ENDPAPER
Comic strip revolution
BY PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
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Large and dazzling and varied in form, graphic novels are obviously here to stay.
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FROM an old habit I usually walk right past the graphic novel section in bookstores. But this time the spine of one of the books caught my eye: Buddha, read the title. It couldn't be a comic strip novel on the Buddha, could it? It was. Beautifully illustrated and written by Ozamu Tezuka, considered the god of Japanese manga. I soon discovered the book I held in my hand was only the fourth in a series of eight volumes that told the story of the Buddha in comic strip form. The bookstore carried only two of the eight volumes and I bought them at once, hoping I could somehow lay my hands on the rest. Buddha spurred me on to look at this form more closely. And the experience was overwhelming — because of how large and dazzling and varied the form is as practised today, it's like stumbling upon a new continent.
Though graphic novels have been around for a long time, I've ignored them. In part, because our bookstores never used to carry them, and in part because I assumed they were all tales about super heroes or dark fantasies or erotic, underground Japanese manga — none of which interested me terribly. Starting with Buddha, I discovered that graphic novels can be literary as well (even non-fiction!) and that our bookstores now devote at least one shelf to them. I discovered, to my astonishment, that they are harder to read than books with just text. I couldn't read them like comics (say "Phantom" or "Archie") where your eyes glaze over the pictures, you take in only the words in those suspended balloons and you quickly turn the page.
Explosion on the page
Here you slowly and intently take in everything on the page. Especially those silent panels, where you linger and just LOOK at the thick, rich graphics that singe your eye; an explosion of form and colour on page. Time stands frozen. Only when you have fully absorbed the mood of the illustration do you move to the next panel or page. Because of our easy experience of reading simple comics, we've concluded that pictures are easier earned information than words. Another reason why graphic novels are demanding in a way a novel is not is because you don't read them in a linear fashion. The graphic novel actually heightens the act of reading because it is, simultaneously, a strange (and sublime) combination of active engagement and submissive escape!
Those of you already steeped in graphic novels should excuse the annoying new found enthusiasm of a recent convert like me ... let me hasten to say that I haven't been entirely ignorant of the form — just some aspects of it. Like every comic book fan, I know that Will Eisner's A Contract with God did not invent the term "graphic novel" but popularised it, and that Manga doesn't mean mango but is Japanese for a certain kind of sexy comic book.
I discovered that some graphic novelists had revolutionised the art of drawing comics: Frank Miller with Return of the Dark Knight and Sin City, Alan Moore with League of Extraordinary Gentleman and The Watchmen, Neal Gaiman with The Sandman and Chris Ware with Acme Novelty Library and Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. For the fist time with these artists, comics become an art form. For instance, Ware uses "precise, geometerical layouts which appear computer generated but have been drawn the old fashioned way — paper and pencil, rulers and T-squares."
The revolution also involves tweaking the legends of canonical comic super heroes: in one called The Return of Superman, Clark Kent meets his rather dusky looking colleague: "Hello," she says, "I'm Lois. Lois Chaudhary." (!).
What I DID NOT know was how many original literary novels the form produces every year. Blankets by Craig Thompson is a 600-page black-and-white graphic novel about first love. A milestone for its literary qualities and the visual grace of its cartooning. Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison is about life for a group of friends in their post-college years; Joe Sacco's Palestine, a political memoir of living in war-torn Gaza Strip and the West Bank; Daniel Clowes' Ghostworld, about angst-ridden teenagers; Harvey Pekar's American Splendour, an autobiography of a self confessed failure. (Imagine a character like that for a comic book subject!) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, a moving story about a young girl growing up in Iran, is drawn in small black and white panels that evoke Persian miniatures. (No doubt the other graphic novel that must have caught your eye is Sarnath Banerjee's Corridors, the first published Indian graphic novel in English).
Meaningful heights
These novels aren't about cute cartoon characters or twisted, grotesque men and women or stylised super heroes but about sensitive, intelligent, interesting people. They fulfil the potential of the medium and raise it to more ambitious and meaningful heights. Some artists have converted entire novels into comic strips: Paul Auster's City of Glass, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time and Kafka's stories. And on the comic strip front: For those of you who miss Winnie the Pooh, Peanuts and Mutts, there is Owly by Andy Runton, about a youngish, gentle, rotund, lonely owl filled with goodness or Jeff Smith's Bone, which combines comedy and fantasy in a wholly original way.
Tezuka drew and wrote Buddha from 1974 to 1984. For nearly two decades it went untranslated and it is only in October 2003 that the first volume in hardcover was published in English by Vertical. The eight volumes look peerless — they were all designed by one of the masters of contemporary book design: Chip Kidd. The order of the multi-volumes are: Kapilavastu, The Four Encounters, Devadutta, The Forest of Uruvella, Deer Park, Ananda, Ajathasatta, Jetavanna. The first paperback editions of Kapilasvastu and The Four Encounters are just out, and a paperback edition of Devadatta will be out in September 2006. Tezuka uses original stories and characters invented by him and weaves them around the recorded story of Prince Siddhartha.
In the first volume, Kapilavastu, which is 400 pages, you come to the story of Maya and her child Siddhartha only three-quarters into the story. What takes up the rest of the 350 pages? The stories of other fascinating characters — some true, others made up: such as Asita, the old sage in search of the Bodhisattva, Asaji, a snot-nosed child who seems to intuitively know the meaning of being a Bodhisattva and Naradutta, a Brahmin monk. The exceptional artistic beauty of Tezuka's landscapes, storytelling and characterisation are informed by his erudition as he entertainingly and brilliantly illuminates Buddhism. What I'd like to see happen is for this art form to turn more mainstream and for the shelves of our bookstores to practically groan under their weight.
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