A History of Violence

A History of Violence represents, to me, the perfect use of a comic as adaptable source material. John Wagner and Vince Locke crafted a fantastic crime story in their original version of the story, and David Cronenberg (and his screenwriter) took a sizable seed from that story to tell their own tale for a different time and a different medium, while keeping pure the central spirit of the story.
The original comic flew under the radar for years; many, accustomed to more “mainstream” comic art, are likely turned off by Locke’s scratchy, loose pencils. I’ll admit there were a handful of pages that seemed unclear to me on first read-through, but I can accept that for the intimacy delivered in his frantic pages. It feels as if Locke crafted these pages with a Bic pen from the market down the street, and it makes the material that much closer to home.
Cronenberg’s and Wagner’s visions diverge considerably after the inciting incident, but I feel like the changes made for the film either improve wholly on the story or make elements workable in film that wouldn’t otherwise make the transition from the comic. My biggest example of the former is that Tom’s family does not take so easily to his reveal of a disturbing past life. This beat felt unnatural in the comic, a note of unrealism in an otherwise relatively realistic story.
Cronenberg and co. also dodge some severely difficult plot points to pull off in film, especially the lengthy flashback to Tom’s youth. Had that remained in the film, it would have directed attention away from the brilliant work of Viggo Mortensen, rested on the acting skills of a considerably younger actor, and pushed suspension of disbelief with the story of teens planning and executing an attack on the mob. The disturbing ending of the comic would have also served to push belief (although it remains shocking that Cronenberg, of all directors, managed to pass up a chance at such extreme body horror).

While I feel that the violence used in Wagner and Locke’s comic is effective and shocking, Cronenberg absolutely managed to top them. The film version features some of the most stunningly shocking violence I’ve ever witnessed on film. The crunch of the mobster’s nose sticks with you long after the credits have rolled. The violent sex scenes also introduce a compelling counterpoint – and parallel – to the violence on display, and is without comparison in the sexless comic.
While it’s tempting to declare Cronenberg’s film an outright improvement on the comic, I feel they serve distinct purposes and work for their respective media in ways that don’t easily translate. While tonally it’s a polar opposite, I would compare elements of this to Scott Pilgrim in its handling of the source material and its selective changes in bringing the material to film.

The Crow

It’s funny for me to discuss The Crow after all this time. I saw the film for the first time when I was five; I remember asking my mom what the f-word meant (and my father what the word “hooker” meant – he answered “a woman who crochets”). The soundtrack of the film sent me down the musical path I’ve meandered around ever since then. My e-mail, until I had to apply to college, was Thecrow12789. And… I didn’t even know it was based on a comic when I first saw it.
I’ll come right out and say, despite my feelings on almost everything else in the world, that the movie is better than the book. James O’Barr’s first comic work is really an exercise of thinly veiled catharsis. The film, directed by Alex Proyas, turns that anger and depression into a unique film experience. While inconsistency plagues the comic (it was completed over a period of time, and early in O’Barr’s career), the visual identity of the film is clear and pronounced. And, for as action-oriented as the film is, Brandon Lee instills Eric Draven with a shocking amount of depth lacking from the comic protagonist.
Not enough can be said about the soundtrack. Featuring cuts from The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, and more, the music of the film creates a mood the comic never managed to do for very long. In an era of music known for its unbridled rage, The Crow managed to gather some of the very best and use it as a perfect outlet for Draven’s passionate quest.
It’s a shame that subsequent iterations failed to capture the same zeitgeist of the first film. The Crow: City of Angels has a suitably good soundtrack, but the supernatural elements of the plot and the convoluted behind-the-scenes drama resulted in a disappointing follow-up to the original cult classic (though Iggy Pop fits the material perfectly as villain Curve). The second two films, and the television series, all misinterpret completely what made the first film so impactful, becoming rote action flicks and a bizarrely dull spiritual journey, respectively.

Much hullaballoo surrounded a potential remake of the film starring, of all people, Bradley Cooper, but it looks like progress on that has thankfully halted. I have no doubt that, like many comic plots, a new version of the story could be successful. However, no film today will unseat the original as a time-specific masterpiece. It remains to be seen if a new film can find a way to be faithful to the concept while being relevant to the twenty-teens in the same way the first film was to the early nineties.

Tekkonkinkreet

Tekkonkinkreet is absolutely beautiful, and I discovered it at the perfect time in my intersecting interests in manga and European comic influences. Created by Taiyō Matsumoto, Tekkonkinkreet is an amazing synthesis of different cultural storytelling methods. Ostensibly seinen, or manga aimed at adult males, Tekkonkinkreet’s story revolves on the predictably contrasting children Black and White as they cling to their decrepit neighborhood. From the first sequences, a sort of Of Mice and Men vibe settles in, in which you want to reach into the page and protect White before other influences can reach him. The tension felt palpable throughout the entire first portion, and I flipped the pages with mounting worry over what would become of the naïve, innocent half of the Cats.
Matsumoto-sensei’s storytelling is really the beauty of the book. Heavily influenced by European comic masters, Matsumoto-sensei populates his pages with bizarre and minute details, inviting the eye to heavily scrutinize every panel. While Americans have a limited knowledge of European comic creators, comparisons with one of the best are earned: Moebius is an admitted influence on Matsumoto-sensei’s work, and it’s evident in the pacing along with attention to detail. In some ways, Tekkonkinkreet feels oddly non-Japanese; the story revolves around two young boys fighting a large corporation, but nowhere does the storytelling devolves into splash pages of blurring limbs and loud exclamations. The action is frequently interspersed with quiet, subtle, and even confusing interactions, such as in the bathhouse sequence.
The animated adaptation seems to maintain much of this, but I still missed the shaky black-and-white of the comic, and the relative “silence” of much of the storytelling. I feel like I would have loved it if it was an original work, but as an adaptation, I can’t see how I would come to prefer it to the source material.
The same sort of cross-cultural pollination can be seen in North American works like Brandon Graham’s King City and James Stokoe’s Orc Stain, which use some very interesting manga tactics, and the work of Geof Darrow, a direct student of the Moebius school. Too often, the influence of another continent’s comic style is limited to superficial details (“big eyes!”) but none of the substance. Tekkonkinkreet (and these titles) are examples of how to do that right. Tekkonkinkreet is also an excellent reminder that Japan produces manga that appeals to more than just 13-year-olds, even if that’s the only thing proven to sell in the States. For readers looking for more in the same vein, I’d recommend AX Volume 1: A Collection of Alternative Manga, and other works from Top Shelf, who aren’t afraid to ignore the market to which Viz and other US manga publishers cater.

Haunt of Horror

Richard Corben’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s works falls in a similar vein as some of our earlier readings, notably The Wolverton Bible and R. Crumb’s Genesis, in that the artist is not at all afraid of embracing the ugly and the grotesque in ways that are effective but not necessarily “cool.” Corben’s figures, especially his facial work, is distorted, plumped, bumpy – they look like the character actors you always see, but whose names you never remember. It also bears a strong resemblance, I feel, with the work of Howard Cruse, creator of the seminal Stuck Rubber Baby. All of these creators have a way of drawing completely “unrealistic” figures that feel incredibly real and human.
Corben’s style is also a strong fit for horror, in the most seventies sense of the word. His is not the relentlessly dark, stylized work of Jae Lee or Kent Williams, but the absurdly, almost humorous impossibilities of late EC comics, where grotesqueries and absurdities merge. Most of Corben’s designs look executable with the monster make-up technology of 1975, but work because of that same sense of consistency and suspension of disbelief.
Where his Lovecraft stumbles is in the over-faithfulness of its translation. Lovecraft, for all of his cultural penetration, probably left more impact because of his content than because of his form. The overwrought, obsessive first-person style of his writing would likely turn off many of the legions of people who flock to his ideas. In choosing to stay so faithful to that style of writing, Corben discards some of the most basic benefits of comic book storytelling. There is no need to employ in a comic the large amount of “telling” that Lovecraft uses in prose; Corben carries most of this with his visual “acting.” Hesitation doesn’t need to be communicated with heavy narration when it can be read plainly on a character’s face. While it is faithful to the source material, it also hampers a smooth reading experience.
Similarly, there is an unavoidable problem in attempting to show the “unshowable.” Lovecraft’s horror often comes in the form of indescribable terrors, not fit to exist within our realm of the senses. By choosing, in most cases, to realize these horrors on the page rather than play with withholding visuals, Corben will inevitably disappoint some readers. However, like Lovecraft himself, Corben is an influential creator whose style can be felt in many places, even if his own output is hit-or-miss with many readers.

Just Divine

I absolutely adored Chwast's impeccably cool take on Dante's Divine Comedy. The original text is probably one of the most visually inspiring things ever written; from the Gustave Dore etchings to Robert Rauschenberg's bizarre and fascinating collage take, The Divine Comedy, especially The Inferno, has seen a multitude of visual representations. Many of these, like the 2010 EA video game and its comic adaptation by Christos Gage and Diego De LaTorre, have tried to top each other with more and more despairing portraits of horror and gore, often while ignoring Purgatory and Paradise completely.

It was incredibly refreshing, then, to see Chwast create a visual language that made for a consistently compelling journey through all three realms of Dante's Divine Comedy, while eschewing the downward spiral of ever-darkening portraits. Chwast's style is very much influenced by blocky printmaking and his background in font and design; his compositions pop, his figures are simplified, and his language is, for the most part, clear.

I adore adaptations of period work that update setting without needing to address it in the text. Chwast's mobsters tickled me to no end, and his design for Satan was particularly different than the portrayal we're used to from Dante's text. His style will turn off many who aren't open to simple, cartoonish work. But, as discussed by Scott McCloud, the simpler the figure, the more we can relate to him or her. It's not Jim Lee or Geof Darrow or anyone else know for there kinetic or hyper-detailed work, but I felt like it served the material to anyone with an open mind.

It was certainly more compelling than the video game...

Crumby Old Book

Looking back on our discussion about The Wolverton Bible (and particularly the enlightening video about its influence), I'm not sure there's much to say about R. Crumb's Book of Genesis besides the fact that it's a truthful, narrative take on the subject matter. As was mentioned, Crumb focuses on the personal and the intimate (in all meanings of the word), and less on the epic. In my opinion, this really speaks to his background in the underground comic scene, a movement that drew focus to the mundane, human aspect of life rarely presented in the funnybooks up until then. Wolverton, on the other hand, showed an initial focus on the grand and large-scale, which drew parallels with his illustration and editorial work, where he was tasked with conveying everything he needed to say in one image as opposed to relying on sequential art.

Of course, with Crumb's assertion that he took it on as a "straight illustration job," there's still room for interpretation. One of the tasks of a comic artist is selecting the extremely specific moment to convey (especially in the case of an artist like Crumb, whose work relies less on the illusion of movement, in my opinion, and more on the static scene). Within the selection of that moment comes the selection of the staging and framing, all of which hold countless variables for the artist. So when Crumb chooses to depict a sex scene from Genesis, his crafting of that scene is very much intentional and very much his own.


As with Wolverton, strangely enough, some of my favorite scenes come from the very beginning. This probably isn't too difficult to justify: I have little familiarity with the Bible, and it is at it's most visually stimulating when it is farthest from reality. The Garden of Eden and the great flood (along with Wolverton's Revelations) are scenes that are impossible to see in real life, and so I was always drawn to them more than the scenes of Isrealite conflict, something still to true.

The scene of Adam and Eve crouching in hiding away from God is a perfect example of Crumb's style reaching confluence with the original text. He chooses a scene laden with sexuality and shame and complex human emotion from a rather rote Biblical telling, and it feels more Crumb than King James. It's also a scene that wouldn't have appeared nearly the same under Wolverton's pen.

Similarly, the anthropomorphized serpent in the Garden feels very unique to this telling. Crumb has a rich history of bipedal, talking animals, and having the serpent appear so odd and out-of-place helps bring that history to the surface while also highlighting the other-worldliness of the tale.

It seems bizarre that Crumb has so few long-form work to point to when discussing his oeuvre. Unless I'm mistaken, this is his longest release, which feels a bit like an iconic punk band releasing countless singles and b-sides and then a full-length gospel album.

At any rate, it's not going to be less controversial any time soon. Those unawares should check out what an outspoken Australian had to say about Crumb, and the effect it had. I'd also urge anyone who's seen the film Crumb to follow up a bit on his family, particularly his brother Maxon, whose work I'd love to purchase as easily as the better known Crumb brother's.


A slightly racier look at Adam and Eve from earlier in Crumb's career.

A True Revelation

The Wolverton Bible is engaging as a book related to comics, if not consistently as a comic itself. Drawn and captioned by Basil Wolverton, an artist who rose to prominence bringing life to disgusting and outlandish concepts for Mad, among other clients, The Wolverton Bible feels like a beloved band’s b-sides or demos, a part of the catalog not as well known but containing some of the most successful pieces of art. Though not traditionally a comic – the illustrations are paired with captions but feature little in the way of sequential order – The Wolverton Bible exudes comic style.

Each illustration feels like a panel ripped from a laboriously created alternative comic. Expressions exaggerate freely, villains look poised to tie a maiden to a train track, and the women wouldn’t look incongruous in a line-up next to the Golden Age Lois Lane. The men, with the exception of Adam and David, aren’t overly pretty – crosshatching and stippling cover their forms, and their faces are often plumped and squished like fruit. As is often the case when a younger reader looks through the work of a much older creator, I couldn’t help but compare him to artists who came much later. Constantly at the forefront of my mind was Howard Cruse, the cartoonist behind the seminal gay civil-rights-era comic Stuck Rubber Baby. Cruse’s style, if not inspired by Wolverton, is an astonishing case of coincidental influence – Cruse must have, like Wolverton, used countless pools of ink stippling and cross-hatching his very un-glamorized figures. Both artists’ figures have a softness about them that is almost always absent from mainstream comics, where all figures must be toned and solid. Cruse’s figures, like Wolverton’s, possess the ability to look utterly cartooned and yet very true to life.

Not all of Wolverton’s work for the Worldwide Church of God was successful for me as a reader. When Wolverton shifted from full pages to smaller scenes, some of his techniques became very repetitive. After the third or fourth time, I became very unimpressed with the use of distant shots of crowds walking through desert landscapes, seen on pages 115, 176, 210, 252, and many more. I also picked up on, though was less disappointed with, the many times he used distant shots with animals framed in the close foreground, visible on several of the pages just mentioned. There were also several uses of very close busts of characters displaying emotions like slyness that, while I feel like they definitely captured with very subtle tones in the text, would have benefited from more context in a larger image. I did, however, love the many times Wolverton rendered odd, angular, and otherworldly pagan idols, as well as the white-hot fury of lightning and fire.

The most successful work in this volume, in my opinion, comes when Wolverton is able to play most wildly. The initial chapters of Genesis, with their otherworldly happenings, and the apocalyptic Revelations, with its modern-day horror, were my favorites in the volume. The storytelling along in many of these images, including the birth of Adam on pg. 21, the hand of God coming down to the Ark on pg. 39, and the pure pandemonium on pgs. 269 and 272, accomplish in single images what many stories fail to do with much more space. The Wolverton Bible is absolutely not a comic book, but it couldn’t exist without the medium, and it shows its influences as prominently – if not more so – as its gospel. While it is perhaps lamentable that Wolverton couldn’t craft these stories as full sequential stories, it’s easy to see why he regarded this as some of his best and most memorable work.