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.