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Now that the elephants are out of the room, let's talk about Grant Morrison.

Morrison is responsible for a huge number of comic works both independent and of "the big two" (Marvel/DC) and I'm currently reading his book Supergods, which dissects the role superhero storytelling has played in the world.

Morrison, after the behemoth success of Allan Moore's Watchmen, arguably the best "what if superheroes were real" story ever told, tackled the comic Animal Man from the same direction, except opposite. Instead of humanizing (ie making gritty like Moore and most 80's/90's comics authors) Morrison inserted himself into the comic and made Animal Man aware of a three dimensional world he could not perceive, but that could perceive him.

In the comic, Morrison explains to Animal Man the nature of comics, how death in his world is entertainment to ours. That violence makes things "adult" and "hip." That everything Animal Man ever did was not of his own volition, but instead for the sheer enjoyment of superior beings.

I think I ride the line between Moore and Morrison with my painted strips. My characters are clearly puppets, enacting expected trope-laden sequences, but simultaneously professing what (at least in my belief) is a more direct version of the implicit narrative, with an eye on the writer more than the character.

This particular painting will have a sexism joke. Sexism isn't funny to Dawson Dawg because Dawson Dawg doesn't exist. Sexism is funny to readers. Now, if I asked Dawson his opinion in the comic, he might rally against sexism because he is inherently good and caring and I believe those traits are closer to the core than sexism, which has shifted away as time has progressed.

But I've frozen time.

I have stopped creating "new" work, like Morrison's "new" Animal Man book and gone back to the 30's, the 50's etc and examined the characters as they were at the time because a hero always wants to be good, and always faces adversity. Such is the nature of story. This is what Morrison was picking at (and Moore, only with satire).

We feed on conflict alone. But what I'm attempting to bring to the discussion is the vehicle of conflict delivery. Yes Dawson is fighting pirates, that's the yoke of my story. A physical confrontation. But what slipped under the radar of "good guy saves his girlfriend" was a cultural stigma that A) She is incapable of saving herself and B) He was saving her because she is beautiful, not because she has otherwise interesting qualities.

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So let's talk about the other elephant in the room: R. Crumb.

Let's not even get started on how I look like him when he was young.

What Crumb did with his Genesis illustrations (the only illustrative work all fine artists can name beside Lichtenstein) was capitalize on the fact that he was generally doing all of the work on his projects.

What I mean by that is, cartoons/comics are a largely collaborative field. Any given comic book has a separate writer (or two), penciler, inker, letterer, and colorist.

Would the gallery have taken the exact same work if it was only in pencil, yet to be inked by a different individual than the one listed on the wall label? Probably not. Art is a tight-knit community, but when it comes to co-authorship, the red flags go up.

The Mickey Mouse I draw reference from was written/drawn by Floyd Gottfredson, but signed Walt Disney at the bottom of every strip. Now, Disney did write and draw the first month of the comic, but lets say GOttfredson wanted to display some of his handiwork in a gallery setting. Whose name goes on the wall label? And whats worse, what if Gottfredson hadn't written the strip, merely drew it. What now? Would a gallery even WANT to tackle that issue? Probably not.

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So it's obviously time to talk about the elephant in the room: Lichtenstein.

Yes, Lichtenstein lifted ideas/images from comics of the time (Dick Tracy, Superman, "Romance Comics") and yes he made a few changes to them from the source material, but he didn't make NEW ones. This is my argument.

My work involves borrowing of styles from existing artists and situational premisis, but never tracing or copying any specific panel. And while my storylines are strongly researched, referential and (okay) maybe even derivative, they are wholly mine.

Lichtenstein brought to light the themes even the most mundane comics were discussing at the time: the glorification of war and the overly-feminization of the female character, and blew them up to a huge scale, and most importantly ISOLATED THEM. His works do not involve narrative continuity, only suggestion.

As much as anyone wanted (or wants, I suppose) to argue the legitimacy of his work as "fine art" he is solving his problems with one large picture and I am solving it with my words over a series of pictures. In that regard, he is much more of a traditional fine artist.

That being said, there are other illustrative fine artists. There are other cartoonist fine artists. There are other people who make screen prints and call it fine art. I am just somewhere in the sea of those with a mix of what I would hope is the more academic or conceptual points of Lichtenstein. Like him, I want to talk about themes in mass media as they reflect on global politics, but I also want to do it with a nod to the past that is both critical and respectful. I find his straight appropriation doesn't send a clear enough message of his position on that spectrum, where I hope mine does.

Leslie asked me if I had been "scarred by Peanuts." Maybe I have. Maybe we ALL have. But I still love it. And I think the best expression of that love is satire. The only question is: What happens when you satire a comedy about satire?

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Almost finished with the Dawson Dawg painting, just missing a bit of shading beneath the logo and some minor touch-ups.

Notice the grey on his foot in this close up. This is two layers of acrylic over a black line. It's going to take several more layers applied over several more days to correct this (as it dries, the acrylic becomes more transparent again).

This week I've also started (a bit late in the semester in my opinion) Supergods by Grant Morrison (of Watchmen fame). I'm only 30 pages in and the book has already systematically changed everything I know about every superhero. Of course the basis of mythological characters forming the most prominent super-people is common knowledge, but the specific socioeconomic situations that birthed each hero is as much a part of their origin story as how they got their powers. One of my favorite passages so far:

"Superman began as a socialist, but Batman was the ultimate capitalist hero, which may help explain his current popularity and Superman's relative loss of significance. Batman was a wish-fulfillment figure as both filthy-rich Bruce Wayne and his swashbuckling alter ego. He was a millionaire who vented his childlike fury on the criminal classes of the lowest orders. He was the defender of privilege and the hierarchy. In a world where wealth and celebrity are the measures of accomplishment, it's no surprise that the most popular superhero characters today--Batman and Iron Man--are both handsome tycoons."

If Grant Morrison wrote a book like this about Mickey Mouse, Gasoline Alley and Popeye, my entire BFA thesis would be complete.

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This week I went back and spent a good amount of time re-painting over with my Unbleached Titanium some small sections of the Cashews painting, which I am considering titling "And Yet You Still Seek Their Approval." Perhaps these very straight-forward names will be a counterbalance to the still-lighthearted nature of the "strips."

As it turns out, one can paint over india ink with acrylic. It just requires several layers, and often still ends up with a slight grey tinge akin to light pencil marks. Areas of note are the C and E of "Cashews" and Barry's left foot in panel 3, where a stray line was removed.

Then came the "Dawson Dawg" painting. Designed to be much more straightforward in its critique of American culture, this is the largest of the set at 1 x 2 feet. I was determined this time to include backgrounds (as you can see, drawn directly from the source material) and to "shade" (note the tree) which was significantly harder with a brush than nib or pen.

One of the stranger notes about Floyd Gottfredson's (1930's) Mickey Mouse was that when black shapes overlapped (Mickey's arms and body for example) there was no thin white line to delineate the forms. They simply meshed. This has been historically explained as the reason Mickey and his friends all wear white gloves.

Because the lines of my brush use their width variation to do much of the representation, filling in the shapes with black makes the negative "white" space the new "line." Thinking in these terms is slightly confusing until you get the hang of it. Consider the shape of Dawson's eyes in the first picture. Very round. Now in this one, after shading, the slightly angular shape of the negative space, originally negligible, becomes much more visible. Quite the nuisance.

And of course with the beauty of the Pentel Brush, it's easy to forget that you don't have an infinite source of line until your cartridge dies mid-stroke. This one cartridge has lasted through several pre-semester drawings and 2.5 paintings. That's pretty good value.

To explain the premise, I've pulled a quote from David Gerstein in his section titled "Katnippery" in Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse Collection.

"The greatest Disney comics have always appealed to adults as well as children. "Mickey Mouse Vs. Katt Nipp" is a simple cat and mouse game: cat holds territory; mouse uses tricks to put cat out of the way. Yet on another level, the story is slyly sophisticated. The grown-up significance of fights for "territory" could be found in any Depression-wracked big city; and let's not even start on the importance that Mickey and Nipp attach to their tails, which reflect prewar notions of masculinity via a crude kind of fashion consciousness."

This is the passage from which this painting, and indeed my entire premise for this series sprouted. Mickey, Superman, Maggie and Jiggs, and a slew of other 1930's creations not only find themselves in comic-violence situations, but PUT themselves there because of pride and lust for adventure. Yes, comics were designed to take people's minds off their Depression-era woes, but why of all things, would we go straight to that? America is a funny place.

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This endeavor was particularly interesting, because I've painted the "Cashews" before. Much of the idea for the "strip" is based on the recurring pulled-away-football gag of Peanuts fame. I wanted to exacerbate that, removing all comedic pretense that hid any of the malice, but would still elicit cruel laughter just as any Jackass or otherwise crude or violent contemporary humor might.

Schulz himself knew that Lucy was an unlikable character, but posited that she was a necessary evil to foil Charlie's unlikeable naievety. Quoted in the book Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, he writes:

"She really can't help herself. She is annoyed that it's all too easy. Charlie Brown isn't that much of a challenge. To be consistent, however, we have to let her triumpuh, for all the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away."

Schulz professed a love of spontaneity in terms of line, ever seeking the "perfect" line that ran from the character's head to foot. This painting was less planned and more spontaneous in it's linework, which to me seems a terrible mistake, but that might be the difference between a man who invented and drew the same characters for decades and a fan who has drawn them maybe two dozen times.

Half way through lettering, my brush split. Perhaps it was not meant to run across acrylic? Regardless, a lot of time was spent simply correcting the tips of letters to seem as though they were one concise brush mark. This often involved a .01 micron.

On the topic of female bullies in his comedy, Schulz said, "The supposedly weak people in the world are funny when they dominate the supposedly strong people. There is nothing funny about a little boy being mean to a little girl. That is simply not funny! But there is something funny about a little girl being mean to a little boy."

This was of course significantly more relevant to the struggle of women and other minorities in 1967, but is largely still funny today for the same reasons. Any analysis of such humor might beg the question why any sort of antagonism is appropriate, no mater from whom to whom, but of course we all know the answer. We like seeing people suffer. And there is the gem of the human condition upon which Peanuts operates. Our malice as the viewer, far more sick than Lucy or Violet or Patty, because we come back every week to see who will embarrass or harm the well-intentioned Charlie Brown next.

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With the addition of the "crazy birds" and the text (decided to leave out the bubbles) all that was left was the logo.

The circular design of the logo is meant to draw slight reference to the opening and closing Loony Tunes images, mostly by being circular in nature and having a black central circle. The font is directly drawn from Loony Tunes. Even the bird's musical notes, an idea only stumbled upon by misaligned lettering, brings a slight formal nod to the Merrie Melodies logo.

The completed piece. 12" x 4"

Next on the roster: My third jab at the "Cashews" strip. Four panels replacing the pulled away football gag with a more directly malicious baseball game involving a brick thrown at Barry Crown's (working name) head. Size 1' x 1'.