University of Wisconsin, Madison

The Art Department, 4D area

At a Cross-Road with Cartooning:

Reflections on my Work in Comics and Video

Joshua Duncan

Professor Lynda Barry

Professor Gail Geiger

Professor Stephen Hilyard

Professor Douglas Rosenberg

March 16, 2015

Duncan 1 At a Cross-Road with Cartooning:

Reflections on my Work in Comics and Video

Introduction:

When examining my own art, I find myself in a peculiar scenario which Nam June Paik

has helped me better understand through his illustration of his place as a video artist. As Paik

said, I think video is half in the art world and half out, and he drew a diagram placing himself

at the intersection between Art and Information [Figure 1].1 One reason Paik saw things this way

is because avant-garde video art of the 60s and 70s appropriated information from TV, which

was then re-presented in the context of art spaces, creating a feedback loop between the art world

and the mass-information of the broader culture.

[Figure 1. Recreation of Paiks illustration.]

Similarly, comic artists have their own subculture, and writings on comics focus on that

communitys history, innovations, and aspirations for the medium. It is rare to find a comic artist 1 Lovejoy, Margot. Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media. Prentice Hall, 1997. pp. 123-124.

Duncan 2 or scholar operating within the art world, and thus finding overlap between the writings of art

world scholars and comic world scholars is a challenge. Many of my comics have a place within

the comics world, yet bringing this work into the context of a gallery setting and asking myself

how my comics and videos relate has proven a puzzle. Complicating matters further is my

compulsion to use Christian imagery in both sketches and video.

1. Professor Lynda Barry

The first question, posed by Professor Lynda Barry, asks me to imagine myself in a

hypothetical situation in which I was free to make work without having to answer to either a

pastor or an art professor, each with different ideas about art and religious images. The question

asks me how, if I wanted to make intensive work responding to Giovanni Bellinis The Agony in

the Garden, I would go about it [Figure 2].

[Figure 2. Giovanni Bellini, The Agony in the Garden. 1459. Wikiart.]

Simply put, I would start by cartooning. The reason I would use the word cartooning as

opposed to sketching is my purpose would not be to recreate Giovannis composition through

labor-intensive analytical drawing, but to quickly understand how the figures relate and what this

might be communicating about their emotions. Ivan Brunetti preferred the term cartoon over

what he thought was the more pretentious comic art, in part because he considered

Duncan 3 cartooning to be the most honest term to describe the action.2 Like an emoticon, a cartoon is

both image and language at once.

After doing initial cartoons of Bellinis painting, I would research every other depiction

of this event I could find, whether in old master paintings or cheesy childrens cartoons. There is

something personally fascinating in seeing how artists have interpreted this powerful emotional

scene from the narrative of Christ and pondering how I might approach it differently. I might go

as far as to create more polished compositional drawings, trying to express something about the

narrative I thought was lacking in other representations. My sketchbooks show numerous

examples of where I have undertaken this exact process [Figure 3].

[Figure 3. Cartoons from my sketchbook. 2011-2013.] 2 Brunetti, Ivan. Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice. London: Yale University Press, 2011. p. 12.

Duncan 4 Though this process bears similarity to how a realist painter would choose a single

composition before beginning a large-scale painting, I would have much more interest in walking

through the moments in time before and after the singular event. Because comics with traditional

media cannot represent time like a video, comic artists like Will Eisner have expressed how this

affects their craft: There are several things this medium is basically unable to deal with. One is

sound, so we use balloons. The other is time, so we cant deal with time.3 The conversation

between Eisner and his protg Frank Miller reveals that they are concerned with depicting time

in comics for a particular purpose: narrative immersion within the world of their stories. The

tricks of creating a sense of time, such as including dripping water or a ticking clock, is the

focus of a chapter in one of Eisners influential texts on comics.4 Apart from the purpose of

narrative immersion, many comic enthusiasts would agree with my opinion that their passion for

comics comes in part from the imagination required to fill in these gaps, and thinking about such

gaps characterizes all of my sketchbooks.

Generally, the cartoons in my sketchbook lie in wait for a time to be referenced later. In

the case of The Agony in the Garden, it so happens I did eventually have an impulse to create

something when I heard the line Oh my gosh, do I pray! in the viral video He-Man Sings.5 This

line brought to mind an animated cartoon of Christ praying in Gethsemane from my childhood,

produced by Hannah-Barbera, the same animation studio behind the He-Man scenes appropriated

by the makers of the viral video [Figure 4].

3 Brownstein, Charles. The Walk Through the Rain. Excerpt from Eisner/Miller. Published in The Best American Comics Criticism. Ed. Ben Schwartz. Fantagraphic Books, 2010. p. 90. 4 Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008. pp. 23-37. 5 Slackcircus Studios. He Man Sings 4 Non Blonds. YouTube video. April 11, 2006. Username: dkilzer2000's channel.

Duncan 5

[Figure 4. Still frame from Heyeayeayeayeaster. Personal YouTube video. March 10,

2013. . Username: jerichosfumato]

Essentially, I havent yet figured out how to sketch out ideas in video format. By

drawing and thinking through scenes like a cartoonist, with an emphasis on emotion and physical

expression in the tradition of Will Eisner, I can work through my ideas about an image or

narrative which has a personal power over my thinking. In contrast, the precisely-edited and

mentally-exacting videos seem to come later, generally when I see technology allowing me to

make something bizarre that Ive thought of. My sketches are emotionally sincere, literal, and

interested in narrative, while the videos are impulsive, technological, and generally reproduce a

pre-existing meme or trend in video. It is the videos that have posed the most questions about

what constitutes sacrilege or blasphemy. By the time I made Heyeayeayeayeaster in 2013, I was

aware enough of this that I included the high priest yelling Blasphemy! while watching the

same video he is in. On one hand, this is a gag at the expense of those who might be so

offended by the video, that they might react to it in the same way that those who accused Jesus

Christ of blasphemy did. On the other hand, it expresses my own sense of doubt about the

appropriateness of what Im doing by mixing a sacred subject with a profane pop-culture gag.

Duncan 6 The ability for the work to be interpreted in different ways by different audiences, and my own

inability to control or adequately express the meaning of the piece is the aspect of my work I

have seen discussed in texts describing postmodern art, particularly by Margot Lovejoy [For

further discussion on this, see the response to question 2].

The reason why I would be willing to make the videos in this series while having

reservations over their appropriateness relates to my changing attitudes on art. Prior to 2010, I

would have argued that the only art worth doing is a realistic painting that took a lot of work to

make, and even wrote a short essay at one point arguing that Andreas Serranos photograph of a

crucifix submerged in urine was offensively stupid anti-art, without even feeling the need to look

up the work when writing about it. This line of thinking was eventually challenged when I began

to think of issues surrounding great artists like Michelangelo and how their depiction of God

was equally problematic for one concerned with representing the image of God and the Bible.6

My life-long love of cartoons, relegated to the backburner as I pursued gaining skills in

representational drawing, returned to the front of my mind when I realized that the depiction of

God in low-budget childrens cartoons had profoundly affected my thinking on this topic. For

example, because the creators of the Japanese animated series Superbook had to tell a story in

which God was a character whose face they couldnt show, they solved the problem by

depicting God as a man with a beard whose face was hidden in a small cartoon cloud [Figure 5].

As a child, I laughed at this image, yet from that point on it was the only way I could mentally

picture the characters in the story of Job.

6 For context on why this remains contentious within Christianity, see the Second Commandment, as found in both Exodus 20:4-6 and Deuteronomy 5:4-21.

Duncan 7

[Figure 5. Still frame from Superbook, Season 1: Episode 16, The Patience of Job.

Christian Broadcasting Network. 1982.]

Because I came to realize the immense power of cartoons in forming my thinking and

imagination, I have both drawn cartoons in my sketchbook and appropriated cartoons in my

videos to depict religious subjects mixed with pop culture references for the past two years.

Professor Barrys hypothetical asks me to imagine how my work might change if I could

not consult a Christian pastor, but was left to figure out the answers on my own. In answer, I

would continue to pursue this line of experimental work juxtaposing Christian subjects with

cartoons and other images from the postmodern culture. This is because the concerns of those

Christian writers who discuss art for the purpose of the Church rarely address my concerns,

where the purpose is to make art which allows me to personally work through the imagery I am

faced with in a postmodern technological society.

If it is contended that this work inappropriately mixes the sacred with the profane, I

would argue that a painting by Michelangelo or the politically conservative moral paintings of

Mormon artist Jon McNaughton pose the exact same questions for a believing Christian (e.g.

What constitutes blasphemy, sacrilege, or heresy?). [The subject of the culture wars

surrounding controversial contemporary artists like Andreas Serrano is a separate topic Id be

Duncan 8 happy to explore at greater length in the future. This same topic is addressed from a different

angle in my response to question 3.]

Figurative paintings, of course, have an aura of respectability in conservative circles that

protects them from the same line of questioning that avant-garde works face. Charles Hartfield

discusses a similar bias against comics in his book on the history of alternative comics:

[Leslie] Fiedler famously claimed that comic books, as a lowbrow form,

attracted the same sort of middle-brow scorn as did avant-garde or high-brow art;

that both kinds of attack were grounded in the middle-brows fear of difference.

In so saying, of course, he was joining a midcentury discussion of taste framed by

such critics as Clement Greenburg and Dwight MacDonald, known for their

Olympian disdain of the middlebrow.7

By putting aside similar preconceived notions about art, I was able to make videos

densely layered with appropriated footage; a body of work which I can easily bring into the

context of an academic art space. The Christian content, while somewhat uncommon in

postmodern art, is not unheard of, and has prompted peer-group discussion about current events.

For example, several have made connections with the attacks on the Danish newspaper Jyllands-

Posten and the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, whose cartoon depictions of

Mohammad prompted violent retaliation.

James Elkins On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art was remarkably

influential in my thinking about how religious art can function in contemporary academic

discussions. He identified five types of religious art based on conversations with his students,

and ends by discussing how spiritual art might be understood in the context of postmodern art. 7 Hartfield, Chris. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. p. xii.

Duncan 9 He cites critic Slavoj ieks argument that the Japanese hand-held electronic toys from the

1990s, tamagotchi, function as a type of popular art object which are also religious objects

because they work by having children pretend they are caring for a digital pet which requires

attention to stay alive.8

While it was inspiring to consider this idea of a mass-produced childrens toy having

accidental religious significance, I had no personal connection with tamagotchi and found them

quite dated. The Internet, and its subculture of memes, seemed a much more prominent example

of the popular culture producing work which fit Elkins characterization of tamagotchi as

postmodern work with religious significance. Furthermore, I would argue that the most basic

form of Internet memes, image macros with a line or two of text, are a type of comic anyone can

make. While looking at memes, I considered Elkins categories of religious art based on work by

five of his students: kitsch or conventional religious art, art based on or creating new religious

movements, art critical of religion, art which wrestles with religion without rejecting it, and art

which unconsciously references religion.9 Based on my original research, I would characterize

Internet memes as either non-religious, intentionally expressing an opinion on religion

(regardless of viewpoint), referencing religion for observational humor, referencing religion for

sacrilegious or shock humor, or unintentionally containing religious overtones. Each category,

particularly the last two, provided the fertile ground for artistic inspiration.

For example, the viral video phenomenon of Caramelldansen has a fascinating,

complex history behind its creation, bringing together multiple pop culture sources, and inspiring

8 Elkins, James. On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. New York: Routledge, 2004. pp. 112-113 9 Ibid. p. 37.

Duncan 10 thousands of people to create their own versions of the animation.10 I interpreted this as an

expression of the Otaku subculture: by drawing various characters doing this dance, the various

creators were declaring their sincere devotion to fictional characters. This layer of meaning

might only be appreciated by those familiar with the subculture when I modeled Caramelldansen

Christ on the meme [Figure 6]. It is noteworthy that my first endeavor to deliberately make what

I thought of as postmodern video art involved cartooning a 13-frame animation, because so

much of the tension in my work is whether my cartooning can inform or coincide with my

experiments with technology.

[Figure 6. Still frames from Caramelldansen Christ. Personal video work. January 31,

2012December 4, 2013. < https://youtu.be/2wBJGvJOc_M>. Username:

jerichosfumato]

The discussions I have participated in with peers and instructors have brought up this

point: much of the comic work looks like it was made to be a comic book, and not made for an

art gallery. I desire to be a cartoonist actively making comics. Just as a concern like Is this work

appropriate for a church? would not be enough to stop me from making what I make, a concern

like Is this work appropriate for an art gallery? is not enough to stop me from being a

cartoonist. That being said, I do have an interest the academic art world and desire to contribute

to the study of 20th and 21st century art. How I might do this while working as a cartoonist, and

the difficulty Ive faced in how to present my comics in a context that is foreign to most comic 10 Longcat and various editors. Caramelldansen. Know Your Meme. 2008. .

Duncan 11 artists, is not a problem unique to myself. As Gilbert Hernandez was quoted as saying, You

cant repair comics, you cant hang them in a museum and say, This belongs next to the Mona

Lisa.There is the sense that this is bad, and we want it to be bad.11

In summation, I am personally committed to traditional cartooning by hand regardless of

any pressures to abandon it for other methods of working, while also desiring to use cartooning

to create work which challenges what cartoons are understood to be and not be afraid to engage

with new technology. This tension leads directly to the thrust of the second question I face, posed

by Professor Douglas Rosenberg, which asked how my art history cartoons might be

distinguished from Classics Illustrated, and how I might contribute something new about the

potential of comics/cartoons in the context of fine arts.

2. Professor Douglas Rosenberg

There are at least two motivations which prompted my comics adapting primary sources

and documents from art history and creating flashcards of various individuals: first, a personal,

emotional response to reading about these individuals in art history classes in which I identified

with them as people rather than as rarified historical figures; second, a desire to make comics in

dialogue with art discussions by making comics which were literally about art history. Upon

reflection, this solution to the problem of how to make comics about ongoing dialogues in art

is something of an obvious approach, one that could be less rooted in a tradition of what

cartooning has been and more rooted in exploring what cartooning could be.

11 Gardner, Jared. Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling. Stanford University Press, 2012. p. x.

Duncan 12

[Figure 7. Raphael and Bellori. From the flashcards for the Notes on Art History series.

2013-2014.]

While making the flashcards for Raphael and Bellori [Figure 7], I was thinking about

Cindy Shermans series of history portraits: in contrast to Raphaels idea of painting the portrait

of a woman by combining the most beautiful parts of multiple women, Sherman cast herself as

characters in Renaissance-era portraits, which I have understood as a postmodern critique of the

male gaze. (Reading several of Shermans own statements has since challenged my simple

understanding of her work, yet the association of her work with the male gaze in classroom

discussions was what inspired me at the time.)12 By simplifying the Renaissance artists,

historians, and patrons to the point where they could be fit on a small flash card, I caricatured

their concepts, debates, and accomplishments just as I caricatured their faces. By reducing

Belloris high-brow defense of his artistic ideals down to Mannerism stinks! in the cartoon, it

creates humor at Belloris expense in a way which parallels the irreverent humor towards

reverent subjects in Shermans self-portraits. Unlike Shermans photography series, however, my

12 Cloutier-Blazzard, Kiberlee A. Cindy Sherman: Her History Portrait Series as Post-Modern Parody. Bread and Circus. Online journal. July 29, 2007. .

Duncan 13 cartoons have an educational function, which has drawn comparisons to other educational

cartoons: edutainment for children.

As stated previously, I feel as though I straddle between a comics world and a

postmodern art world. Carter Ratcliffe explains that Lovejoy draws a distinction between artists

who flee technology and those who try to engage it on terms other than the ones dictated by

institutional purposes.13 While making comics, I have tended to utilize traditional, physical

materials, while my videos fit the description of work engaging technology. While trying to

make comics which speak to the art world by making comics about art historical subjects is a

simple solution, I believe that there is untapped potential in the medium of comics which might

lend itself to postmodern art discussions, if only I can think experimentally about cartooning in a

way which parallels how Ive thought experimentally about video editing. A better

understanding of how other comic artists have tackled historical subjects, and how my history

comics are either similar or different, might help me identify ways to approach this problem.

First, there are comics about historical subjects which are done for personal artistic

purposes. These are comparable to Hollywood treatments which sacrifice historical accuracy

for the sake of telling a story, (e.g. Braveheart). Typexs Rembrandt fits this mold, casting

Rembrandt as a passionate personality; the author goes as far as to say this should be seen as

Typexs Rembrandt.14 This category might be understood generally enough to include any book-

length historical comic, even one more strict about historical accuracy, so long as it uses a

narrative format with a plot structure of rising and falling action.

13 Qtd. in Lovejoy, Margot. Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media. Prentice Hall, 1997. p. xx. 14 Typex, with Gerrit de Jager and Gert Jan Pos. Rembrandt. SelfMadeHero, 2013.

Duncan 14 Second, there are comics intended for children with the specific goal of being used as an

educational material in a classroom setting. While there is diversity in drawing style and tone,

they generally present a positive portrait of the historical figure. Particularly influential in my

schooling were the Getting to Know the Worlds Greatest Artists books by Mike Venezia. The

biographies were written at the grade-school level, and were illustrated by a series of gags

referencing events in the artists lives. The only way to get the joke was to read the text and see

what it was referring to. The gags departed from strict adherence to historical accuracy, putting

the artists in imaginative situations to reward children for reading the biographical texts.

[Figure 8. Kate Beaton. Marcel Duchamps Breakfast. Hark! A Vagrant. 2006.

harkavagrant.com]

Third, there are comics about history without narrative aspirations. For example, Kate

Beatons Hark! A Vagrant features various historical entities as guest characters [Figure 8]. The

absurdist humor could be appreciated differently by different audiences, whether they are

familiar with the historical subject or not. Unlike Venezias gags for his childrens books,

Duncan 15 Beatons comics are not created with the primary intent of functioning as an educational text or

resource, though a teacher could certainly use Beatons work to add flavor to their lessons.

Neither Classics Illustrated nor my own history comics fit neatly into any of these

categories. In his book documenting the history and discussing the artwork of Classics

Illustrated, author W.B. Jones looks back with personal nostalgia on the series, saying that they

formed his developing imagination. At the same time, Jones reveals that his fondness for them

stemmed from their deliberate purpose. Jones quotes the romantic poetry scholar, Donna

Richardson, Every week Id obey the exhortation at the end of each issue: Now that you have

read the Classics Illustrated edition, dont miss the [added] enjoyment of the original, obtainable

at your school or public library.15 Jones appreciates the comics because they embodied the

Horatian ideal of mixing usefulness and pleasure16 In other words, in both the view of Jones

and the original publisher Albert L. Kanter, these comics were good comics insofar as they

succeeded in their purpose to wean young readers from Action Comics, Detective Comics, and

Marvel Comics, employing the same medium to win new adherents to the works of Dumas,

Scott, Cooper, Melville, and Dickens.17 Even the companys decision to change the titles name

from Classic Comics to Classics Illustrated is emblematic of this purpose, which Jones

considered a deliberate effort to disassociate Classics from other comics and instead associate

themselves with illustrated books, in the tradition of golden age illustrators like Howard Pyle and

N.C. Wyeth. The realistic drawing style and the decision in later comics not to rewrite the

dialogue of characters from the original source material is in keeping with this tradition.

15 Qtd. in Jones, W.B. Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002. p. 4. 16 Ibid. p. 4. 17 Ibid. p. 5.

Duncan 16 To contrast my own work with Classics Illustrated, I would first point out that for Jones

and Kanter, these comics are a means to an end, whereas I view comics as an end in themselves,

apart from their ability to be used to educate. I do not look down on educational comics as

inferior to comics with high literary ambitions (of course, both types would still struggle to find a

place in the context of postmodern art). Many significant figures in the comics world have made

educational comics, such as Will Eisner who devoted decades to PS magazine. What appears to

be the major struggle for placing my own historical comics in the context of academic discussion

informed by postmodern art is that my comics seem to translate the historical texts in a straight-

forward, impersonal fashion.

[Figure 9. Panel from Caravaggio Orders Artichokes. 2015.]

In discussions with visitors to my MA exhibition Learning with Comics, I repeatedly

stated how making these comics was an educational exercise for myself as much as anyone.

While I grant that my use of the medium of comics appears didactic on the surface, I wish to

defend my comics as having significance beyond a dry illustration of historical data. For

Duncan 17 example, in Caravaggio Orders Artichokes, my choices for the expressions and body language

of the waiter and the scribe are interpretive choices necessitated by drawing the comic [Figure 9].

The scribe and the waiter could have been faceless entities if I wanted to avoid adding anything

personal to history, yet I treated the waiter as a sympathetic if bumbling character type, and the

scribe as a stoic and detached academic. By drawing the waiter with a cartoon halo, those

familiar with comic strip iconographies could easily understand that I am ironically indicating

that the waiter is casting himself in a positive light, whereas the cold, hard facts are presented

by the scribe. This interpretive decision reflects my personal understanding of the historical

documents presenting their court testimony: the waiters side of the story portrays the attack as

unprovoked, while the scribe seems to correct the initial testimony and provide a better

understanding for what prompted Caravaggios violent reaction. Therefore it is not a purely

objective transmission of historical data into illustrations, but a personal interpretation of how

these obscure historical entities could be understood as human beings of flesh and blood.

By pondering on what exactly these history comics are, Ive had the thought that they are

something like what a student does when they read a text and tear it apart for relevant

information, highlighting and rephrasing key concepts [See Figure 13 and attached notes for an

example]. Just as there is a difference between a student reading a text about postmodern art and

taking notes and a student making a work of art which is postmodern, there is a difference

between making comics which are effective and interesting comics referencing postmodern art

discussions and making comics which themselves are postmodern works of art (just as

Lichtenstein isnt understood as making traditional comics merely by appropriating comic book

images).

Duncan 18 What is both exciting and daunting about this prospect is my difficulty finding a model of

a comic artist operating in the postmodern art world. Art history classes at UW-Madison

introduced old masters who secretly drew caricatures such as Annibale Carracci and Bernini.

In contemporary times, there are recently-deceased and living individuals like Kieth Haring and

Kara Walker who use comic language and are recognized as significant art-world figures, yet I

have not found any discussion of their work by comics scholars. Perhaps this is due to the insular

nature of the comics subculture, focusing upon its own history, struggles, and artists.

One fascinating route of research might be to look at such recognized contemporary

artists through the lens of the comics world, asking why they have not been the subject of much

discussion within the comics community and how the contributions of postmodern artists might

change the comic worlds perception of itself. To undertake such research, I would need

sufficient knowledge of both worlds, which as previously stated are often divergent in their

interests and presuppositions. Fortunately, through my reading I have been able to identify

similar patterns of thought in both comics scholarship and texts on postmodern art. I hope to

develop my artistic practice with cartooning in light of this information.

The major divide between the world of comics and the world of postmodern art is the

focus of cartoonists on using certain conventions to overcome the limitations of comics and

immerse the reader in a world of the artists creation. Whereas postmodern video art might be

characterized as abandoning the conventions established by TV and Hollywood producers while

using the same tools, cartoonists and comic fans tend to deeply appreciate the conventions of the

medium and how artists have worked within the limitations imposed on them. As Ive discovered

by bringing my own comics into the digital format of video, many of the conventions of comic

story-telling become ineffective when translated into digital technology [Figure 10]. If I as a

Duncan 19 cartoonist can find ways to use technology to eliminate the restrictions that traditional media

places on comics, for example the inability to dictate time, then the conventions of comic story-

telling can be understood as optional rather than as requirements I must adhere to. Even without

digital technology, many alternative cartoonists have found ways to use comics without creating

traditional narratives. Indeed, the history of non-traditional narrative in comics is the focus of a

book by Jared Gardner, which is one of the few texts I have found which attempts to examine

comics history through the lens of machine age thinkers like Walter Benjamin.

To summarize Gardners argument, he believes that prior to Hollywoods attempt to

make film a high art through strict narrative structures, both early film and early comics were

characterized by both non-linear narratives and even linear narratives which defied high-art

aspirations of storytelling. In the words of film theorist Siegfried Kracauer, the comics and films

of the early 1900s lacked any authentic and materially motivated coherence.18 Even serial

narratives in comics, which Gardner describes as an innovation that contemporary audiences

have difficulty appreciating, tended to defy classical story structures. Gardner quotes feminist-

narrative scholar Robyn Warhol to distinguish the two: Serial form defies the dominant

marriage plot governing so much of popular fictionSerial form infiltrates domestic space,

blurring the boundaries between public and private discourse.Serial form interacts with

events in real time.19 Gardner believes these are precursors to postmodern storytellings

rejection of the modernist Hollywood narrative structure.

As figures like Benjamin tended to ignore comics, Gardner believes that comics were

able to thrive as an underground art form, allowing for experimentation that would not be

18 Qtd. in Gardner, Jared. Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling. Stanford University Press, 2012. p. 21 19 Ibid. Qtd. in p. 51-52.

Duncan 20 allowed in modernist film. That Benjaminlargely missed the foundational importance of the

comic form when looking at newspapers and cinema in the 1920s is not surprising.20 Art

Spiegelman has observed this same tendency: Comics have the power to fly under the critical

radar and dive right into the brain.21 Because of the Internet and digital technology, Gardner

anticipates that cartoonists will not need to rely on traditional conventions of comics in the

future, and cites Jashon Shigas Meanwhile as an ambitious attempt to utilize the web to present

a non-linear format where the reader determines the course.22 Furthermore, he believes that

technology like the DVD player has encouraged people to think of video as something which can

be read like a comic through pausing and rewinding, something impossible in 20th century

cinema.23 Comics, in the end, is defined less by its formal propertiesspeech balloons, gutters,

even sequential imagesthan by its invitation to the reader to project herself into the narrative

and to project the narrative beyond the page.24

Reading Gardner led to a personal observation: while video art indicates the death of the

author by incorporating appropriated footage and multiple cuts and angles, leaving more to the

viewer to interpret, comics have also historically indicated the death of the author both in their

narratives and in their multiple viewpoints which force the reader to fill in the gaps. While

video is experienced in time and is not constricted by the limitations of drawing on paper,

traditional comics exist outside of time and the cartoonist is unable to dictate either sound or the

exact timing of events to the reader. Experiencing the passage of time is a reality for video art

but an intellectual challenge when reading comics. 20 Ibid. p. 2. 21 Faires, Roberts. Triumph of the Yellow Kid. The Austin Chronicle. October 22, 2004. . 22 Gardner, Jared. p. 192. 23 Ibid. 182. 24 Ibid. p. 193.

Duncan 21

[Figure 10. Two panels from A Tale of Taps and Tabby or KK. Adapted to video.

2014. . Username: jerichosfumato.]

This reality became apparent when I attempted to translate one of my class comics, A

Tale of Taps and Tabby (alternatively titled KK which is the only title written on the original

dialogue-free comic) into video. The timing of events which was only implied in the comic (e.g.

Taps reacting in shock as someone approaches), had to be recreated in video using precise

editing. I confronted a reality observed by literary scholars Jakaitis and Wurtz that While other

visual media, such as film or television, incorporate a concrete sense of time on a structural level,

graphic narrative relies on its reader to interpret time presented spatially.25 Desiring music, I

appropriated the song Moe tte Ittai Nan desu ka? from the anime Gurren Lagaan, and

confronted the reality of wanting to time events to fit with emotional cues within the existing

song. Admittedly, Id consider this video to be an experiment in adapting comics to video rather

25 Jakaitis, Jake and James F. Wurtz. Introduction. Crossing Boundaries in Graphic Narrative: Essays on Forms, Series and Genres. Ed. Jakaitis and Wurtz. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012. p. 14.

Duncan 22 than anything revolutionary in the use of video, yet the experience of making it has helped me

understand how technology might affect my cartooning if I continue to freely mix these tools.

The mixing of tools, even if it means moving beyond what looks like a traditional

comic, is a practice especially appropriate to a form marked by synergy and a mixing of

disparate elements. While summarizing the debate over whether comics are better understood as

verbal works accompanied by pictures or visual works accompanied by text, Jakaitis and Wurtz

argue that the debate misses the unique synergy characteristic of comics, which are both things

at once.26 Aaron Meskins recent definition as a hybrid art form that evolved from literature

and a number of other art forms and media also evokes this synergy, once more suggesting that

crossover is central to the medium.27 Bringing together disparate elements was an early way of

working in pluralistic or postmodern art history. Henry M. Sayre draws a distinction between the

two words, pluralistic and postmodern to better identify how the American avant-garde

differed from the earlier eclectic style of pluralist architects and writers.28 Whereas pluralistic

works mix disparate elements together to make a statement: that all solutions are equal,

interdisciplinary postmodern work is in a state of conflict or undecidability which has no

solution.29 As an interdisciplinary comic artist and video maker, I believe I can contribute to

this discussion by allowing my digital and cartooning work to crossover. As I have previously

spoken about my intention to enable people to browse through a family tree of my art history

comics on a website and determine their own path rather than one I dictate to them, I believe I

26 Ibid. p. 1. 27 Ibid. Qtd. in p. 2. 28 Sayre, Henry M. The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde since 1970. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. p. xii. 29 Ibid. p. xiii.

Duncan 23 was subconsciously understanding the importance of allowing the work to take on a life of its

own beyond my ability to influence it.

While it may take considerable time for this vision to be realized in the art history comic

series, other works I have done and am working on currently do explore how a cartoon might

come to fit Sayres definition of an avant-garde work, one which denies its own autonomy,

[and] implicates the audience in its workings. It demands a personal response.30 The untitled

comic for my MA show Learning with Comics, which incorporated videos playing on iPads, is

an initial solution to this problem, one which might be described as eclectic rather than truly

avant-garde, according to Sayres definition, since the disparate elements of comic pages and

video are brought together but not fully integrated into one work.31 By coming to this realization,

I believe I can now make work which better addresses the apparent division between my comics

and my videos, essentially by coming to think as both video and the Internet as a sheet of paper

where I may cartoon electronically.32 My discovery of free online tools like sketchtoy.com is

encouraging as the web now allows anyone to doodle and record that action online. It is

something I can use myself to experiment and as an illustration how the Internet is making it

easier to produce effects which previously required specialized knowledge to simulate.

In summation, the comics world and the academic art world tend to be separate sub-

cultures, and I occupy a place in both. The resurgence of cartooning in my practice has led me to

make comics which react to conventions and discussions within the comics world. As scholars

have identified parallel themes between the two groups, and as I have identified some of my own

30 Ibid. p. xiv. 31 I adapted this work for the gallery into an online version, where the viewers ability to change and interact with the work is vastly increased: . 32 The DO IT!!! page on my Christ Bomb website in particular has parallels to a cartoonists arrangement of panels on a page. .

Duncan 24 works which employ cartooning but depart from traditional comics, I believe there is fertile

ground to use cartooning along with technology to make work which moves past the traditional

conventions of the form. Because the academic study of comics is a relatively new discipline,

collaboration with peers is vitally important to promoting this experimental attitude to

cartooning. Volunteering as a captain of the UW Comics Club is likely to provide opportunities

for workshops with my cartoonist peers, where we intend to test different ways of cartooning,

with technology like 3D scanning acting as a tool of transforming motion into line. By reflecting

on this work through the research I intend to conduct on past cartoonists and contemporary

artists, I hope to identify how cartoonists have used their freedom in the past and present to

create transformative work that is deserving of recognition within contemporary art circles.

3. Professor Stephen Hilyard

In discussing technology and cartooning, I have considered the death of the author in

postmodern and avant-garde art, which provides a natural segue into Professor Stephen Hilyards

question concerning the very personal nature of some of my work. This question asks me to

examine the specific personal themes in three of my current works of art and how making the

work affected how I thought about those themes. Like Professor Rosenbergs question, this

question also presents my art history comics as something didactic or merely instructive, in

contrast to other work which is understood as more personal.

In the previous response, I used general categories to describe various types of historical

comics, and argued that my history comics stemmed in part from a desire to take a large

quantity of information I was currently studying and use drawing to work through it. These

particular comics have a high degree of professional polish similar to illustrated educational

materials. However, thinking about the root of why I made those works to begin with, reading the

Duncan 25 history texts and feeling an intense personal connection to the emotions and struggles of the

people writing them, led me to also think about the personal themes in my video works featuring

Christian imagery.

[Figure 11. Web page from Christ Bomb. November 2013. ]

Of the three works which I chose to discuss as part of my current practice which

express personal themes, The Seven Final Words of Christ or Christ Bomb is the first

chronologically [Figure 11]. Of all my video work appropriating both Internet memes and

footage of Jesus from Christian TV, this is the only work I would consider mature enough to

categorize as part of my current practice.33 33 I have already discussed my use of memes extensively and will not reiterate that here for the sake of brevity. For information on the Internet meme which informed this work, see Mercer, Alex. Content Aware Scaling. Know Your Meme. 2013.

Duncan 26 Last year, I used these videos to create installations at the Mana Contemporary Gallery of

Art in Chicago and at the 2014 1st Year MFA Review Show at the Art Lofts Gallery in UW-

Madison. Additionally, I created the website christbomb.com, which encourages people to use

the video for a type of digital graffiti prank, bombing public computers with looping videos. I

took extensive notes on the personal associations or nostalgia each of the seven videos carries (of

the seven, three of the original cartoons were ones I saw as a child, three were not seen until

adulthood, and one was part of the childrens Bible series I loved most even though I dont

remember watching that particular episode).

Collectively, they express a personal struggle with the question, How can I know that

what I believe is true, and not simply tradition or attitudes inherited from my parents? Of all the

works which stemmed from reading Elkins as an undergrad at Concordia Univeristy, Nebraska,

this was when I was most aware of the controversy surrounding works by Andreas Serrano and

Chris Ofili and the fact that both Christian and art world audiences would draw immediate

associations with the culture wars of the late 80s and 90s.

As stated previously, I wanted to create work which was explicitly Christian art, yet not

limited to one of Elkins five categories which he believed covered every possible type of

religious art.34 At Concordia between 2011 and 2012, one of my classmates, Evan Balleweg,

created a work for a class critique which profoundly affected me. He cast a mold of a cheap

bunny statue to make thirteen rough, unpolished plaster bunnies, each with a poem written on its

back suggesting that if the bunny was broken, the person might find a prize inside. Of the

thirteen, only one contained a prize, a second poem which instructed the finder to meet Balleweg

and redeem their prize. A married couple found it, and received a new bunny like the others, but 34 Elkins, James. On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. New York: Routledge, 2004. p. 37.

Duncan 27 polished to a smooth finish. As the student critique group was predominantly Christian or at least

well acquainted with Christianity, they were quickly able to identify themes such as the 12

apostles plus Christ, the possible symbolism of sin and redemption or sanctification, the

resurrection, and most notably, the Lutheran and Calvinist doctrine of election.

An immensely dense topic, Lutherans and Calvinists essentially understand salvation as

entirely Gods work, with no meritorious work on the part of the person who is eventually saved,

including the choice to believe. This is in direct contrast to an Arminian or Catholic

understanding of salvation as being the free will choice of the believer in response to Gods

calling. Because only one bunny contained the second poem, only one finder could ever redeem

the prize of the second bunny. The choice that the other finders had to break or keep the other

twelve bunnies did not allow them to freely chose the true bunny. Ballewegs work has stuck

with me as the only example of an art work which tries to tackle the Christian debate over

election and free will. Because I cannot imagine any classical painting having the capacity to

approach such a topic through illusionistic representation, Ballewegs work is proof in my mind

that postmodern and experimental art practices can influence my own work. Furthermore, it

indicates that traditional Christian definitions of art rooted in hard work and skill would have

difficulty approaching this work by Balleweg because it rejected traditional painting as the only

way of engaging in a Christian dialogue through art.

Like Balleweg, I also had specific Christian theological discourses on my mind while

making the Christ Bomb videos, yet whereas Balleweg seemed to have a specific position which

his work expressed, my videos fail to communicate this theological content effectively as

message art unless one has familiarity with both the theological debate and is able to dialogue

with me personally. On their own, my videos cannot clearly communicate the theological

Duncan 28 messages and positions in my own mind. Im not sure whether I succeeded at making

postmodern art and failed at making Christian message art, or vice-versa, or failed at both.

Christian peers tend to pick up on the theological significance of the Seven Final Words of

Christ, and sometimes know the source cartoon material. My peers in Madison were quick to

recognize the connection to the Andreas Serrano controversy. [I discussed my first exposure to

Serrano and his affect on me earlier in the response to Lynda Barrys question.]

While discussing the 1st Year Review MFA Show with the class, Jojin VanWinkle said

she initially interpreted my work as an attempt to capitalize on Christian imagery as an easy way

to add controversy and political charge to my work, and said something along these lines: If you

werent a Christian, I would find this work boring. Now that I know you are, Im very

interested.

When I set up the seven videos at the Art Lofts Gallery in a row, I had the Catholic

tradition of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross in mind. As those Catholic scenes are extra-

Biblical, I have thought of my works as a sort of Protestant counter-point in keeping with Sola

Scriptura. Yet, because the cartoons I drew from all added some extra-Biblical material, the final

product is self-contradictory, both a critique of the Catholic use of images to reinforce Catholic

tradition not found in the Bible, while at the same time recognizing that the Council of Trent was

essentially right in asserting that images in church are an unavoidable reality and should be used

for instruction (the childrens cartoons are proof that all but the most fundamentalist of Protestant

groups allow and rely on images of Jesus to instruct).

Furthermore, Christian soteriology is at the forefront of my mind when I think of this

work. Within Protestant denominations that teach The Five Solas, Christs salvific work is more

likely to be understood as a completed work, something where his words, It is finished, take on

Duncan 29 additional significance. In this view, salvation is a fait accompli for a specific group of elect

individuals known to God by name. In contrast, belief in free will leads many Christians to reject

this understanding of election in favor of a soteriology where Jesus offers the opportunity of

salvation to anyone who willingly accepts. While many Protestants hold to this second view, it is

the former view which characterized the Reformation controversy, and which explains why

many Protestants have been historically troubled by Catholic crucifixes (as opposed to blank

crosses meant to imply to resurrection due to the absence of Christs body).

Because Catholics tend to represent Christ on the Cross, many Protestants interpret this as

sending the message that Christs work is not finished (though some Protestants tend to only see

this as a problem with depictions of Christ in the context of a church building and the debate

over idolatry of images, as opposed to illustrative works like childrens books where a distinct

context and purpose is recognized). Again, my Jesus videos were made in an attempt to express

my own view, but seem to have contradicted those views. I was thinking about how by depicting

Christs crucifixion with videos in time, I was again trying to counter the use of painting for a

propagandistic purpose by the Catholic church, where the presence of Christs body in the art

work is meant to reinforce the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. Protestants in the

tradition of the Reformation object to paintings and statues of Christ frozen on the cross because

they understand Christs work as complete and argue that the Eucharist contradicts the

sufficiency of the atonement at the Cross.

Yet, while I was attempting to critique Catholic images which deliberately freeze Jesus

on the Cross, the result is videos which eternally loop, essentially suggesting that Christs

suffering never ends, contradicting my own view that his crucifixion took place in historical time

and that time of suffering came to an end. Of all my Christological works, the only one which

Duncan 30 focused on the Resurrection at all was Heyeayeayeayeaster, which causes the most self-doubt as

its apparently the most flippant and the most comedic of the group. I have also discussed how

this work has forced me to think of Christian childrens cartoons as a formative experience,

neither things which are ideologically neutral nor mere entertainment. This was discussed at

greater length when response to Professor Barrys question as I thought about cartoons.

The second work Id consider as directly expressing intensely personal themes is Dick!

The WWII Cat-Snake-Monster from the Great State of Massachusetts! A class assignment in the

Making Comics workshop imposed limitations on time and structure which forced me to draw on

personal experiences. Whereas in the past I have been frozen by the prospect of depicting

detailed and accurate historical information in comics, such as my sketches for a Frederick

Douglas comic, with Dick! I had to draw each panel in a few minutes, freeing me from such

concerns.

Also, after drawing the initial panels, our class was asked to cut and paste copies into

notebooks in order to write additional text. When confronted with the problem of how to

incorporate text outside of the panel, I elected to write text which revealed the inner monologue

of the protagonist, a common narrative device. The protagonist was based on a monster which

was created by classmates in a partially random process. After drawing the monsters family I

chose one of the grandfather characters, who was dressed in a military uniform. Next, when

asked to draw scenes from the characters life out of chronological order, I quickly realized that I

had no personal experience with war, and the only source I could possibly draw on was a

secondhand story of my grandfathers experience at Pearl Harbor.

Apart from the obvious emotional nature of such a subject, this project forced me to come

to terms with personal realizations about my relationship to my grandfather, who died when I

Duncan 31 was three years old. I barely knew him, yet now had to enter his personal thought life. How

could I depict his inner thoughts? Having only a barebones account of the story my mother and

father had passed down to me, I had to become the character of my grandfather, as I have done

in improvisational theater. In my mind, Dick Dunkelberger represents the old America having

built his own house and worked as an electrician all his life to support a family and encourage his

son Richard to follow the American dream, to take advantage of educational opportunities which

were unavailable to Grandpa Dick.

Anne Dunkelberger was a part of my life for a much longer time, and before she died in

2013 I had the opportunity to hear her tell stories about cutting gas masks during the Depression.

It is one of the few details I remember from her many stories, which had a tendency to jump

from one event to the other and mention many names and details without a discernable narrative.

Art Spiegelmans Maus was on my mind as I drew. While Spiegelman had the

opportunity to conduct multiple interviews with his father, I was compelled to fictionalize

events, while at the same time realizing that I was trying to depict an event my grandfather,

described as a jolly man by my father, would refuse to talk about, an event which I cannot truly

enter. In high school, I had written about Pearl Harbor as a school project, and was able to read

historical texts and verify information. Without the history texts, it became clear to me that I

could never truly become my grandfather in the way method actors desire to become their

characters.35

I could either try to pretend I was grandpa based on limited information, or use that

information to create a fictional character with similar life events I could embody. Later, it

became easier to characterize Dicks best friend Red, a man I know even less about, as a

35 Stanislavski, Constantin. An Actor Prepares. Routledge, 1989.

Duncan 32 particular person. Red became a Jewish bibliophile who was gripped with fear over the spread of

communism and fascism, and who was animated by outrage over Americas passivity.

Embodying this character made me think about the inherent ethical discussions of WWII

and war in general. It is my impression that, since the counter-culture of the 60s and 70s, WWII

has become an event which is pointed to as a necessary war in the face of an evil so monstrous, it

signifies the end of modernism as an idealistic model for utopia. At the same time, Vietnam has

become a war to make morally grey statements at best, or accuse America of an evil

interventionist policy at worst. Yet, I wrestle with how, if America is understood to have had an

ethical obligation to intervene in Germany in order to prevent the wholesale destruction of life,

could it not also have that obligation to prevent the similarly massive destruction of life in

Saigon or under the Soviet Union? If the horrors of war are a compelling argument against

Americas war in Vietnam, why wouldnt graphic photographs of dead German children be an

equally compelling argument against American intervention in Germany?

My father Richard personifies this tension in my mind, as someone who believes strongly

that the moral imperative which WWII presented America was one that should have been met

and was met at that time, that Grandpa Dicks service and pain ultimately meant something. At

the same time, my father was an anti-war hippie of the 70s, who argued that America couldnt

possibly police the world and we had little business asking young boys to die in a country they

had no connection with. In the context of my story, Dick shares my confusion. He is vaguely

aware that his friend Red and his son Richard represent opposing viewpoints, yet as a dumb

schmuck doesnt know if his own pain ultimately amounts to anything. He is a man who is

content with his family, while pained by the loss of his friend and physically pained by ringing in

his ears due to the machine gun fire. Lacking an ability to summarize something like the

Duncan 33 meaning of Pearl Harbor, I can only present Red and Dick as I imagine them to be: the first an

idealist who was willing to die if it meant he could save another life, the second a simple man

who fought, and suffered, and laughed, and loved his family.

In personal discussions, the dichotomy of poetry vs. prose has been presented to me as an

illustration of how I might distinguish fine art from didactic art. I would argue passionately that

Dick! is more the former than the later, not only due to my perceived inability to present a

didactic message, but also in how, formally, I experimented with text and space in Dick! to try

and capture the nuances of my inner voice while embodying Dick.

While the text in Dick! is non-traditional, it is less extreme than the bizarre chicken-

scratch found in my sketchbooks, notebooks, and handwriting, which together are the third

current work which most embodies personal themes. In Figure 7, I showed two finished

flashcards from my art history series. Comparing my flashcards to my initial sketches illustrates

how text and image work together within my note taking, and are arranged into shapes and

chunks of information, but are often illegible as linear notes. While preparing this essay, I

considered the advice Professor Barry gives her comic students about writing a novel with a

brush and ink in order to prevent erasing ideas. I substituted the brush with a flair pen, but kept

to the spirit of this advice, approaching each questions separately and writing everything that

came to mind, drawing diagrams and doodles connecting this information as I went. Attached to

this essay is a copy of these notes for reference [Figure 13].

These are at once comics, juxtaposing words and text and treating words as images, but

they eschew most of the conventions of graphic narrative. A doodle of a person might have a

speech bubble still, but a single line is faster and more common. A line or two might separate

chunks of text to help me read them later, but the order provided by comic panels is replaced by

Duncan 34 general chaos. Occasionally, this loose use of text makes appearances in my comics which might

otherwise be described as polished. The reason I focus on these notes is that by beginning to

think of them as comics, Ive identified a way I could use cartooning in work where any sense of

a traditional narrative melts away. Of course, since sketchbooks are part of the working process

of many artists, it is difficult to present the process of note taking as a work ready to be shown.

I have discussed how the conventions developed through the history of comics have

developed in response to practical narrative problems. Alternative comic artists have certainly

challenged those conventions, but as Brian Doherty has observed, One most enjoys seeing

conventions subverted when one understands the conventions.36 This was in reference to Alan

Moore, David Gibbons, and John Higgins Watchmen, a comic which is widely interpreted as

deconstructing the superhero genre, but which nevertheless does so through a narrative with

costumed superheroes.37 As I read comics regularly, I intend to look for more radical cartoonists

whose work might be understood as avant garde for comics and consider why.

36 Doherty, Brian. Comics Tragedy: Is the Superhero Invulnerable? The Best American Comics Criticism. Ed. Ben Schwartz. Fantagraphic Books, 2010. p. 31. 37 Gravett, Paul. Can You Hear the Trucks? The Best American Comics Criticism. Ed. Ben Schwartz. Fantagraphic Books, 2010. pp. 35-36.

Duncan 35

[Figure 12. Untitled. 2015. Larger version attached]

Since my MA show, I have drawn one comic in class where, exercising my freedom, I

decided to draw something which responded to my classmates drawings and writings collected

in my personal notebook, but abandoned any pretense of a cohesive linear narrative. By drawing

blind, I overlapped text and image, impeding the ability of the viewer to read either, violating the

rule as posited by Ivan Brunetti that comics are built upon the Five CS: calligraphy,

composition, clarity, consistency, and communication, each reinforcing the other.38 In my own

terminology, I am melting the clear line work which is foundational to clarity and consistency.

A copy of this comic is included as a supplement, as it is the single example of a

finished work which illustrates this idea in practice. In earlier questions, I articulated how 38 Brunetti, Ivan. Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice. London: Yale University Press, 2011. p. 25.

Duncan 36 thinking about videos as a type of comic and bringing my cartooning into videos might prove

fruitful. I believe the attached comic illustrates how text and image can be broken and layered in

drawing in a way which parallels the layering of footage in video art. Furthermore, it shows how,

in the short time since the oral examination and group discussion on my MA show, I have started

thinking about the broken and layered nature of my videos and incorporating that in drawing as I

also start incorporating drawing in video and on the web.

My response to Professor Rosenberg offered an opportunity for me to articulate the

synergistic nature of comics as a form and my connection to video art as a feedback loop

between two worlds. To summarize how I see these three works coming together, I cannot help

but notice that as I am starting to bring videos into my cartoons and bringing my cartooning into

videos, the authors I am reading are observing how the boundaries between traditionally distinct

medias are becoming more blurred in the online age. Gardner writes that the anguish over too

many comic book movies comes from both film and comic enthusiasts, who both worry that

comics are becoming more like film and movies more like comics.39

4. Professor Gail Geiger

I discussed my interest in narrative during the MA oral review. By looking at my

sketchbooks and videos, I have identified themes and ways of working which are not reliant

upon a narrative. Though I love narrative and see myself creating narratives, I see narratives as

something which arise out of creative thinking. In my response to Professor Hilyards question, I

argued that this creative thinking and desire for personal connection was the fundamental aspect

of the art history comics which overlapped into the three personal works. Of the three, two are

39 Gardner, Jared. Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling. Stanford University Press, 2012. p. 181.

Duncan 37 non-traditional comics, and one a video series which still speaks to the relation of panels in

traditional comics.

Professor Geigers question observes my love of narrative, as well as my desire to depict

a personal connection to the stories of historical individuals by trying to formally draw their

moods and actions. She suggests, accurately, that I am committed to the form of the cartoon, and

rely on my memory bank. She closes by asking how I would articulate my goals with such richly

diverse media, and further asks how she might explain the value of my work to a third party.

The value of some of my art might be commercial or educational (I recall that

Professor Hilyard commented that many of my comics look like they could sell outside of the

art world as a way of pushing me to think about making work specifically for the art world).

Comics enthusiasts certainly value the many formal characteristics cartoonists use: the elements

of art like line and shape, the principles of design like rhythm and pattern.

There is a very poignant conversation between Frank Miller and his mentor Will Eisner

in which they discuss their love of their materials and the challenge of immersing their readers in

their stories. However, this conversation also contains several quotes from Eisner in particular

which have helped me think of comics as an opportunity for innovation as opposed to merely an

opportunity to tell stories. Miller brings up Eisners famous splash pages for The Spirit, and

Eisner responds by discussing how the splash page arose as a solution to practical problem: how

to fit a story into a very strict page limit determined by his editor.40 Eisner innovated the splash

page to quickly immerse the reader into the world of the Spirit without wasting precious pages.

Yet, when Eisner later made what he dubbed a graphic novel, A Contract with God,

Eisner wisely did not hang on to things like the single splash page. Because it was his personal 40 Brownstein, Charles. The Walk Through the Rain. Excerpt from Eisner/Miller. Published in The Best American Comics Criticism. Ed. Ben Schwartz. Fantagraphic Books, 2010. p. 89.

Duncan 38 work, he was under no obligation to meet a publishers page limit, and was free to use multiple

pages to immerse the reader in the world of Dropsie Avenue. This decision was also a type of

innovation, but one borne of a willingness to freely put aside past solutions. While not all artists

are scientists, this process reminds me of the scientific method, and I contend there is value in

practicing and teaching this type of lateral thinking to more than just artists.

This spring, I had the opportunity to listen to philosopher Roy T. Cooks presentation

When Are Two Comics the Same Comic? for the A.W. Mellon Comic Workshop.41 Cook

argued that in comics scholarship, the academic debate on the value of comics as an art form,

starting in the late 80s, has recapitulated earlier debates about fine arts in general. Cook quoted

Scott McClouds definition of art, Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate

sequence,42 and identified McClouds position as Formalist, fixating on the objective, visual

characteristics of comics. Second, Cook summarized what David Carrier considered the essential

characteristics of comics, the speech balloon, the closely-linked narrative, and book-size scale.43

Cook identified this view as both Formalist and Narrativist. Arguing that because McCloud and

Carrier fixate on the objective qualities of most comics, they lacked sensitivity for the historical

context of comics, Cook then identified a Historical view of comics, as articulated by his

colleague Aaron Meskin: Meskin at one point suggested that anything could be defined as a

comic if it was intended to be regarded as such.44 Cook argued that the logical problem with this

view was that it couldnt identify the first comic since the first comic creator would have to

41 Cook, Roy T. When Are Two Comics the Same Comic? Oral presentation. A.W. Mellon Comics Workshop. February 7, 2015. 42 McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Harper Collins, 1994. p. 9 43 Carrier, David. The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. p. 74. 44 Meskin, Aaron. The Aesthetics of Comics. Academia.edu. p. 2. .

Duncan 39 know what a comic was in order to have the intention to make one. An Institutionalist definition

of comics was proffered by Bart Beaty: Objects recognized by the comics world as

comics.Those objects presented to a comics world as comics.45 In response to this, Cook

asked how one would define a comics world if that world was also what defined comics. Some

of Scott McClouds critics suggested avoiding the use of definitions altogether, such as Samuel

Delany. In my own readings, I have found other voices which support Cooks thesis that debates

about comics tend to be a few decades behind similar debates about art. Dan Nadels article

criticizing the major 2005 travelling exhibition, Masters of American Comics, reveals an

approach which parallels the feminist Geurilla Girls criticisms of art institutions ignoring

women artists. Nadel argues that because the curators established a canon of fifteen master

cartoonists, they had lazily ignored the chaotic diversity and basic anarchy of comics.46 For

Nadel, the value in comics lies in their sundry nature, not in whether they are recognized as

masterpieces by museums, though he does appreciate the possibility for comics to receive such

recognition. Cooks summary of these views shows how different scholars, who all value

comics, have attempted using different paradigms to define their value.

Faced with the question of how a third party might be convinced of the value of my art,

one obvious question is how appreciative this person is of comics in general. For much of my

work, I have generally assumed a viewer with an ability to read and understand the comics.

Sometimes, a very literate person might not have any experience with comic strips and comic

books, and thus, reading a comic will not come as naturally to them as it will to one more

familiar with the form. Hence, my comics will naturally have more value to those who either 45 Beaty, Bart. Comics Versus Art. University of Toronto Press, 2012. Kindle Edition. Chapter 2. 46 Dan Nadel. What went wrong with the Masters Show. The Best American Comics Criticism. Ed. Ben Schwartz. Fantagraphic Books, 2010. p. 215

Duncan 40 possess a basic familiarity with comics or are in the enthusiastic sub-culture of comic fans,

people who are already deeply appreciative of the form. Children seem to have a natural affinity

to cartoons, and while a cultural attitude that comics are only for children and childish minds

may persist, that attitude seems to be waning as comic fans have entered various fields in

academics and brought their passion into their research.

In responding to Professor Rosenberg and Professor Hilyard, I was faced with the

challenge of how my work might be understood in the context of a particular group: academic art

discourse, where there is a general emphasis upon complexity and a suspicion of black and white

statements. I effectively argue that by not relying solely on the traditions of past cartoonists just

because they are traditional, a cartoonist could indeed engage new technology in unique ways,

and thus contribute to an exploration of new technology by a broader artistic community.

By thinking about the value of my work to a third party, perhaps someone outside of

both the art world and the comics world, and the value such a person might find in my work,

one might again consider the instructional or literary potential of comics. The average person,

perhaps uninterested in scholarly philosophical discourse, would most likely appreciate a comic

if it entertained them, enlightened them, or in the case of a more surreal comic artist, provided

them with a memorable experience divorced from the mundane.

Those artists concerned with graphic narrative are particularly concerned with concealing

the building blocks of comics as much as possible, trying to capture the readers imagination

within their narrative. In my notes and experimental comics, I attempt to provide an example of

how a cartoonist can work outside of the paradigm of a story-teller and a listener. What might, in

my opinion, be more fundamental to the appeal of cartooning than things like panels and speech

balloons is the ability of a cartoon to represent the state of mind of another human being. As

Duncan 41 Professor Geigers question correctly observed, I am obsessed with the personality of the

historical individuals I draw, opting for a relatively simple drawing style where the faces have an

abstract, iconic quality rather than a strictly realistic 3D effect.

It is not that a cartoonist is inherently more interested in expression that a realistic artist.

However, I believe it is true that by simplifying expressions, cartoonists allow the viewer to

more easily identify with the depicted character. Cute is often a word used to describe

characters with simplified, appealing features. Yet scientific research on why people respond

positively to cute things seems to suggest that it stems from a biological drive to protect infants

from harm.47 Since a cartoon might be simplified without looking like an infant, I would argue

that a better description than a cute drawing style for my work might be an identifiable

drawing style. Such a style still has roots in childhood. When drawing with the young son of a

local family in Madison, I had the opportunity to watch a creative five-year-old boy create whole

fantasy tales in minutes, while instructing me on how to draw lightning-powered dragons [Figure

13]. I drew along with him based on our conversation, and quick doodles were the only way for

my hand to keep up with the speed of the conversation. These pages illustrate something

fascinating about drawings potential, something I believe is universal and visceral. It is a quality

I intend to preserve in my work no matter what type of project I undertake, whether more

experimental and concerned with philosophy or more straight-forward and concerned with

narrative.

47 Martinez-Conde, Susana. The Power of Cute. Scientific American. December 5, 2014. .

Duncan 42

[Figure 13. Collaboration with Ezra, Super Ezra, and sample of personal notes. Larger

copies of notes attached.]

Childrens drawings and narratives are not necessarily logical, nor do they have to adhere

to established ways for adults to make work. While my media and subjects of interest are

Duncan 43 diverse, I would summarize my goal as attempting to use this process of generating creative

thought through moving my hand, the doodle, as being the root of thinking through any problem

or discussion I face.

By retaining something which is so anti-digital, the motion of the hand with a pen, I hope

to bring something into my experiments with technology which is often present in my comics: an

ability to connect with another person on a personal level. As mentioned earlier, attempting to

evoke a personal response in the viewer is not something antithetical to postmodern art. Indeed

Sayre has written that demanding a personal response is part of the definition of postmodern

work.48 Ultimately, the tension between a traditional medium like comics and a digital medium is

not their fundamental goals, but in their approaches. Both desire to evoke a response in the

reader. The traditional comic artist might do so through a carefully crafted narrative with themes

of their choosing. The postmodern digital artist might do so through juxtaposing disparate

elements in such a way that he or she denies her own ability to dictate the message to the viewer.

Yet neither is bound to do only that simply because of the media they have chosen to work with.

The ultimate goal of using cartooning might be understood as establishing a personal

connection with another person through sundry elements. Since cartooning is close to the root of

how I think laterally as opposed to simply thinking linearly, it allows me to bring together many

competing elements on a page, which helps me learn something even if the final result doesnt

make sense as an organized image. If I am able to use cartooning in the way I intend, then a

person need not bring knowledge of the history of comics or the history of art to be able to find

value in the work and connect with it. As looking at speedily-drawn cartoons asks the viewer to

think laterally in order to read the cartoon, it is a medium particularly appropriate and 48 Sayre, Henry M. The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde since 1970. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. p. xii.

Duncan 44 underutilized for the type of experimental engagement with new technology which is the

emphasis of many 21st century artists. It is my contention that, simply because traditional

cartoons might be stereotypically viewed as a polar opposite to avant-garde art practices, such

a stark dichotomy should not be used to dissuade academic artists from the use and exploration

of cartooning in their own work. By not allowing a simplified view of traditional techniques as

opposed to digital techniques to dictate one or the other as the only solution, I hope to bring

disparate elements together and find ways for the kinetic movement of the hand to persevere in

the digital realm. My interest in art historical subjects poses a similar opposition between

objective and subjective presentations of information.

In closing, one might consider comics journalist Joe Sacco. He provides an enlightening

example of an artist who struggles with using comics, a media which necessitates subjective

decisions, to depict real events as an objective journalist. Wanting to be taken more seriously as a

journalist, Sacco experimented with removing himself from any of the panels, thinking of

himself as more of a fly on the wall.49 Over time, he decided that a better option was to be

honest and show himself in the scenes interacting with his interviewees. Saccos presence in the

events he reports becomes unavoidable, and the illusion of an objective, disembodied voice

reporting current events is destroyed. Saccos approach to comics journalism is evidence of why

comics are an enticing medium for exploring various subjects including art history and its

discourses: far from being a monolithic authoritative voice, the comic artist is uniquely poised to

bring together disparate elements together into one work, making their own biases and

personality apparent to the viewer. Cartooning is the bridge that will allow me to establish such a

connection. 49 Sacco, Joe. Journalism. Preface: A Manifesto, Anyone? New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012. pp. xii-xiii.

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