Monthly Archives: August 2010

What Do I Do With Those Damn Anime Kids?

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ink drawing- pile of stylized bodies

Keira Lozeau- age 17

 

My first meeting as a high school teacher was almost five years ago to this date, mid-August, on a hot Washington afternoon.  I was a new hire at a school district to the north of Seattle, and I was young at twenty five, still idealistic despite a rough student teacher period.

The room was spacious and beautiful, with large open windows and large group seating.  The entire district’s staff of visual art teachers was present, and they were in the midst of a casual discussion as I entered, five minutes late.

“I mean, what do I do with those damn anime kids anyway?” the silver-haired teacher said slowly, shaking her head.    The others laughed and sighed in sympathy.

“What do you mean?” I asked, before I realized I was drawing attention to myself, something I had vowed not to do anymore after my last educational employment experience.

 

Nicole Ham, age 17

Introductions were made, and more chitchat was had about the problem at hand, namely, the Damn Anime Kid.  “They just wanna draw the same stuff over and over again.  The big eyes, the tiny chins, pointy hair.  Whatever.”  Others commiserated.  “I can’t tell when they’re copying other stuff or when it’s their own characters or what.  And even if they say it’s their own characters, all of it looks the same anyway.  It’s all virtually identical.  So even if it’s technically original, they’re not learning anything anyway.”

At the time I just sat back and took it in, unbelieving.  What do you do with those damn anime kids, huh?  You mean, the kids that are interested in drawing?  The ones that are interested in learning concrete skills that will help them tell stories, with an interest in the human body, in posture and proportion?  Gosh, what is an art teacher to do with such challenging students?

As a half-baked cartoonist I had an advantage over my colleagues, and fortunately for me I was not above using this with my students.  It was easy to see after even a few weeks of classes that many of the students that were dedicated to various manga, or just drew Yugioh over and over again, were also students that many times had difficult home lives.  It isn’t difficult to imagine that a teenager with real problems at home would find refuge in fiction, and fiction inaccessible to their parents or less-dedicated peers would naturally have an even greater cachet.

girls on the playground. "Eww, is that a Get Smart lunch box?"

M.A., age 18

 

Nikyla McLain- age 16

I found this perception of the of the manga or anime enthusiast as social leper simultaneously the closest to the truth and the least useful of the clichés surrounding these students.  This was also the cliché most likely to be common knowledge, as evidenced by one teacher I knew who once explained to me the lineage of the otaku.  “No, these kids have been around for a while.  They just used to draw super heroes or whatever.  Or sports cars.  We still have some of those–the kid that just wants to draw the one view of the same race car over and over again.  Then there were the dragon kids before that.  Of course, we still have some of them too.”

After a few years of working with these students, both as a teacher and as adviser to the school’s Anime and Manga Club, I had the opportunity to give some presentations at state and other regional conferences, and I used it to talk about these students, whom I identified with and had a genuine desire to advocate for.  I titled my presentation after that first teacher’s comment regarding these students–What Do I Do With Those Darn Anime Kids? The title was, in addition to being catchy, also ambiguous enough that I had a wide range of teachers attend, ranging from other club advisers that were looking for suggestions on what to do with their programs, to teachers that had a genuine hostility towards these students and their interests.  And the ensuing discussions provided me with a broader perspective on secondary art school opinions regarding anime and manga, and more broadly, on sequential art in general.

J.J.- age 17

These opinions seemed to have less to do with the students and their interests than the teacher’s own art backgrounds.    For teachers who had their formative art experiences in the art education system, representational art in general and any type of cartooning specifically didn’t address enough what they might consider to be “personal expression,” i.e. the idea of art as therapy or release.  For these teachers, of which there are still a great deal, art is what happens without instruction, without stricture, and concerns with form, style or narrative are distractions from the true art experience.

There seemed to be just as many teachers whose formative art experiences took place in a more formal academic art background, and whether that background was based out of the studio or out of the art history classroom, it was very easy for them to dismiss budding cartoonists in their classrooms.  After all, any comic is by nature illustration, and therefore not art.  (I once walked into an upper-level high school art classroom where a well-meaning and very knowledgeable teacher was leading an oral dissection of the Andrew Wyeth painting “Christina’s World.”  “So,” she said to them as I walked into the room, “Is Wyeth an illustrator?  Or is he an artist?”)  Having survived several years of fine arts training myself, this was not an unfamiliar attitude to me, but I was continually surprised to find it in the secondary school environment, especially considering the broad nature of the students we teachers were supposed to be serving.

 

Katelynn Orellana- age 17

Of course, there was a lot for me to be frustrated with too.  Much of this was part of learning to readjust my expectations, realizing, for instance, that just because students are interested in reading comics, and say that they’re interested in making comics of their own, doesn’t necessarily mean that they will go through all of the necessary skill building and labor necessary to do so.  The first year I was adviser to the club we barely managed to scrape together a publication, and it was a compromise in every way–padded with pin-ups and work with which the artists themselves were not satisfied.  From the second year on I concentrated more on skills building and low-risk activities that had a high likelihood of success–the Scott McCloud-adapted “four hour comic” was among the most popular.  (Four pages in four hours, with music and pizza and soda, and many kudos for those who crossed the finish line.  Sometimes we tried a variation on this, dividing up into teams for the duration, with each team member having a clearly-defined role in the production.  These usually turned out a little less crazed, but a little more visually punchy and thus more likely to be included in future publications.)

 

Five years and several hundred pages of student comics

But it’s not frustration that I remember now, looking back on my five years of working with art students, the club members, or members of the cartooning class I taught my last two years.  It’s a feeling of real accomplishment–of having met students at their own level, at their own interests, and helping turn those interests inwards,  helping identify and eventually obtain the skills that will bring them an outlet for their own stories, for their own burgeoning creativity.  I remember lunches in my classroom, inking tutorials and jam comics.  I remember watching four of the club members whipping out a twenty page comic in four days, each one of them taking on a different task.  I remember how proud they were giving out copies of their comic anthology at an event at the Seattle Public Library, and the genuine enthusiasm the other cartoonists and comic fans had for their book.  I remember when I finally realized how much I had learned from them, from their love and their interest, their tenacity and their promise. I remember when I realized that all the practice helping other people with their drawing had finally affected me as well.  When I realized I was no longer an interested amateur, but a cartoonist capable of producing work I could be proud of.

So, what does one do with those damn anime kids?  How about recognize that, as students that already have an interest and a passion, they’re several steps ahead of many of their peers.  How about meeting them at their level.  How about showing them how the skills you can teach them connect to their interests.  How about remembering that the impulse to make art is always with us, and that things grow in the places that we cultivate.

 

Andie Sellers + Xochitl Briones – age 15 and 16

Comics Criticism Roundtable on TCJ.com

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I just wanted to let readers know that Suat, Caro and I are all contributing to a roundtable over at TCJ.com on the book Best American Comics Criticism edited by Ben Schwartz. Ben himself is also participating, as are Jeet Heer and Brian Doherty. I think the roundtable will be running for several days, so check back throughout the week.

Gluey Tart: Yokan Premonition

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Makoto Tateno, Oakla Publishing and Digital Manga Publishing, 2010

I was having a bad day Friday, so I went to Borders, hoping to be soothed by the gentle and expensive caress of European fashion magazines. Which worked out, by the way – German Vogue has a rock theme! I skipped Italian Vogue’s questionable tribute to the Gulf oil spill, but I said yes to Australian Vogue and British Elle. No Dansk, alas, but I got the September issue of Details, which has a lovely spread featuring Gabriel Aubry. Everybody loves Gabriel Aubry, of course, but I love him specifically because he is the earthly embodiment of Yohji.

Perhaps you remember my Weiss Kreuz obsession/personality disorder – Yoji is the tall, blond ladies’ man florist/assassin. (He isn’t blond in the image above, which is from Ja Weiss, a doujinshi; he is blond in the anime, though.) (I share because I care.) I find Details sort of uniquely annoying, by the way, but this is a very fine photo session.

Why the hell would you want to know any of this? Because we have no secrets! That is the nature of our relationship. And you now understand why I was suddenly in a mood so buoyant that I decided to take a chance on the manga section. Because the Borders manga section, once a joy and a constant drain on my fiscal resources, has become a source of sadness, woe, and lamentation. Much like the rest of Borders. (I would say that is a discussion for another time, but who would I be kidding? Besides, we may never pass this way again. And, does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care about time?) The manga section is a pathetic shadow of what it was two years ago, and yaoi is now a wee, tiny proportion of the pittance that is stocked. It makes me frown. It make me cross. But I was in such a good mood (a contact high from the magazines), I decided that haunting the sorely diminished Borders manga section like a hungry ghost wouldn’t make me cranky and weepy. Up the escalator I went, approximately thirty pounds of magazines (that is to say, four) tucked under my arm.

It was fascinating up there because Dave Mustaine was in the house, autographing his new book, I Was Once in a Couple of Bands that At One Point Didn’t Suck, But I Was Always an Arrogant Asshole. Hundreds and hundreds of people had purchased his book (which has a hard cover and 368 pages and costs $25.99). Frankly, I was shocked. I mean, why? Of course, I bought Walk the Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith. Twice. So.

Let us change the subject.

(Except, did you see the video of Joe Perry knocking Steven Tyler off the stage? Joe said he didn’t do it on purpose. I’m sure the look of death was just a coincidence.) (Forty years is a long time, y’all.)

Gingerly stepping around Dave Mustaine fans, I found about five yaoi titles, all of which sucked. Except Yokan Premonition, by Makoto Tateno. I scooped this up without bothering to see what it was about or even look carefully at the cover. There’s no need – I loved Hero-Heel, Yellow, etc., and I already know what to expect from Makoto Tateno. There will be hostility and holding out and poorly drawn looks of shock and dismay. There will be garish lace pattern fills and snakeskin jackets. (And, in this one, there’s the S&M turtleneck with the buckle on it, a la Aya Fujimiya, the slightly less tall, red-headed brooding head case florist/assassin from Weiss Kreuz!) (The human brain fills in patterns, you know?)

______

Tateno’s characters look pretty much alike, and there is a certain mood. The particulars of the stories differ, though. Yokan Premonition turns out to be about a rock band (and lordy, I do love me some rock porn). Well, a visual kei band. Which is obviously not the same thing, but close enough, if you know what I mean.

I am wondering about the manga’s title, by the way. Yokan is a jelly made from bean paste, which doesn’t seem right on target, but there is an old-ish Dir En Grey song titled Yokan. (Dir En Grey is a visual kei band.) (A J-pop band called Heidi recently released a song with the same title; the main thing I remember from seeing the video is that the guitar player wore dropped-crotch harem/Hammer/sweat pants, and this is not a good look. Seriously.)

All right. Onward. One doesn’t like to shoot one’s wad too soon, but my favorite line in this manga is on page five: “Singing is just like masturbation.” Really? Because I had not noticed that. The deal is that Akira, the singer of the band the book is about, won’t sing a song written by anybody else, and he thinks of his music as a solitary pleasure. (I still think the metaphor went awry, but it made me laugh, so good enough.) And the setup is ridiculous, as always. (And as it should be. If I want realistic cause and effect sequences, I’ll knock over some dominoes.) Pretty little Akira, who complains that people always think he’s gay (hard to imagine why), happens to overhear a famous actor singing a fabulous self-written song to himself on a roof. I mean, that obviously happens all the time. Akira can’t get the song out of his head, and later, the famous actor, Sunaga, happens to run into Akira singing the song to himself in a hallway. He tells Akira he can have the song if he’s willing to pay the price, wink wink nudge nudge. Later still, when Akira is presenting songs to the rest of the band, they find Sunaga’s song (which Akira has scored, as one does), love it, and want to record it. For reasons that are so unclear it’s really a thing of beauty, Akira feels he must therefore record the song, and he calls Sunaga to find out exactly how much he wants.

This whole scene is delightful. Akira goes to Sunaga’s place and seems skittish. I love the dialogue. Sunaga asks, “What’s with that troubled look? What are you, too chaste or something?” “No, not chaste,” Akira says, looking miserable. “But I am a virgin.” (Insert afore-mentioned look of shock here.)

This spread perfectly demonstrates the good, the bad, and the ugly of this and most other Makoto Tateno manga. She strives for a hip, sort of edgy atmosphere, and her success is hit and miss. It hits enough to work for me, and when it misses, I find it kind of amusing and endearing. There’s also the element of one partner being aggressive, and the other partner wanting to get away – but being strangely drawn in. Tateno is a master at that plot device, if you like that kind of thing. The “symbolism” gets absurdly heavy handed – Akira’s band is called Charon, and he keeps talking about hell. Yes, yes, very clever. We get it. Now stop it. (She doesn’t.) And the art. There are some pretty panels to be found, but most of the art is not great. That final panel, where they come together, is really nothing to boast about. And yet – it works. For me, anyway – I can see how it might not be everybody’s cup of high-strung melodrama. I love the look on Sunaga’s face when he says “Come here,” and I love the understanding we get of his character when he adds, “Good boy.” I even like the twisty angsty nervous virgin stuff from Akira. Believable? Er, no. A hot setup for an absurd romance? Yes.

Spoilers ho!
But all Sunaga wants is a kiss. It’s a really good kiss, with some groping, but that’s it. He cuts Akira loose – but tells him he has a better song, and if he wants that one, he’ll have to do more. And Akira realizes he doesn’t have to use the song after all. It’s cute. As the actual story unfolds, Akira reveals how obsessed he has become, and there is sex, more obsession, growth and character development, and a happy ending for everyone (except the dead guy).

Oh, and there’s a final short story called “Sinsemilla.” It is not about pot, but rather about pills, which I found puzzling, but drugs are drugs, I suppose, and there is lots of sex. There are also some extreme head to body ratio issues. No plot to speak of. Just sex, pretty much. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Monthly Stumblings # 4: Dominique Goblet, Nikita Fossoul

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Dominique Goblet’s and Nikita Fossoul’s Chronographie (Chronograph)

Some of you monolinguists may ask yourselves why do I bother to write at the HU about foreign books written in a foreign language (?)… There are a variety of reasons which explain why a columnist chooses his or her topics. Being a foreigner myself (and someone who manages to, at least, understand Latin languages) I have access to many books that aren’t available in North America. In this day and age though you’re just a few clicks way from these great comics (I’m old school, so, don’t expect me to say “graphic novels” very often).

My last post was about a scriptwriter who wrote in Spanish. His comics are a bit verbose (this isn’t a negative criticism: as I said elsewhere: I prefer great words to mediocre images and vice-versa, of course), not to mention completely out of print, but my other stumblings were wordless or almost wordless. (Unfortunately that’s not what happens with the links below: they mostly lead to not so silent French and Belgian sites.)

When I say “almost” I’m not implying that the words don’t count (contrariwise to a somewhat goofy comment that I wrote answering to another comment by Noah who “accused” me of just writing about European art comics). For instance, I didn’t mention in my first post that Pierre Duba wrote a few phrases in Racines about identity and quoted  Norwegian writer Tarjei Vesaas. (I thank my friend Pedro Moura who linked Racines to another central book in the ideal comics canon: The Cage by Martin Vaughn-James; maybe I’ll come back to Duba one of these days; I have to, I’m afraid!…)

I wrote about Héctor Germán Oesterheld because I think that he is the best comics writer that ever existed (yes, better than Alan Moore) and the world needs to know more about him. Being an Argentinian he’s at a disadvantage (like everyone else that worked or works in comics outside of the holy trinity: Japan, U.S.A., France-Belgium). This applies even to countries with fairly important traditions in the field like Spain and Italy…

My other posts just mean that a comics avant-garde scene (Bart Beaty calls it a postmodern modernism – 2007) truly exists in Europe (this is an idea that goes back to Jan Baetens in his analysis of Autarcic Comix – 1995 – as reported by Paul Gravett in the link above). What interests me the most in comics are those borderline examples that push the limits of the form. Publishers like L’Association, Six pieds sous terre, Ego comme x, Frémok frequently publish, with the help of grants from the French and Belgian governments, highly experimental books that shatter to pieces our expectations of what a comic is supposed to be. Authors like Vincent Fortemps or Jochen Gerner are part of this unpopular (to quote Bart Beaty again) cultural movement.

I will stumble on some North American comic one of these days, I’m sure, but I don’t know exactly when… (North American comics authors respect comics’ mass art tradition too much for my taste. They are afraid of being called pretentious or elitists if they forget goofy caricatures, I suppose; maybe they should embrace Milton Caniff’s, Hal Foster’ s, Alex Raymond’s tradition instead to tell contemporary adult stories? Are the technical skills a problem though? Sadly, I suppose so… those giantly talented graphic artists are hard to match.)

Dominique Goblet is also part of that nineties’ European comics revolution that I mentioned above (she’s a Belgian). Nikita Fossoul is her daughter.

In Chronographie (another quasi-wordless book) they publish ten years of their more or less biweekly portraits of each other (Fossoul was seven years old when they began and Goblet was thirty one). Words are few and far between, but when they appear they add important meanings, not as an anchor in a Barthesian sense, but as time and context info and as emotional descriptors. It’s mostly Nikita who uses the latter saying thinks like: “Faché[e]” – “Pissed off.” Being in a powerless situation children need to pay attention to the adults’ moods. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Dominique was pissed off at the time though: it may simply mean that she appears to be pissed off and Nikita noticed this after doing the drawing (see below). (Curiously enough the words gradually disappear from Nikita’s portraits. I’m sure that there’s a paper here somewhere.)

Confronted with these kinds of books this television show host asked: “Can we still talk about comics?” I would answer definitely yes, but I hardly count… My answer is in accordance with my expansion of the comics field to include things from the distant or recent past (said expansion may be seen as an anachronism and a decontextualization). What’s new in this case is that these authors really are comics artists. L’Association (Chronography‘s publisher) is a comics publishing house (whose publisher Jean-Christophe Menu, as been one of the most vocal actors in the comics field to defend that really there is a comics avant-garde). If Frans Masereel never thought about  it, I’m sure (I include him in comics history without his permission), they, on the other hand, want to do comics in a contemporary high culture context. As Dominique Goblet put it, answering the question:

We are at the crossroads between the visual arts and comics. The link that unites all this is a passion to tell stories.

(I would replace “tell stories” for “do sequences” because many things in, for instance, the Fort Thunder style shatters the narrative. On the other hand I suppose that it is defensible to say that two images put together, no matter what they represent, do tell a story of sorts… Also: the visual arts always have been a part of comics, so, I don’t see where the crossroad is. What Dominique Goblet says is understandable though: the visual arts have an important history of experimentation and comics don’t.)

In almost every session Goblet and Fossoul chose the same technique, the same composition solutions, explored the same particular aspects; they even shared model poses sometimes (see below). This coherence can only mean that Dominique Goblet was the art teacher and Nikita Fossoul was the student.

The book begins with graphite and black colored pencil  line drawings. It continues exploring washes, pastels, collages, acrylic paint. The supports are all kinds of paper (old papers, drawing papers, etc… two of the drawings seem to have been done on some sort of synthetic board).

The problem of resemblance is at the center of the portrait genre. If Dominique Goblet solves this problem easily Nikita Fossoul doesn’t even address it. As she put it in the book’s postface (in both French and English, by the way):

So I drew what I sensed (almost) more than what I saw: a mood, a special complicity… Thanks to this lack of interest in strict likeness, I too could let go and no longer be afraid of ‘going wrong[,]’ and that is how I dared to carry on.

As she also says drawing was a game at first, but an evolution can easily be traced in her drawing skills. As for Dominique Goblet she draws in a contemporary sketchy (sometimes fragmented) style, but she never destroys her model’s face. She obscures it sometimes because she has a real interest in shadows and light (great vehicles to convey mood). Sometimes she just did beautiful simple drawings like the two below.

Ten years is a long time in a person’s life and Chronographie is about the passing of time, but what story do these faces tell us? When she began this project Dominique Goblet wanted to explore a mother / daughter relationship:

I have always wondered about what is called ‘maternal instinct[.]’ To be honest, I have never fundamentally understood what it could mean.

In any case, to my great regret I have never been sure of anything that obvious. I don’t know if I resemble those mothers who talk about unconditional love, instinct, the need to unreservedly  protect.

One more time we reach the conclusion that philosophy, science, the arts start with the same impulse: the will to explore, the will to know beyond all clichés and common sense. A book depicting saccharine moments between a mother and a daughter would be a kitschy thing indeed. But that’s not what Chronographie is: there are moments of laughter, there are moments of bliss and there are moments of sadness. Life is a lot more complex and interesting than any pop myth (Dominique Goblet again):

Many things were said without words. The sequential work is carrying on, in a way, very slowly. What is told here traverses the prism of an imperceptible movement. The years spent together…

The essential is told, we have given more of ourselves than any memory would have done. This is no longer about details, let alone anecdotes.

The myth of the mother-daughter bond appears in another form: a silent tale.

Imagining myself as a devil’s advocate I could say that Nikita Fossoul’s drawings are amateurish and Dominique Goblet’s drawings are sometimes great, sometimes not so great. All that is true, but is it really important? What matters is the inquisitiveness, the patience, the bond between mother, daughter, and the readers… life being lived and shared (that’s what real art is all about)… those rare moments in which we receive our rewards and get some answers… That’s why I finish this post with the only portrait in the book in which a  young artist (she was twelve years old) captured her mother’s likeness, without even trying… It’s no wonder that she saw her with a pair of worried, slightly sad, eyes the size of the world… her world…

Dominique Goblet’s site

Utilitarian Review 8/20/10

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On HU

We started off the week with Andrew Farago’s discussion of Popeye in multiple media.

Matthias Wivel examined Breugel, Rembrandt, and Crumb’s Genesis.

Ng Suat Tong discussed The Playwright by Daren White and Eddie Campbell.

Caroline Small discussed Ivan Bilibin’s illustrations for Russian folktales.

Robert Stanley Martin argued that Popeye shouldn’t be canonical.

I analyzed one of Rembrandt’s Biblical illustrations.

Peter Sattler criticized the insufficient literalness of R. Crumb’s Genesis.

And we have an index of the entire Genesis roundtable.

And here’s a doom metal mix if that sort of thing appeals.

Utilitarians Everywhere
At Madeloud I discuss some of the best releases by the Japanese psych-rock collective Ghost.

And also at Madeloud I contributed an appreciation of the Bangles reunion record to this discussion of counterintuitively good albums.

Slow-Rolling Genesis Index

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We’ve been writing about R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis on and off here at HU for the past month. I think we’re finally done (hear that co-bloggers? Stop it!), but I thought it might be helpful to provide a convenient index of the roundtable. So here it is:
________________

The entire roundtable is here.

Ng Suat Tong begins the roundtable by comparing R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis to the Biblical images of other great artists.

Ken Parille, writing at his own site, defends Crumb’s Genesis.

Ng Suat Tong responds to Ken Parille’s post.

Ken Parille at his own site, talks about pastoral and presence in Crumb’s Genesis.

Alan Choate defends Crumb’s Genesis.

Ng Suat Tong replies to Alan Choate.

Alan Choate continues his defense of Crumb’s Genesis.

Ng Suat Tong responds to Alan Choate’s further comments.

Noah Berlatsky talks about Crumb, Kierkegaard, and floating bearded heads.

Caroline Small compares Crumb’s Genesis to Biblical illustrations by Howard Finster and Basil Wolverton.

Matthias Wivel discusses Crumb, Rembrandt, Breughel, and cartooning as exegesis.

In a slight detour, Noah Berlatsky discusses a Rembrandt illustration from Genesis that Matthias highlighted.

Peter Sattler argues that Crumb’s treatment of Genesis is not sufficiently literal.
______________

In addition to the posts, the discussion has generated a lot of comments. Besides the writers above, interesting points have been made by

Jeet Heer

Steven Grant (and also here)

EricB.

Robert Stanley Martin

Ed Sizemore

________

Thanks so much to Suat for starting this, to all our other posters, and for everyone who took time to comment…and of course to read it.

Strange Windows: The Adventures of Tintin in Otherland, Part V: Radio Coda

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On Wisconsin Public Radio’s Here on Earth program — moderated by the able Jean Feraca — Gene Kannenberg and I chat about Tintin and field listeners’ calls; you can find a streaming of the show at this link.

Enjoy my dulcet tones– or, rather, my robotic stammer.

———————————————

Some have chided me for overlooking the most excluded of “others” in the Tintin oeuvre, i.e. women.

This is indeed true. In all the albums, there are only three or four women with so much as speaking roles. I interpret this as a hangover from the fiercely puritanical Catholicism of Hergé‘s youth, mixed with his own dose of misogyny.  Hergé’s own explanation fails to convince:

“True, there are only a few women, but not out of misogyny. No, it’s simply because as far as I’m concerned, women don’t belong in a world such as Tintin’s; it’s one dominated by male friendship, and there is nothing ambiguous about such friendship! Of course there are only a few women in my stories and when they do appear, they are caricatures, such as Castafiore.

If I were to create a character who was a pretty girl, what would she do in a world where all the other characters are caricatures? I love women too much to turn them into caricatures!

Anyway, pretty or not, young or not, women are rarely comical elements.

Would it be the maternal side of women which prevents us from making fun of them?”

(That last sentence would be of interest to a psychiatrist…and, indeed, Hergé spent years in analysis.)

But there is one woman in Tintin with enough force and character to dominate any story she shows up in; yes, the divine ‘Nightingale of Milan’, the Empress of the Opera:

Bianca Castafiore!

What mere male can fail to wilt before such beauty and power?

As the good Captain Haddock says, a formidable woman.

Ah, Captain, submit to the inevitable; the charm and might of La Castafiore will keep you in her thrall!

The transition from ogress to goddess is most satisfying, and is consummated in Hergé’s wittiest Tintin album, Les Bijoux de la Castafiore (‘The Castafiore Emeralds’)

Love her though I do, I must concede that the Castafiore is a monstrous caricature of woman.

What I delight in, however, is the way she serenely floats above every catastrophe…even when on trial for her life (in “Tintin et les Picaros”) she turns the courtroom into an opera stage!

You go, girl!

————————————–

Tintin wasn’t Hergé’s only series.

One may applaud the cosmopolitanism of the later Tintin albums (and of the redacted earlier work), yet still regret a certain earthy malice inherent to the initial work: Tintin was, in the beginning, a brawling, cunning trickster more than a boy scout. He was also definitely Belgian, as contrasted with the somewhat bland “international” Tintin of later years.

As a counterpoint, I recommend (to you who speak French) the series of albums featuring Quick & Flupke, a pair of wicked little Brussels street urchins.

The Belgian equivalents of the Katzenjammer kids or of Max and Moritz, these two lively pests were well grounded in the rich culture of that teeming capital, Brussels.

The series, composed of two-page stand-alone gags,  also lets Hergé indulge one of his major talents as an entertainer– the gagman… but in a childlike, gentle mode that didn’t exclude mild satire:

And the establishment– represented by the police– comes in for some tweaking at the hands of this delinquent duo:

Try this strip some time!