Why Comics Part II

September 05

On my desk I have a framed picture by Henri Cartier-Bresson, taken in 1948. In it are Lord Mountbatten, the last British ruler of colonial India; along with Jawaharlal Nehru and Mountbatten’s wife, with whom Nehru was reportedly sleeping. It’s the sort of image you couldn’t make up: Mountbatten gazes out into the distance like Nero looking over a burning Rome; behind him, Nehru and his wife are doubled over in hysterical laughter. Beyond the image, we can imagine the greater picture: the bloodletting and exile that Ghandi predicted would occur with the dissolution of colonial rule, the ugly birth pangs that gave rise to modern India and Pakistan. It is context that makes this photograph a work of sheer genius--in one image, Bresson captures absurdity and tragedy together. It’s easy to make depressing art, passionate art, arty art. The hardest mood to capture for any artist is the tragicomic. To be funny and sad at the same time is almost impossible, but when achieved, it frames some of the most raw, real, divine human truths that are possible to depict. Bresson did it with a single click. One image. A thousand stories.

That’s what comics do.

Comics are the ideal medium for the rare writer who thinks words sometimes intrude on a story. There comes a point when prose doesn’t do the job--if you want to tell a story that is particularly unbelievable or surreal, but you want a reader to be able to enter into it as if it was, you need a picture. Imagine Superman as a novel. Now imagine a world without Superman. Clearly it was a story that had to be told, and could only be told a certain way: words and pictures. A lot of people argue that comics are inherently silly; the vast majority of them deal with people who wear multicolored tights, fly, and have perfect hair. They may be right. Then again, that description could also be applied to certain members of Congress. But comics seem to fill a cultural need to personify abstract hopes and fears--seen in this light, characters like R’as al Ghul (vaguely Arab man who believes he will live forever and fights against a West he views as inherently corrupt), who was written decades before 9/11, seem oddly prophetic. This is an idea explored in Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel WATCHMEN. (Go read it.) Above all, comics ask a question--over and over again--that human beings have never quite been able to answer: What is justice?

Well?

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