PULPHOPE: MOEBIUS.

Every now and then it surfaces, stirring delusions of grandeur in insecure geeks like myself: The Pablo Picasso “comic”.

In Dylan Horrocks‘ Hicksville (Drawn&Quarterly, 2002), it’s a dream come true for the prentious comic reader: The secluded town is secretly host to an Borgesian library of original, never published comic works by Real Artists and Great Writers like Picasso and Lorca – smaller fish like Wally Wood, Harvey Kurtzman, and Winsor McCay have come to Hicksville on incognito sabatical to produce transcendant masterpeices beyond the standards of their known work. In other words, comics is portrayed as an artform rather than industrial rabble.

Hicksville is a clever metafiction (the narrator and lead character is named after the author) and while the collection in the town’s lighthouse is likewise fictional, Horrocks isn’t just making it up as he goes along. He simply distorts the way we look at comics in relation to art, shifting focus ever so slightly to give a proper, healthier perspective on the medium.

It is a sad but telling fact that Hicksville is still relatively unknown to the general public. Other than Michael Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay, not many stories about comics creators and the industry have made it to a larger audience. Grown men (and the odd woman) dealing with kiddie stuff? That’s laughable, if not objectable. The “Hey Kids!” stigma runs deep and long in the way comics are perceived. And it is most deeply ingrained in the readers.

Now, all comic readers started reading funny animal or superhero comics (I’m intentionally disregarding newspaper strips, as my focus is on the longer narrative here) and those that didn’t quit around puberty and maturity have at one point or another met with the prejudice that they should be reading ‘real books’ instead. Fair enough, mass produced monthly comics are a far cry from Joyce’s Ulysses, but Dan Brown has absolutely nothing on Alan Moore or Osamu Tezuka.

Fortunately, our guilty pleasure in cheaply mass produced, crap comics is alleviated every once in a while, however, when something like this hits the internet (again):

“>“>
The Lion cut in Half bit (above, far left) via Paul Pope’s blog -

Pablo Picasso’s preserved child drawings are now housed at the Musee Picasso in Barcelona, and are available for view upon appointment. Above is one he did in 1893 (aged 12), which we could arguably classify as yet another example of “proto-comics”.

The other two pieces are Dream and Lie of Franco, via Galilean Library, discussed at length at Wake Forest University Print Collection. This is obviously a sequential narrative of a sort, yet contradicted by a quote attributed to Picasso: “The only thing I regret in my life is never having made comics.”

What’s comics or not is another discussion. What boosts the self esteem of little fanboys inside grown-men connoisseurs of graphic fiction, isn’t. I’d say insecurity breeds snobbism. We all love this kind of thing – great, recognized artists slumming in our preferred medium, it’s like meeting Danny DeVito at a Fantômas concert, only better.

As mentioned in my post on the Outcault vs Töpffer throwdown, Tom Spurgeon made a similar point in his latest reply to Matthias Wivel :

I wonder sometimes if there isn’t an underdog mentality to comics that makes people want to state all achievement in terms of casting down a nefarious orthodoxy.

Or in this case, struggling against the Establishment for a higher recognition. But – no matter how great and accomplished someone like Picasso was in his field, we will never know what his mark would have been in comics. The above samples do not tell us much in that direction; they are babysteps toward sequental narrative. Instead of having comics institutionalized as High Art by bigshots seventy years ago, we are now in the best of all possible scenarios.

In spite of Liechtenstein’s recycling of comic panels in his canvases, art spiegelman’s Pulitzer award, and the fact that Watchmenis in the Times list of 100 most important novels, we still have the widest possible canvas to paint the future of comics. What I’m saying is, who needs Picasso in comics if we are yet to see the Picasso of comics?

Despite the fact that comics is arguably older than film (a lot older if you accept that comics is a distant relative to the earliest progenitors of written language) it has not been subject to the same regulation that movies have. Comics is still in its puberty, so to speak, and remains malleable, fluid and flexible. To me, that’s a better outlook than hanging in the MOMA.

—

I have to disclaim the above, sweeping statements about the Comic Reading Public. I’m not an analyst, I haven’t the foggiest idea about segmentation or whatever. I know myself and, being a comic reader, I have to assume that most other comic readers are like me. If I am demonstrably wrong, my apologies; if my assumptions offend or provoke other readers, I rest assured that I have probably hit home.

I want an audience to reflect my razor (t)wit. That’s why, in celebration of my upcoming 3,333rd tweet, I’m launching a quick contest.

The rules are simple:
1. The 9 tweeps to get me most followers by the time I post my tweet no. 3,333 win the nine prizes (see below)
2. New followers must tweet me your Twitter @-name as a vote for you — as in “hey @haverholm, I’m a new follower. @astoriaalbum sent me”

The prizes, however, are the cream of the crop:
For the person who have gotten me most new followers (and have instructed them to vote correctly), the Grand Prize is one signed color original!

Second Prizes, for the three tweeps to have earned me slightly less followers: One signed and inked b/w original each!

The following five runners-up win each their own customized, signed print!

Tell you what, if this gets me above 500, I’ll throw in a signed copy of my Resistansen book with each prize!

Prizes will be mailed flat at lowest available cost. All handmade by me, sorry.

Now, I am currently some 40 tweets away from the 3,333 mark, which under normal circumstances should give you a day or two to compete… Go!