The relationship between comics and the art world is hardly the stuff of headlines. Picasso integrated the over-the-top, cartoon style of American comic strips in his epic masterpiece, Guernica, while the Pop Art movement lifted its candy-colored look straight from sappy comic romances. But the point behind the "Comics on the Verge" exhibit, hosted at the Maryland Institute College of Art, is that comic books no longer influence contemporary art--they actually are art.
But this classification has some major exceptions--Family Circus and the spandex-clad puppets of big business need not apply. The superhero world presided over by Marvel and DC and the comic strip syndicates carried by major newspapers are too corporate and adhere too strictly to PG-ratings to classify as art. The art world hasn't battled for the privilege of smearing excrement on canvass and exhibiting it in the hallowed space of museums for nothing. Instead, the featured stars are the edgier, darker voices of independent social commentators, like Kaz, Richard Sala and Debbie Dreschler.
"Comics on the Verge" is really "Comics Uncensored," excavating the underground revolution of cartoonists, animators, graphic novelists and four panel comic illustrators, that have begun to seize public forums in a major way. But a placard near the exhibit's entrance clues us as to why this stuff isn't mainstream just yet: "Warning, Adult Material Featured." Even cartoonists who prefer a wacky, kitschy style and cute animal characters will center their work on adult themes. The menu is certainly daunting--the viewer runs the gamut from ethnic eccentricities, the follies of TV culture and runaway advertising, to the uncut bleakness of rape and religious extremism.
"Daily [newspaper] strips are washed out," says exhibit curator Paul Candler. "People feel uncomfortable with strips that make them think."
Thinking-fodder is certainly in ample supply at "Comics on the Verge." One of the most powerful strips featured in the show is Debbie Dreschler's Sixteen. Here the cartoonist uses easy fluid lines to bring us back to the self-image and social adjustment crises of high school. The main character is a morose, pudgy girl, whose mother constantly nags her about being a social reject. But just as the girl finds an outlet in writing poetry and begins to gain self-confidence with the recognition she receives, she's raped. What makes this a gem is the way Dreshler deftly combines visual and text to show how the rape victim internalizes the trauma in feelings of guilt and shame.
We can actually hear the inner dialogue, drifting in bubbles over panels that show her weeping on the toilet. The withdrawal is rendered so compellingly through her body language, that's it's almost a physical pain to watch her retreat into her shell. But the crowning tragedy is her creative paralysis; "Maybe the guy gave me brain damage when he did it to me, I don't know," she wonders, hunched over her desk. "I had to give up, the poems were all gone."
Comics are incredibly versatile, which is illustrated by the way other cartoonists change gears in the medium to arrive at something more historic and panoramic in scale. The exhibit features some panels from King vol. 2, Ho Che Anderson's massive comic biography on MLK in the setting of the black civil rights movement. Anderson uses pen and ink to produce a sparse realism, revitalizing a musty history lesson into a powerful story unfolding with the taut intensity of film noir and the grandiosity of an old-time epic. Panels slice open the tension of leaders trying to make decisions they can't predict outcomes for and illustrate the violence of the time in terrifying streetscapes of police clubbing civil rights demonstrators.
The subject matter is realistic across the board, but the exhibit also shows why most cartoonists value humor as the spice that gives the dish its sharpness. A brilliant one-panel cartoon by Mark Newgarden, depicting an interviewee describing the kind of fulfillment he expects from his new job, presents a savage caricature of the modern job market. "I want to be paid as close to the minimum wage as possible," says the cartoon Everyman to the corporate interviewer, "and I'd like something of the verge of obsolescence, where I'd stand a good chance of being replaced by computer circuit, or a third world child, or a genetically mutated member of the mandrill family in 6 years."
Other humorists featured are Ivan Brunetti, Art Spiegelman and the wonderfully satiric Kaz. Pulling umph from a palette ranging from sophisticated irony to dumb physical comedy, kitschy parody to heavy metal dark humor, these guys explode open the weirdness of our world and teach us to laugh at the unlaughable. Also important is the variety of mediums showcased by the exhibit, which supports the main point behind the Comics on the Verge theme--gritty independents are no longer restricted to the subculture basements but are coming out in a major way. They're branching out, moving from independent magazines like Raw and PULSE!, to animation contracts for popular MTV and Nickelodeon cartoons.
All in all, "Comics on the Verge" presents an entertaining, graphic view at a counter-culture comics revolution that is poised to shock, titillate and challenge mainstream like never before.
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