RICHARD THOMPSON (1957 - 2016)

 

The brilliant Richard Thompson, an artist of immense gifts and creator of the last great comic strip, Cul de Sac, passed away today.

I've written about Richard several times on this blog, always inadequately.  I've written about his courageous decision to end his strip in 2012 when Parkinson's cruelly stripped him of his god-given gifts, and the book about his art that was created as an homage to Richard by fellow artists such as Bill Watterson, Peter de Seve, John Kascht and Nick Galifianakis. 

As I wrote in that book:

Richard's lines wobble like an infant learning to walk, teetering to the right and to the left of what the laws of perspective and anatomy might require. His shapes are askew as if they were lured from the straight path by a more fun place to play.  Yet those same lines are applied with such exquisite precision, his drawings would be diminished by any variation.  His beautiful ungainly pictures place him among the very top artists in his field.  

You can view an excellent documentary about Richard below.  His extraordinary gifts deserve your attention.



In the final stages of Richard's illness, he sat immobilized in a wheel chair barely able to whisper a single word.  Still, some of the most talented and famous cartoonists and illustrators came from far and wide just to sit in his presence.  They were a boisterous group, sitting around Richard's messy kitchen table (littered with Richard's crappy diet of Cheetos, orange soda and corn nuts) drawing sketches, laughing and telling jokes.  But the instant that Richard attempted to say something, all noise ceased.  Everyone turned expectantly to Richard and strained to hear his few squeaked words, which were consistently the best part of the conversation.

Even ravaged by Parkinsons, he was always the funniest man in the room.

  

COMIC-CON 2016: PHIL HALE

  
One of the most exciting developments at San Diego Comic-Con was the world release of Phil Hale's new book, Let's Kill Johnny Badhair.   The book brings together Hale's brilliant series of paintings of  a solitary, half dressed figure battling a machine in front of a bright blue sky.

Hale painted the same subject nearly eighty times. Yet, there’s nothing redundant about these pictures.   Each new painting was a fresh experiment.  Each battle had an uncertain outcome.

These are what composers call “variations on a theme.”  They allow the composer to explore a concept’s full potential by using multiple, even contradictory approaches.  They gave Hale  the freedom to give his character different roles, to kill him off and bring him back again in a more profound state, one that could grow and mature along with Hale’s artistic powers.

Hale was kind enough to invite me to write an essay for this book.  Here is an excerpt:

Hale’s artistic growth through these variations is obvious for all to see.  He didn't want a formula he could repeat to make his job easier. To the contrary, he struggled with each new painting the way Jacob struggled with the angel, wrestling through the night and refusing to let go until the angel blessed him. Sometimes he won and other times he didn’t, but neither outcome was permanent.

The clash between man and machine has inspired many legends,  from John Henry’s race against the steam drill to John Connor’s struggle with Skynet.  You might say it has become a central metaphor for our time.  Like all great metaphors, the clash between man and machine offers both strength and flexibility. Its imagery is strong and clear while its message is flexible and ambiguous, permitting a wide variety of interpretations. For example, a clash between man and a machine might represent humanity’s clash with modernity, but it might also symbolize sterile efficiency against organic imagination. We might reflect on it as a statement on the endurance of the human will when flesh is pitted against metal; or the value of a soul in a conflict with the soulless; or the conflict between order and disarray.

Hale has developed his own, striking version of the metaphor: a ballet in the sky between Badhair and a sinister metallic conglomeration of sprockets, blades and cables. The two characters leap up together, they twirl mid-air, one advances while the other retreats. The paintings are powerful, even savage, and yet at the same time they are riddled with ambiguity: sometimes it seems one combatant has won, but that lasts only as long as the next painting. The stakes seem high-- perhaps the very highest-- but it’s never quite clear what they’re battling for or who the victor will be.

I love the way Hale sets his stage with a universal background: an eternal blue sky with no distractions or clutter that might limit the scene to a particular time or place. For all we know, these battles could be taking place on Mt. Olympus or in some dystopian future. They could take place over centuries or in a nanosecond. The combatants could be enormous in size or microscopic. The sky gives us no basis for measuring any of these things; it's the perfect backdrop for a clash of big ideas and ambitious icons.

Hale flew to San Diego from London for the release of his book, which was published by Ashley Wood's publishing company.  

It was a pleasure to see Phil again, to talk about our favorite illustrators, and to be reminded of his great sincerity, his intellectual curiosity and his passion for growth.  The wonderful compilation of badhair paintings in this book reminds me of his past accomplishments, but it is clear he has many themes, and many variations ahead of him. 

ONLY THE CARTOONISTS PREVAIL

Mort Drucker

On this date in 1925, the famous Scopes "monkey trial" began in Dayton, Tennessee.  High school teacher John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution in public school. 

T.S. Sullivant

The lawyer for the World Christian Federation blasted evolution for suggesting that humans were descended "not even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys."  The lawyer defending Scopes, Clarence Darrow, told the court his goal was "preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States."

Richard Thompson

Scopes lost his trial, but nobody ever seems to lose this battle permanently.  For nearly 100 years, the argument has raged in different forms.  More than a dozen other states attempted to impose similar laws against teaching evolution.  Scientists, theologians, teachers, government officials, clergy and bureaucrats all clashed bitterly over this issue. When the opponents of evolution began losing ground, they switched tactics and attacked anew in the name of "creation science."

It was the generals who proved most persuasive.  Following the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik, the US government became so alarmed by the state of science education it passed the National Defense Education Act.    The resulting textbooks included the theory of evolution, but even that didn't stop the resentment.  Texas newspaper editorials and church sermons angrily insisted on the right of Texans to disbelieve science.

The only group that seems to make out well in these kinds of protracted disputes are the cartoonists. At least they get to have fun drawing cool pictures of monkeys.  So in commemoration of the Scopes trial,  here are some of my favorite drawings of apes:

From the great Walt Kelly:

The brilliant Mort Drucker drew dozens of wonderful monkeys in his story about Mighty Joe Kong in MAD no. 94:

 

From Peter de Seve:

And for those who enjoyed last week's panels from Prince Valiant, here is another elaborate (although somewhat stiff) image from Hal Foster: 

And finally, the weirdest of them all, from Gary Larson:

 

THE ENORMOUS ADVANTAGES OF FORM

The pictures in comic strips today have become less ambitious and imaginative.

Prince Valiant, 1942

The strips which first established the greatness of the medium had a strong visual character.  Today the drawings have become simpler and more basic, even as the words have become more adult and sophisticated.

You'll find no images in comic strips today like the grand images from Hal Foster's Prince Valiant:

You'll find no powerful chiaroscuro drawings such as these from Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates:

You see no displays of visual imagination such as this from Gasoline Alley:

or this from Lyonel Feininger's Wee Willie Winkie:

Feininger imagines the black smoke from the locomotive smokestack as "giants" while the steam from the cylinders becomes white rabbits running alongside the train:

George Herriman's visual layouts were crucial to his poetic content:

 

 The words in Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon were pretty silly, but Raymond's drawings were quite eloquent.   Note his strong brush work describing Dr. Zarkov's back:

Raymond created huge fanciful worlds with his brush:  

Such worlds are gone from comic strips, having migrated to movie screens.

Why have so many strips today settled for a low grade functionality?

 

People have offered many explanations: smaller size, changed economics, different priorities.  I'd like to suggest another explanation: drawings have become dumber because comic strip audiences are less appreciative of the importance of form.  The modern appetite for comic strips has shifted from form to content; rudimentary drawings in simplistic, repetitive compositions don't slow the intake of a joke.

Whatever the reason, there's an awful lot of mediocre drawing in popular strips today. 

 

In this example, the woman's rolls of fat make no sense, and the folds on her shirt work against the humor of the drawing.  Those spasmodic motion lines surrounding both the woman and Opus suggest movement in all directions simultaneously.  Opus is running on a floor substantially higher than the one on which the woman stands.  I don't mind the ugly colors since the artist is going for a grotesque effect,  but here the light source and purple shading are as aimless as the line work.

There's no law that pictures must be internally consistent--  George Herriman made an art of inconsistency-- but the sloppiness of so much contemporary drawing wastes a lot of opportunities.  Spontaneity is a virtue only as long as artists are able to distinguish it from carelessness.

Words can be eloquent but pictures have an eloquence all their own.  If we lose sight of the enormous advantages of form -- the extraordinary range of qualities found in omission and selection, in visual design, imagination and grace-- we will never be able to recapture them with all the advantages of content.