C COMICS (Part 5)

Matt Madden responds with two comments to Saturday’s post, here.

Madden writes: “[Jessica Abel and I] cover McCloud's transitions in our new textbook and we propose a new one which I hope addresses this ‘vertical’ (I like Deren’s distinction) aspect of a comic: we call it a ‘symbolic’ transition (replacing our earlier choice, metaphoric) and intend it to refer to two panels that are not related literally but which do have some kind of connection. For example, you might have a guy saying something stupid in company and the next panel might show him standing with his pants around his ankles. Or like in manga where characters turn into little superdeformed versions of themselves from one panel to the next (or in the panel for that matter).”

And, in a second comment, “Jessica points out in defense of McCloud that his ‘aspect-to-aspect’ transition can also be considered a vertical, non-narrative type of transition. It’s basically what I used in my one-page comic ‘House Music’ (A Fine Mess #1), to offer one example.”

This is exactly the kind of feedback I’d hoped for here, and I’ve spent the last day and a half thinking about both the new transition Madden and Abel propose (the “symbolic” or “metaphorical”), as well as the applicability of Scott McCloud’s “aspect-to-aspect” transition to non-narrative comics as a whole.

Let’s first return to McCloud’s full definition of an aspect-to-aspect transition:

“Aspect-to-aspect bypasses time for the most part and sets a wandering eye on different aspects of a place, idea or mood.”

Given this definition, it is true that aspect-to-aspect provides a valuable way of distinguishing non-narrative-based panel progression from narrative based.

But as we look closely at more examples of non-narrative comics, aspect-to-aspect transition loses its value as descriptor and becomes more-or-less tautological, retaining its descriptive value only in relation to comics telling a story.

How, in other words, can we contrast and compare Brainard and Elmslie’s “Babs’ First Smile” with Brainard and Padgett’s “Sufferin’ Succotash”?

We must first ask the question: How are the panels in each comic related to each other, to the layout, and to the comic as a whole? Let’s take the latter as an example.

Looking back at Saturday’s analysis, it’s clear that the images in “Sufferin’ Succotash,” though unrelated to each other, are not exactly non-sequiturs, as they all refer back to the text running along in the text boxes above. Yet, although these images, some more obliquely than others, do refer to the text, the relationship is not exactly symbolic or metaphorical, both of which limit or clarify meaning. The images here do not exactly correspond to the text so much as further expand upon it, complicating, rather than clarifying, its meaning.

A symbolic or metaphorical relationship seems better suited to describe the images in “Babs’ First Smile,” which is, as our analysis on Friday suggested, a comic largely focused on symbolic language.

In “Sufferin’ Succotash,” it is as though the images are strung together and ultimately charged by their relationship with (literally their physically connection to) the text—a kind of Christmas light or charm bracelet effect.

Going out on something of a limb, I’ll provisionally suggest that this particular kind of panel-to-panel transition is one of “stringing.” It differs from aspect-to-aspect in that, in the latter, each panel supports, by example, a larger idea or mood in the storyless comic. In contrast, the panels strung together in “Sufferin’ Succotash,” do not so much support an idea or mood, clarifying one or the other, as they expand upon, even complicate, or reroute, what’s going on in the text.

Unfortunately, I woke up a bit late this morning, and have to cut this short. I’ll continue to work on this definition, and we’ll look at several more collaborative comics by Joe Brainard in the coming days. Feel free to comment below, or by sending me an e-mail at gpsullivan AT hotmail DOT com.