Storytelling 5: More on sound

In our exploration of sound in the comics panel, we once more look at the storytelling skills of Mort Walker. This time, it's about telling us something we didn't realize about the qualities of an everyday object.

Lt. Fuzz thinks Cookie should be wearing a helmet, and Cookie reveals that he's already wearing one – in a drastic, immediately-understandable manner that will let the reader make the connection immediately. The joke hinges on the use of Cookie hitting his chef's hat with the soupçon to make an immediately recognizable metallic sound ("BONG"); if the reader would have to read Cookie's whole line explaining that "this hat is made of metal", the joke would fall entirely flat. As so often in humor, it's mostly about timing, and the visual shortcut is what makes the timing work.

(The joke is also dependent on another quality of comics: the cartoony way the hat is depicted lets Walker get away with suddenly springing the "it's metal" joke on us. In real life, it would be obvious pretty soon that Cookie's chef's hat wasn't exactly normal, but a cartoon doesn't give enough detail and realism for us to recognize that – which is why we don't react with a feeling that we've been cheated: "Hey, no fair! We would have noticed long ago if that hat was made of steel!")

My t-shirts, part 23: Groo again!

My t-shirts, part 22: Groo!

Groo – always funny (usually hysterically so), usually intelligent (sometimes brilliant) satire from the master, Sergio Aragonés, and some Evanier guy that I don't know what he does on the book.

Back from the comics shop...

...with both some things for the archive shelves and some for pure reading enjoyment.

Mark Waid is one of the better US superhero writers, so I'll of course want his new Boom! stuff. "Ka-Zar" was one of Andy Kubert's early triumphs as an artist (I misremembered and bought the collection because I thought it was Bruce Jones' version, but that was earlier and drawn by Brent Anderson IIRC – but since this was scripted by the aforementioned Waid, no problem anyway). "Magnus, Robot Fighter" is a classic and by the elegant Russ Meyer – unfortunately, the colors in this edition are a rather flat, and murky to boot. A "Phantom" collection from the pen of Ray Moore; the exquisite art of Alex Raymond from his "Rip Kirby" years; and Jeff Jones has done some of the most beautiful paintings I've seen (though I'm not always as keen on his ink work, and the scripts for his comics were always a bit... well, shall we say, sparse?).

Well, more Segar "Popeye"; starting putting together a complete "Prince Valiant" collection; a book on John Buscema ("Mr. Marvel Comics"); and Jim Steranko's comics history (part 2).

Marvel's "Civil War", two more collections; a DC war comics collection that judging by a hasty first look is pretty uniformly crappily drawn (I hope the scripts will be better); and Mark Schultz' marvelous and beautiful "Xenozoic Tales".

Judith O'Sullivan: "The Great American Comic Strip"

Finished Judith O'Sullivan's "The Great American Comic Strip", a review of US (not entirely excusively) newspaper comics from the 1890s onwards.

Unfortunately, O'Sullivan starts off the book with a big whopper, namely that the medium of comics was invented in US newspapers, which sort of ignores not just Töpffer but a bunch of other folks, but the book gets better after that. She discusses how the early comics business evolved, delver extra deep into a few of the early strips like "Little Nemo" and "Krazy Kat", looks at how various genres developed, and also looks at how the changes that American society has gone through have impacted the comics. I appreciate that O'Sullivan makes the effort to analyse strips, as that makes the book more interesting to read, even if I don't always agree entirely with her. I won't go into big detail here, just bring up a few points she makes that I found interesting (from my notes; largely quoting O'Sullivan directly):


• Although weekly illustrated newspapers such as Gleason’s (1852), Leslie’s (1855), and Harper’s (1857) achieved immediate popularity, it was the invention of photoengraving in 1873 that made possible for the first time inexpensive newspaper reproduction. American newspapers became at once more pictorial and more plentiful.


• The young Windsor McCay had jobs like sign painter, scenic artist for a freak show in Cincinnati, poster painter, and a traveling performer on the vaudeville stage. His decade of close contact with the bizarre left an imprint on McCay, whose later work is replete with carnival motifs, including distortions based on trick mirrors, exotic animals, clowns, and dancers. Much of the imagery in “Little Nemo” is borrowed from the art nouveau vocabulary – peacocks, lilies, swans, and water flora abound. Added to this vocabulary is his own carnival experience –exotic animals etc. Presaging Surrealism, appearances are unstable, nature is hostile, objects come together in irrational conjunctions, mechanical devices are frequently threatening.
 

• Herriman’s mature style, achieved from 1913 to 1925, is characterized by vast vistas through which miniscule characters pass, and by low horizon lines, spatial plenitude, infinite regression, calligraphic pen strokes, and literary whimsicality. His later style, 1925-1944, is marked by full frames of standard size, high horizon lines, limited spatial recession, formulaic and repetitive landscapes dominated by large figures seen close up. The diminished artistic interest is compensated for by its vigorously virile poetic power, incorporating African-American folk idiom.

• In 1896, he was moved by “The Rising Generation”, a drama featuring Irish actor Bill Barry, and felt that a knockout strip could be created using the idea behind the play, the experiences of a laborer’s family suddenly becoming wealthy.  After “The Newlyweds” (1904), McManus created “Bringing Up Father” in 1913, about the Irish former hod carrier Jiggs and his wife, former washerwoman Maggie. The style would later be termed art deco. Jiggs’s ebony tuxedo symbolized the confinement of his upper-crust lifestyle, which he constantly tried to escape.

• In “Blondie”, Chic Young established a triangle similar to that of Arthur Miller’s 1949 play, “Death of a Salesman”: the capricious boss, the wage-slave husband, and the family whose financial demands forever yoke husband to boss.

• The domestic strips were originally intended to attract an audience of the increasing numbers of young women entering the work force – Cliff Sterrett’s 1912 “Polly and Her Pals”, Martin Branner’s 1920 “Winnie Winkle, the Breadwinner”, and Russ Westover’s 1921 “Tillie the Toiler”. As time passed, their fashion-plate protagonists became flappers, matured, married, and followed the same life cycle as their readers – except that in the papers’ self-censorship, the depiction of birth and death was forbidden.

• Harold Gray, Chester Gould and Al Capp, the big right-wing trio, created a dark vision of America, where the urban hells and rural retreats of their strips reflected the broken dreams of a generation. Common themes of "Little Orphan Annie" were the demise of the small businessman, the loss of the family farm, and the triumph of the international financier; and "Dick Tracy" and "Li'l Abner" depicted the breakdown of law and order and many aspects of class and gender warfare. (Still, let's not forget that for all his conservatism, Gray showed a strong young woman in his strip – something that contrasts favorably with the often misogynistic underground comics that are sometimes seen as more "progressive"...)

I won't recap the whole book, so I'll just wrap up with recommending it. This is a good book, even if 150 pages is a bit short for the subject. I still hold Brian Walker to have written the so far best book on the American newspaper comics, but this is well worth reading. Recommended.




Addendum: Many of those early comic strips are just terrible storytelling. Thank goodness for the true storytelling artists who would emerge – and I'll quote Milt Caniff on how he did it, because he was one of the greats: "Use motion picture techni(que) in the execution. First panel: Long shot with the speaking characters in the middle foreground. Second panel: Medium shot with dialogue to move the plot along. Third panel: Semi-closeup to set reader for significant last speech. Fourth panel: Full closeup of speaking character with socko line."

200 years

Courtesy of Hans Rosling and the BBC:

Anti-poverty programs

This is an excellent NYT online article on helping poor people. Go read the whole thing.

 Today, however, Brazil’s level of economic inequality is dropping at a faster rate than that of almost any other country.  Between 2003 and 2009, the income of poor Brazilians has grown seven times as much as the income of rich Brazilians.  Poverty has fallen during that time from 22 percent of the population to 7 percent. (...)

 Several factors contribute to Brazil’s astounding feat.  But a major part of Brazil’s achievement is due to a single social program that is now transforming how countries all over the world help their poor.

 The program, called Bolsa Familia (Family Grant) in Brazil, goes by different names in different places. In Mexico, where it first began on a national scale and has been equally successful at reducing poverty, it is Oportunidades. The generic term for the program is conditional cash transfers.  The idea is to give regular payments to poor families, in the form of cash or electronic transfers into their bank accounts, if they meet certain requirements.  The requirements vary, but many countries employ those used by Mexico: families must keep their children in school and go for regular medical checkups, and mom must attend workshops on subjects like nutrition or disease prevention.  The payments almost always go to women, as they are the most likely to spend the money on their families.  The elegant idea behind conditional cash transfers is to combat poverty today while breaking the cycle of poverty for tomorrow. (...)

 Bolsa Familia, which has similar requirements, is even bigger.  Brazil’s conditional cash transfer programs were begun before the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but he consolidated various programs and expanded it. It now covers about 50 million Brazilians, about a quarter of the country.   It pays a monthly stipend of about $13 to poor families for each child 15 or younger who is attending school, up to three children.  Families can get additional payments of $19 a month for each child of 16 or 17 still in school, up to two children.  Families that live in extreme poverty get a basic benefit of about $40, with no conditions.

 © 2011 The New York Times Company.

Rob Johnson, Michael Whitby & John France: How to Win On the Battlefield

Finished Rob Johnson, Michael Whitby and John France: How to Win On the Battlefield. The 25 Key Tactics of All Time. (Thames & Hudson, 2010.)

Basically, two dozen principles of warfare (not tactics, as they call it, since several of them aren't actually tactics at all), presented briefly along with more or less well-chosen examples of them being used in actual wars. 

If you're already a war history buff, there might not be all that much new info to be had from this book, but it's an easy read and a decent effort. And if you want an introduction to the subject of history of war, this is a good starting (or intermediate) point.

Likely worth your time. I'm reproducing my notes on it below, since I've already written them. Yes, the formatting is all messed up, but that is what happens when you go from Word to the Web without bothering with fixing the formatting.

1. The attack at the center of gravity

Example:      Montgomery at El Alamein.

2. Counter-attack

Example:      The German counter-attack at Cambrai, 1917.

3. Surprise attack and ambush

Examples:      Teutoburg Forest, AD 9. (Recent archaeology suggests that the Romans made a final stand at Kalkriese Hill, north of present-day Osnabrück.)

                      The Six Day War, 1967. “[Q]uality of weapons is never a guarantee of success – it is the men and women who operate them, and their level of training, experience and determination , that really count.”

4. Envelopment and double-envelopment

Examples:      Cannae, 216 BC.

                       Walaja, 633. The early Islamic Caliphate attacking the Sasanian Persians. General: Khalid ibn al-Walid. Afterwards, the Muslims – though exhausted and depleted, went on to defeat another Persian army at Hira and eventually captured Iraq (if only temporarily).

Bukhara 1220 (Genghis Khan).

Operation Uranus, 1943  (the Soviet counter-attack against the Germans at Stalingrad). The Germans lost sight of the true center of gravity, and allowed themselves to regard the city of Stalingrad, not the Soviet armies, as their focus of operations. The focus on Stalingrad played to the strengths of the less mobile Soviet forces.

Zhukov and Vasilevsky were able to build up and hold in reserve five new tank armies. To gain battle experience, these were given limited objectives on other fronts, while for five months the rest of the army endured the fierce fighting of Stalingrad. Deception and good security was important. Any information the German high command received about the build-up was discounted since they didn’t think the Soviets capable of any large-scale mobile operations on this front. Hitler and his senior officers preferred to believe that the Soviets were constructing defensive positions.

Once the Soviets had broken the Romanian and Italian forces on the flanks, they avoided attempting to reduce the German position in Stalingrad, concentrating instead on advancing further west. On 2 February 1943, Paulus surrendered his 90 000 men to the Soviets.

5. Flanking

Examples:      Bouvines, 1214. King John of England and the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto IV, plus some French noblemen, versus King Philip Augustus of France. Well-controlled French cavalry attacks on the right flank managed to break the back of the allied forces. The Duke of Brabant, who had not taken part in the fighting, fled with his forces and the French cavalry could then charge into the allied centre from its flank.

The Battle of Bouvines created a French hegemony that would last until the Hundred Years War a century later, led to Frederick of Hohenstaufen and Pope Innocentius II defeating Otto IV in the war for the German Empire, and the barons of England rebelling against the weakened King John, forcing him to sign the Magna Carta.

Chancellorsville, 1863. Stonewall Jackson led the flanking movement while Lee demonstrated against the center.

6. Dominating the terrain and using the environment

Examples:      Bannockburn, 1314. The Scots exploited woods, marshland and a ravine to deny the superior English knights room to manoeuvre and gather momentum for their attacks.

                       Horice, 1423. The Hussites faction led by Jan Zizkaformed a wagon fort on hilltop, making it hard for the Ultraquist guns to bring their fire to bear, the cavalry unable to charge, and the infantry tired and disrupted after climbing the steep slopes and subject to withering fire from the Wagenburg. Thus endeth the Hussite civil war.

                       Leuthen, 1757. During the Seven Years War (1756-63), Frederick the Great of Preussia beat Charles of Lorraine’s Austrian army by feinting towards the centre while stealing a march on its left flank behind a line of low hills.

7. Echelon attack

Example:      Leuctra, 371 BC. The Thebans sending in their best troops in an extremely deep formation against the Spartan warriors on the Spartan right flank, and defeating them.

8. Committing the reserve

Examples:      Strasbourg, 357. Caesar Julian beat the Alemanni by saving the situation after they broke through his center by committing his final reserve, augmented by the camp guards.

                       Austerlitz, 1805. Napoleon feigned a weak left flank, hiding his reserve behind the Pratzen Heights plateau, and unleashing them on the Austrians when they were passing – after the Austrians had committed their reserves.

9. Blitzkrieg

Examples:     Khalkin Gol, 1939. Zhukov vs. Japanese army.

                     Operation August Storm, Manchurian Campaign, 1945.

The essential components of Blitzkrieg:

                  - Concentration of force, achieving local superiority in numbers/combat power.

                  - Extending the enemy’s line to weaken the whole, usually involving deception or limited deployments.

                  - Breakthrough at the point of weakness (requires lots of intel and recon work).

                  - Race into depth to hit a mobile reserve, spread confusion & panic, or double-envelop enemy positions.

                  - Maintaining momentum through the breakthrough point, with rapid decision-making and efficient communcations.

10. Concentration of firepower

Examples:      Carrhae, 53 BC. The Partians surrounded Marcus Crassus’ Roman army and whittled it down with an truly extraordinary amount of arrows.

                       Omdurman, 1898. Kitchener sent two years building up the infrastructure necessary, including a railway, and then slaughtered the Mahdi’s forces (after his death led by the Khalifa) with breechloader, rifled guns, Maxims, and excellent rifles when they tried to ambush him. They never even reached the British-Egyptian line.

11. Shock action

Examples:      Arsuf, 1191. A crusaders’ charge slaughtering 7 000 of the Muslim bowmen harassing them.

Balaclava, 1854. A joint British-French-Turkish expedition besieging Russian Sevastopol, receiving their supplies from the nearby harbour Balaclava. The 2 000 strong Russian cavalry tasked with taking Balaclava halted incredulously when the outnumbered British Heavy Brigade (900 strong) closed in on it. So they charged a stationary target, and after 8 minutes, the Russians began to give way.

The Heavy Brigade pursued them to the Causeway Heights before they had to stop, with their horses blown. That’s when Lord Raglan gave the order to the Light Brigade to charge to prevent the enemy from taking away their guns, but failed to specify that he was talking about the guns on the Causeway Heights.

Knights were men of substantial rank who resented discipline, not members of standing armies. In the absence of any real structure of command, the overall military commander had to impose himself by sheer force of personality and the example of his bravery.

12. Co-ordination of fire and movement

Examples:      Cerignola, 1503. Spanish general Gonzalo de Córdoba beat more numerous French army with pikesmen warding off two French cavalry charges and cannon breaking up their formation. Pikesmen and arquebusiers pursued offering mutual support.

                       The Hindenburg Line, 1918. Hamel etc. Short, creeping artillery barrages, intensive bombardments lifted a few hundred yards before the infantry reached there, close air support from the RAF allowing adjustment of artillery fire.

13. Concentration and culmination of force

Examples:  Jagdgeschwader, the Western Front, 1916-17.

                  Midway, 1942.

14. Seizing and retaining the initiative

Examples:  Eben Emael, 1940.

                  Pegasus Bridge, 1944.

15. Off-balancing and pinning

Example:      Trafalgar, 1805.

16. Mass

Example:   The Overland Campaign of the American Civil War, 1864-65. Note: This seems more of a case of using numerical superiority than actually using mass against a point or a foe.

17. Defence in depth

Examples:  Alesia, 52 BC.

                  Kursk, 1943.

18. Strategic offence and tactical defence

Examples:  Panipat, 1526. Turkish Babur went into Panipat, threatening Delfi and forcing Sultan Ibrahim to attack to defend his capital.

                  Yom Kippur, 1973.

19. Drawing the enemy

Examples:      Hattin 1187. Saladin fooled Guy of Lusignan, who’d seized the Kingdom of Jerusalem in a coup, into going out after him with all his knights, leaving the Kingdom’s cities defenceless once his army had been annihilated.

                  Napoleon in Russia, 1812.

20. Deception and feints

Examples:  Kurikara, 1183.

                  Q-ships, 1915-17.

21. Terror and psychological warfare

Examples:  Thebes, 335 BC (Alexander).

                  Palestinian terrorism, 1050-99.

22. Attrition and annihilation

Example:      Verdun, 1916.

23. Intelligence and reconnaisance

Examples:  The Battle for the Atlantic, 1941-45.

                   Cape Matapan, 1941. British Naval Intelligence learned that a strong Italian fleet had set out to attack a British convoy in the eastern Mediterranean. The Italian navy received such a thumping that it never ventured out in force in the Mediterranean again.

                  North Cape, 1943. Led to the destruction of the Scharnhorst.

24. Insurgency and guerrilla warfare

Examples:      China 1934-49.

                  Vietnam 1956-75.

25. Counter-insurgency

Example:      Malaya 1948-60.

My t-shirts, part 21: Gray Hulk

Well, it's the Hulk. What can I say? At least Peter David did some good writing for this series.

The Daily Show shaming the news media again

Jon Stewart does good.

 Though he might prefer a description like “advocacy satire,” what Mr. Stewart engaged in that night — and on earlier occasions when he campaigned openly for passage of the [9/11 responders' health care] bill — usually goes by the name “advocacy journalism.” (...)

 The Dec. 16 show focused on two targets. One was the Republicans who were blocking the bill; Mr. Stewart, in a clear effort to shame them for hypocrisy, accused them of belonging to “the party that turned 9/11 into a catchphrase.” The other was the broadcast networks (one of them being CBS, the former home of Mr. Murrow and Mr. Cronkite), which, he charged, had not reported on the bill for more than two months.

 “Though, to be fair,” Mr. Stewart said, “it’s not every day that Beatles songs come to iTunes.” (Each of the network newscasts had covered the story of the deal between the Beatles and Apple for their music catalog.) Each network subsequently covered the progress of the bill, sometimes citing Mr. Stewart by name. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, credited Mr. Stewart with raising awareness of the )

 Eric Ortner, a former ABC News senior producer who worked as a medic at the World Trade Center site on 9/11, expressed dismay that Mr. Stewart had been virtually alone in expressing outrage early on.

 “In just nine months’ time, my skilled colleagues will be jockeying to outdo one another on 10th anniversary coverage” of the attacks, Mr. Ortner wrote in an e-mail. “It’s when the press was needed most, when sunlight truly could disinfect,” he said, that the news networks were not there.

  Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company.

Let's hope that the US news media actually learns something and comes back doing better reporting, instead of just spending fifteen minutes saluting Mr. Stewart for doing what they themselves really should have been doing in the first place.

Oh, who am I kidding – of course they won't. Still, kudos to Mr. Stewart.