n i j o m u

I love stories like this. Naomi Shelton began singing in church when she was 6 years-old. From that time on, her goal in life was to be a singer. So she eventually moved to New York and sang in the club circuit. Just this year she released her first album to huge critical acclaim. She’s sixty-six years old.

So just keep doing what you love. You never know when the rest of the world will sit up and take notice.

Story here.

Martin Vaughn-James, The Cage; 1975.

Like Miné Okubo, Martin Vaughn-James has created a work that is more akin to a picture book than a comic book. By this I mean that neither artist uses multiple panels on a page and both set the text separately from the image. And neither uses the tropes associated with comics: word balloons, motion lines, onomatpoeias, etc. Vaughn-James goes even further and also gets rid of human characters. The Cage is a visual novel (his term) focused completely on objects and architecture. While Okubo uses art to reclaim the human reality of an inhumane situation, Vaughn-James uses art to show the inhuman reality in the structures around us. The objects we have created to surround us and with which we fill our lives cannot give us meaning. The fact that no people appear in this book underscores that idea.

The introduction that Vaughn-James provides helps us to understand his intent: “my purpose is not so much to illuminate reality (as if reality was an object and art merely an aesthetic flashlight) but to reinvent the narrative form.” Like the deconstructionalists, Vaughn-James is denying the mimetic possibility of art. For him, art does not reveal external truths–it does not “have something to say about a certain issue”–it is its own system, the signs of which relate to other signs within that system.  The signs do not relate to signifieds that are outside of the narrative. For Vaughn-James, the classical considerations of narrative are “anachronistic” and “irrelevant.” And he believes that this worn-out system of language correlates directly to a worn-out society, “a stagnating culture.” 

And so this book is full of “worn-out” objects and decaying symbols. We see spotted road signs, crumbling pyramids, sand-filled rooms, and cracked buildings. And the objects that do appear don’t always conform to our expectations. Doorframes and doors swirl together in a passageway. Sheets twist and snake their way through rooms and halls. Plants spring up from floors. Vaughn-James plays with our expectations about representation as well. For instance, we see a painting of a camera, a typewriter, and other objects on page 107. Then on page 108, the same objects are no longer within the frame of the painting and are instead littered upon a bed. This jumping back and forth of an object being an image or being part of the diegesis happens several times. Of course, in all circumstances, nothing actually changes about the object being depicted. The object looks the same in either circumstance and is still a drawn image in the book. It is just the presence of a frame that changes our understanding of that object. Vaughn-James takes this play even further by “tearing” the image plane. The panels on pages 114 and 115 look as if they were ripped and placed back together. The panels are not windows to “reality.” Vaughn-James constantly reminds us of the artifice of everything depicted. And of course, the idea that the panels are torn is itself an artifice.

The images defy mimetic expectation, and the text is similarly disconnected. At times, the text seems to correspond to what is being depicted, yet at other times it is oddly dischordant. On page 36, the text begins describing a noise. This noise builds throughout the following pages. Yet even though the noise is described as a “barrage” and a “cacaphony,” the accompanying images are serene (37, 36). Later the sound comes in “epilectic waves,” but again the image does not depict this. All we see are two dilapidated doors, split to reveal plants growing behind them (48). In other words, the noise is never depicted visually and this creates an odd disconnect between the image and the text. It is hard to mentally place the sound into the images depicted. This disconnect grows when the narrative in the text contradicts what is being shown in the corresponding image. On pages 68 and 69 we are shown the cage. The bars of it are bent and the barbed wire is twisted. It seems broken. Yet the text says “the cage stood as before… immune to chaos and decay.” But obviously it isn’t immune (this of course assumes that what is depicted is “the cage”; it may in fact be something else). And later, the text describes that everything is set within a cylinder and that the cylinder is rotating. While the images show a jumble of unconnected objects, they are often simply strewn on the floor or on the bed. Things do no appear to be tumbling as the text implies. To what is the text referring? Is it nonsense or is there meaning? This is the question the reader must answer.

Visually, the entire book occilates between violence and sedate decay. At times, there is the impression that we are viewing the same scene at different moments in time. Buildings and structures seem more broken as the book progresses. But again, this implies a narrative progression of time than Vaughn-James denies. For instance, we are shown a Mayan pyramid in decay on page 15. All of a sudden on page 16 it appears clean and new. Have we gone back in time? No, because on pillars leading up to the pyramid are modern objects looking as though made of melted black plastic: a typewriter, a phone, a camera, etc. Such objects did not exist when the pyramid was new. The image is intentionally anachronistic. Later in the book, the room depicted on pages 98 and 99 is the same room as on pages 100 and 101. The layout is the same, as is the perspective. Yet on pages 98 and 99, the door is bricked closed and cracks stretch across the pillars. On pages 100 and 101, the door is unblocked and the pillars are clean. Also, the pile of clothes on page 99 has been replaced by a pile of books on page 101. These changes do not seem to be simply the effects of time, but instead seem to be variations on a visual theme. The compositional elements are the same, but the actual details have changed. In other words, the pattern is not temporal, but graphic. Still, while there is no clear narrative, the violence and destruction seem to increase as the book progresses. Objects shatter into more pieces, buildings are more dilapidated, and an inky black mass appears more and more in the scenes. This symphony of destruction culminates in the last view of the cage, which is now, ironically, perfectly formed. All the posts are straight, and all the barbed wire is attached. Yet the last image is not of the cage. We seem to enter it on pages 178 and 179, but then we seem to go through it and are left only with an image of the empty plain on pages 180 and 181.

And so what we are left with is the inability of symbols to signify anything. The objects in this book do not conform to expectation, nor does the narrative. There is no plot, no real characters. Is the cage our system of symbols? Are we trapped within a structure that cannot give us meaning?

I think that looking for a theme like this is perhaps the wrong thing to do with The Cage. It doesn’t seem to be what Vaughn-James wants us to do. As he says, it is “not so much the aim of the narrative which interests [him] but the process of its evolution.” So it’s more important that he defies any narrative expectations, since all such expectations rely on a system that he feels is out of date. He desires to evolve “a new language of signs.”

In the end, I don’t really know what that means and so I don’t know how successful Vaughn-James is. The Cage is fascinating intellectually and visually, but in the end it’s a tiring book. The text is uncomfortable to get through. The fact that it often doesn’t relate to the images increases the pointlessness of it. I think if the text were intriguingly written or captivating in some way, then the book would be more interesting. Actually, I’d prefer this as a wordless novel. The images are definitely intriguing. Still, they are often repetitive. We often see the same images and places, just in different combinations. Like language perhaps, the same symbols get assembled in different ways. And while the observant reader can find these repetitions and see the patterns, the act of doing so seems to be the only reward. Since Vaughn-James doesn’t believe in external referents, the connections are all internal and don’t lead to anything outside the book. It is a puzzle set within a moebius strip. So while The Cage is fascinating and I’m sure I’ll open it many times in the future to look at the drawings, it is a strangely sterile and inhuman book.

Other writings about The Cage:
Kristien Jacobs
Domingos Isabelinho 

I just received the new edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The Modern Language Association just updated its rules and since I teach MLA style in my classes, I needed to get up to date. As I was flipping through the book, I noticed that it provided guidelines for how to cite comics, or as the book puts it “an illustrated book or graphic narrative.” Now, I can understand not wanting to say comics, but it’s funny the book uses the term “graphic narrative” instead of “graphic novel.” Maybe the MLA is trying to be more inclusive. But I also think it points out that “graphic novel” may not as ubiquitous as those of us involved in comics assume it to be. The MLA does say that “in a graphic narrative, text and illustrations are intermingled” (166). The use of “illustrations” may raise some people’s hackles, but at least the MLA understands that word and image work together. If a graphic novel is by  a single artist, then the works cited entry is like that for any other book. Yet when the book includes different creators, such as a different writer and artist, the rules change slightly:

Many graphic narratives are created through collaboration. Begin the entry for such a work with the name of the person whose contribution is most relevant to your research, following it with a label identifying the person’s role. List other collaborators after the title in the order in which they appear on the title page… (166) 

On the surface, this seems reasonable. If you are quoting dialogue, then it makes sense that you’d cite the author of the words. If you’re analyzing the page layout, then you’d cite the artist. Yet this implies that comics are just a combination of words and pictures. It overlooks the fact that the effect is cumulative. What makes the narrative (if there is one) is the interplay of all the elements. It also doesn’t take into account the full collaborative nature in some collaborations. For instance, looking at samples of Alan Moore’s scripts it’s obvious that he controls much of the page layout. From reading things by Frank Miller, it’s apparent that he gives his artists more free reign. The story changes due to the strengths of the person he’s working with. So Elektra: Assassin with Bill Sienkiewicz is a crazy ride, while Daredevil: Born Again and Batman: Year One with David Mazzucchelli are more tightly paced works. The divisions are not clear. Also, if what you are looking at is the pacing of a work, who do you cite? The MLA does say that “sometimes you must improvise to record features not anticipated by this handbook,” so I suppose you could cite both collaborators if you feel it necessary (183). And despite my nitpicking, I was happy to see that comics were included in the MLA Handbook at all.

On a completely different note, I gave the collector’s edition DVD of A Bug’s Life to my daughter for her fifth birthday (we must have rented it at least ten times in the past two months). We watched some of the production footage and I was interested in the discussion of the story reel. Basically, a story reel is a mock-up of the film using only the storyboards. The sound effects and music are in place, but no actual animation has been done. Animation directors do this to get the pacing and sequence down before they begin to animate. It’s a time saver. It makes no sense to spend all the time animating a scene that might end up being shortened or gotten rid of altogether. So what this means is that the bulk of the editing is done before the actual production of the movie. As the directors of A Bug’s Life point out, this is the opposite of how most movies are made. A film director shoots the scenes often using lots of coverage. After the shooting, the director then edits the film, choosing which shots to use, what sequence to put them in, and how long to run them. So films involve post-production editing.

This lead me to think about splitting up the narrative arts into two process categories: pre-production editing and post-production editing. Now, I realize that many artists don’t edit and just go with the first thought, so these categories leave them out. Yet in general, it seems to me that film and literature involve post-production editing: the bulk of the editing happens after the main production process, after the shooting in film, after the first draft in literature. In both mediums, the artist creates a bulk of work and then goes back over it to sculpt it into shape. Conversely, traditional animation involves pre-production editing, the explanation of which is above. It strikes me that this should also be true for comics. Not that everyone creates comics this way, but it saves a lot of time to edit the narrative before the main bulk of the production–drawing the thing–begins. This is why many artists use scripts and thumbnail breakdowns. They want to know what the scenes will look like basically before they begin the long process of drawing.

I’ve been trying to move this direction. I’ve got three or four stories in thumbnail process now. I tried to do this with Carnivale, but I started the production part before the thumbnails were completed. And so I have since thrown out about 30 pages of drawn story and inserted easily that much. I’m assuming this is a direct cause and effect relationship. I might have saved myself a lot of time if I had been patient and finished the thumbnails. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. I definitely realized that I discover a story as I’m working on it. I’m hoping that this can be done mostly in the thumbnail stage. It would save a lot of time. I’m just looking for the process that will allow me to be the most productive.