of the medium "comic". If the reader does indeed remember the 60's in comics, he will recall the prominent style of Jack Kirby. In remembrance of the 80's, one will immediately think of "Watchmen" and so on. This effect is mimiced bei Ellis and Raney, as they catalyse it through the character of Jenny Sparks, whose memeorys we're confronted with. With that, they expand the medium with the technique of imitation as reminiscence respectively using it genuinely in an ubiquitous fashion - on the artwork level as well as the text level.
 
 Literature
  • Warren Ellis/Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5 (dt.), mg publishing, Rastatt 2003.
  • Mark Millar/ John McCrea „Jenny Sparks – The Secret History of the Authority“, DC Comics New York 2000.
  • Les Daniels, Superman: The Complete History – The Life and Times of the Man of Steel, Chronicle Books, San Francisco 2004.


Websources


List of Illustrations

  • Img. 1:
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5, mg publishing, Rastatt 2003, 4.
Dick Chalkins, Buck Rogers 25th Century A.D, cover.

  • Img. 2:
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5,  mg publishing, Rastatt 2003, 5.
Joel Shuster, Action Comics #1, DC Comics, New York 1938, 2.

  • Img. 3:
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5, mg publishing, Rastatt 2003, 6.
Will Eisner, The Spirit (unknown issue), Quality Comics Group, s.l., s.a.

  • Img. 4:
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5, mg publishing, Rastatt 2003, 6.
Will Eisner, The Spirit (unknown issue), Quality Comics Group,s.l., s.a.

  • Img. 5:
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5, mg publishing, Rastatt 2003, 13.
Jakc Kirby, The Avengers #4, Marvel Comics, New York 1964, cover.

  • Img. 6:
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5, mg publishing, Rastatt 2003, 19.
Dave Gibbons, Watchmen #1, DC Comics, New York 1986, 1.

  • Img. 7:
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5, mg publishing, Rastatt 2003, 20 (mirrored).
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5, mg publishing, Rastatt 2003, 18.
Dave Gibbons, Watchmen #12, DC Comics, New York 1986, 17.
Dave Gibbons, Watchmen #3, DC Comics, New York 1986, 23.

  • Img. 8:
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #5, mg publishing, Rastatt 2003, cover.
Al Feldstein, Tales from the Crypt #24, EC Comics, New York 1951, cover.
Jack Davis, Incredible Science Fiction #31, EC Comics, New York 1955, cover.
Wally Wood, Weird Science # 16, EC Comics, New York 1952, cover.

  • Img. 9:
Gil Kane, Stormwatch #44, Image Comics, New York 1998, alternative cover.
Gil Kane, Captain Marvel #17, Marvel Comics, New York 1968, 14.

  • Img. 10:
Tom Raney, Stormwatch #44, Image Comics, New York 1998, alternative cover.
Dave Gibbons, Watchmen #1, DC Comics, New York 1986, cover.



[1] E.g. http://mustusepowers.blogspot.de/2011/01/homages-to-action-comics-1.html- a website containing hommages to the famous cover of "Action Comics #1".
[2] Elis/Raney, Stormwatch #5 (germ.), mg publishing, Rastatt 2003.
[3] Ibid., inner cover.
[4] Elis/Raney, Stormwatch #5, 3.
[5] The 70's are strived only briefly.
[6] Elis/Raney, Stormwatch #5, 4.
[7] Elis/Raney, Stormwatch #5, 5.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Siegel und Shuster both were 24 when they created Superman.
[10] Daniels, Superman, 22–23.
[11] Elis/Raney, Stormwatch #5, 6.
[12] Elis/Raney, Stormwatch #5, 13.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Elis/Raney, Stormwatch #5, 19-24
[17] E.g. Mark Millar/ John McCrea „Jenny Sparks – The Secret History of the Authority“, DC Comics, New York 2000.

 Latest Version I: 10-07-2012, 13:25
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