What's New Podcast Transcript Episode 9, The Hidden Universe of Comics

What’s New Podcast Transcript

Episode 9: The Hidden Universe of Comics

January 30, 2018

Host: Dan Cohen, Dean of Libraries and Vice Provost for Information Collaboration at

Northeastern University.

Hillary Chute, Professor of English and Art & Design at Northeastern University

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:00:30]

Comics are often viewed as lesser form of storytelling. Colored as they are by the

superhero movies that fill multiplexes in the summer. But in the unique way they

combined hand-drawn images, with equally flexible lettering, comics can also

convey profound expressions of humanity, tragic events and humorous

escapades, subtle observations of everyday life, loneliness and taboo, sexual

desire. Today on What's New, the Hidden Universe of Comics.

[00:01:00]

Welcome back to What's New, I'm Dan Cohen. Joining me in the studio is Hillary

Chute, the author of a wonderful new book, Why Comics? From Underground to

Everywhere. Hillary is a Professor of English and Art and Design here at

Northeastern University. Welcome to the program Hillary!

Hillary Chute:

Thank you for having me.

Dan Cohen, Host:

So I noticed the title of your book is Why Comics with a question mark, rather

than something more assertive like the Genius of Comics. And I guess it seems

that's because comics kind of need an evangelist or at least a helpful interpreter

to get across why they aren't just an immature medium for kids. But why do you

think that this is still true in 2017?

Hillary Chute:

[00:01:30]

Well, I think that one of the most common misperceptions about comics is that it

is a genre and not a medium, and that, that genre is superhero comics. So for

people who pay attention to comics, people would know that there are various

genres, right? You know, including comics, journalism, romance comics, western,

you know the whole thing, science fiction.

[00:02:00]

But most people, if they don't really think about comics when they think the

word comics, they think of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman. All those

Marvel, angsty neurotic superheroes from the so-called silver age. And you

know, all the superheroes that are now sort of glutting mainstream cinemas. So I

think the association of the form with superheroes still persists as a kind of

cultural shorthand.

Dan Cohen, Host:

Right. So people don't view them like books or TV where we know that there are

lots of different formats for those medium?

Hillary Chute:

[00:02:30]

Right. Well, it's starting to change, but I don't think it's as widespread yet as I

would hope. And so in a way I wanted to write this book so I could stop

explaining so often what I do at cocktail parties, and faculty get-togethers, so

and so forth and so on. Because I think there is still the assumption that comics is

largely about fantasy.

Dan Cohen, Host:

Right. Right. So maybe we could rewind a little bit, how did you get interested in

comics?

[00:03:00]

Hillary Chute:

So, I was not a particular fan of comics as a kid, unlike other people I know who

study comics for a living like I do. I got interested in comics in graduate school.

So, my PhD is in English and I read Art Spiegelman's Maus for the first time as a

second year graduate student in a course on contemporary literature.

[00:03:30]

And that was in the year 2000 and I have been thinking about this book a lot

ever since, including working on a book with Art Spiegelman for six years called

MetaMaus, that was a collaborative project. And so even though I've worked

with the author of Maus for six years about Maus and I've written countless

book chapters and articles about it, I still feel like I haven't solved it.

[00:04:00]

For me, it's a book that keeps on giving; every time I read it I find something

new. I feel like that's the book that really got me started thinking about why this

kind of form for serious kinds of stories, which is how I got interested in comics

in the first place.

Dan Cohen, Host:

Same was true for me. I read Maus. It came out my freshman year in college.

Hillary Chute:

Did you read it for a class?

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:04:30]

I did not, but interestingly a couple of years later. So it came out in 1986, and

then a couple of years later it had already been incorporated into a course,

actually, on literature that I took through New Forms of Literature along with

Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns as a kind of disruptive new format for what

seemed like a traditional superhero based genre.

I think both of those things were fairly shocking for me. I mean, particularly

Maus, I think for those who have not encountered it before, it's a not very

superhero-ish, exploration of the Holocaust and the nature of memory and the

nature of family relationships that really struck me as a freshman, who thought

comics were Richie Rich or the original Batman or Batman on tv, which was very

comical. There was a depth there, right?

[00:05:00]

Hillary Chute:

In Maus, certainly, and it's also such a fascinatingly styled work, which is one of

the things that struck me about it right away. So he chose to do Maus in black

and white. He chose that kind of loose, sketchy style in Maus that all of the

[00:05:30]

characters are rendered in. And so when I worked with him on MetaMaus, I saw

his years of stylistic exploration to get to something as coherent but as loose as

Maus looks like.

So I think one of the things that's so interesting about it too is that it has that

kind of intimacy that just pulls you right in, sort of like a diary or a manuscript.

Dan Cohen, Host:

Since our audience is listening to this rather than viewing, and you've got some

incredible page images in your book, can you describe what new kind of graphic

novel like Maus in the 80s did? What does the form look like and how would you

describe it?

Hillary Chute:

Do you mean that specific work, because I would love to describe that?

[00:06:00]

Dan Cohen, Host:

Yes, sure. Can you just describe the line drawing and the paneling and how it was

put together that looked a lot different than other comics?

Hillary Chute:

Sure. So, I mean, one of the things I love about studying comics and graphic

novels is that I feel that these works really call readers’ attention to the book as

material object, in a way that I worry is sort of evaporating from the

contemporary fiction landscape, you know, since I am a person who has a PhD in

contemporary literature.

[00:06:30]

So I feel like these books really inhabit themselves as physical objects. So the end

papers are beautiful. The cover is beautiful. They're designed front to back by

cartoonists, which is really a huge difference than most books. I mean, any other

books in the book industry. There's no other form of book for which the author is

the default designer.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:07:00]

Hillary, you've got a lot of examples in the book of a cartoonist who really ... they

made the book in many cases, right? They printed it themselves and they

designed that. As you notice the cover and the back and you think about modern

books are, often the designer's off somewhere in New York doing the cover and

the author is just responsible for the text. But, in this case it's really end to end

as you know.

Hillary Chute:

[00:07:30]

Right. And so what it shows to me is an understanding that cartoonists aren't

only illustrators and aren't only storytellers, but are rigorous designers. So, I

once said to the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and I think this is maybe in the book, he's a

fabulous comics' journalist who does amazing works mostly about contemporary

conflict zones like Israel and Palestine.

And I said, "So, you know, you have to be like a designer as a cartoonist. You

have to design each page, design each panel, design the whole thing." And he

just looked at me and said, "You know, that's like walking if you're a cartoonist."

So it's really about designing elements in space. And for a work like Maus, that

[00:08:00]

means that it's not only about each page having its own aesthetic logic, but it's

also about the size and shape of the book overall.

[00:08:30]

So Maus is digest sized, so it's six by eight. It's quite small. Spiegelman

deliberately meant it to be small. Spiegelman composed Maus with a common

fountain pen from a stationary store on common typing paper. He used white

out and little gummed labels, very deliberately as a sort of aesthetic political

choice. He wanted to make this work about the Holocaust, work that was

composed with common everyday materials as against a kind of aesthetic

virtuosity that he associated with Nazism.

So in an example like that, you can see that all of these production choices and

format choices really have a big impact, but also a big political import too.

[00:09:00]

Dan Cohen, Host:

Great. Maus itself was disorienting for this very reason in that it is basic line

drawing, right? And, unlike the very slick Superman comics or those kinds of

things. Can you just tell our audience a little bit about the plot and the fact that

the family is designed as mice, right, in this comic?

Hillary Chute:

[00:09:30]

Sure. So this is a book that is so fascinating because it's not only about Art

Spiegelman's father, Vladek Spiegelman's experience surviving multiple death

camps in Poland, including Auschwitz. But it's also about the cartoonist son's

experience trying to elicit this testimony from his father, who is a reluctant

witness. So it's a work about this incredible story of survival.

[00:10:00]

But it's also a work about what it means for an artist to try to visualize this kind

of painful testimony. So it's a book that's always aware of itself as a book, aware

of what it's doing, aware of the images it's giving us and it toggles back and forth

between Poland in the 40s and New York City in the 70s and 80s. So, it's always a

story in which the past and present are informing each other and are actually in

certain moments sort of collapsed onto each other.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:10:30]

I thought this was one of the most important points in your book that I really

hadn't thought about. These drawings, I mean, they're hand drawn, they're very

personal, but in this medium of the comic, you could do strange things with time

and space that you can't do in other formats. You can't do in a movie. And I

hadn't thought about that before. Do you want to describe that experience or

how that actually happens, because I felt like you were almost a psychologist of

the graphic novel in this case.

[00:11:00]

Hillary Chute:

Well, I take that as a huge compliment. Yes. So the amazing comics theorists,

Scott McCloud, who's actually from Lexington, Massachusetts wrote in his classic

text called Understanding Comics, which is a sort of McLuhanitebook about

comics in the form of comics. That comics proposes a kind of time that's really

weird, and I think that's kind of in some ways the best way to put it.

[00:11:30]

So, for example, to go back to Maus, there's a panel in Maus in which a family, a

son, a father, and the son's wife are driving to the supermarket in the Catskills in

the late 70s. And as they're driving through a sort of, wooded, rural area, the

legs of girls who were hanged in Auschwitz in 1944 are hanging from the tree

tops.

[00:12:00]

And this is one two-inch high panel. And so this is something I always think about

when I'm trying to describe how comics can do weird things with time. In this

moment, there's not one real time and one fake time. These moments are both

inhabiting the same two-inch high space. It's the 40s, and it's the 70s. And it's

obviously a way to show, in this case, how present Vladek Spiegelman’s

experience is for him as he's recounting it to his son.

[00:12:30]

But what comics can do is make that kind of figuration about the past invading

the present, actually literal and material, and visible to readers and it has a very

powerful effect.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:13:00]

There also seems to be a psychological effect, between the panels who talk

about how your mind fills in the gaps in a way. It's almost like if you left a word

out of a sentence, your mind sort of fills that in. You make the great point that

we do that in comics as well. If there are two panels that are spaced apart, we'll

sort of figure out what's going on between them. How does that work or what's

your sense of that in really well done say graphic novel like Maus?

Hillary Chute:

Well, to me that's the feature of comics that is almost its defining feature, and

it's a feature too that I would say isn't replicated in any other form, in the same

way. So it's not replicated in film in which the persistence of vision doesn't really

give us any visible gaps. Right? It's not replicated in prose, there're plenty of gaps

in prose.

[00:13:30]

But they're not part of the narrative fabric and structure the way they are in

comics. So for me, the gutter is doing something incredible with time and it's

also making the reader a participatory kind of reader, which doesn't necessarily

detract from the pleasure of reading comics, but is one of the things I think

shows that comics is a form that suggests a pretty complicated kind of literacy.

[00:14:00]

So when people think of comics as easy to digest and diversionary and just for

kids, I think about all these complicated formal elements of comics, like the fact

that a reader, him or herself, has to make that kind of closure from panel to

panel, and has to figure out in his or her mind what kind of time happens in that

panel.

[00:14:30]

And for that reason it's a form that is almost interactive in a way that I think few

people consider. So the amount of time happening in a panel could be one

second, it could be 20 years, it could be no time at all. There've been plenty of

experiments with trying to make time stop in comics. It could be backwards

time, right?

[00:15:00]

So comics has all of these ways to pressurize linearity, all these ways to

pressurize even the direction that we read in. And so it really makes a reader an

engaged participant in creating meaning.

Dan Cohen, Host:

Do you think that's why people have this real personal association with many of

the comics and graphic novels that you write about?

Hillary Chute:

[00:15:30]

That's such an interesting question. I think that has to be true, because, we

imagine as readers what happens in the moments between two framed images

that are given to us. So I think one becomes attached to characters invested in

storylines when one is involved in that way in figuring out what they're about.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:16:00]

How about the images of things that can't be photographed? In a number of

your chapters on these different topics like war and disaster or sexuality, there

are depictions, some of them very difficult to look at, of things that probably

haven't been photographed or were unphotographable. So, Hiroshima for

instance, being one of them that can sort of only be represented at the ground

level in a comic that you write about.

Hillary Chute:

[00:16:30]

Right. So, this is a part of comics that I think is related to why there are so many

comics about traumatic experiences. Whether on a world historical level, like the

US bombing of Hiroshima, or on a level of having to do with sexual assault and

rape, which is something I've been thinking about a lot recently, even since my

book came out, since it's been so much in the news.

[00:17:00]

So you know, they're not a lot of public photographs, although there are some of

rape, but it's not often documented in that way. And so the ability to draw one's

own experience in this context is an incredibly powerful tool. And so I have

examples in the book of work that truly couldn't be photographed by people

who were assaulted, for example.

[00:17:30]

And in the case of Hiroshima, which you brought up, that's just an unbelievable

comic by a Japanese cartoonist named Keiji Nakazawa that first came out in

1972. And so he was six years old when the bomb was dropped on his city in

Hiroshima and his father and siblings died and he and his mother survived. And

the kinds of images to me, when I think about what comics does in this instance,

it provides a kind of phenomenology of trauma-- that's the way I think about it.

[00:18:00]

Because we get the on the ground child's eye view of what he saw, moments

after the bomb detonated. And he saw people with skin falling off their bodies

and he saw sort of unimaginable devastation. And he's able to express this in

drawing in a way he wouldn't be able to recreate it in any other form.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:18:30]

You've got an amazing panel from that book. It really struck me how it was both

specific, skin falling off, but also impressionistic-- trees sort of almost painterly

sorts of bending of trees and paper flying everywhere and these kinds of things,

all again happening at once is compression of time.

Hillary Chute:

[00:19:00]

Yes, that's such a good point. It's very sensory when he's going back and trying to

describe what that moment was like. So there's this sort of visual tapestry that

doesn't make a lot of sense to him as a child, right? But, but we can tell is the

affective sort of incredible physical violence and then there's what it sort of

smelled like, what it sounded like, how bright it was.

So that's what I mean, this incredible sort of phenomenology of trauma. And I

think it's so important that it's an on the ground point of view countering,

obviously, the technological prowess from above that creates the traumatic

physical devastation of the city and of hundreds of thousands of people.

[00:19:30]

Dan Cohen, Host:

Sure. I'm sure before actually seeing this graphic novel, most people would think

about it from the perspective of the Enola Gay, right? In from the air of this

mushroom cloud, right?

Hillary Chute:

[00:20:00]

Yes. From my perspective, perspective, I didn't mean that as a pun, I mean, but

literally, I guess from my perspective, I had been used to seeing if any

photographs, aerial military photographs, and so this is a really important voice

that's being added. A non-western voice that's being added to the global

conversation about what happened on that day.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:20:30]

A lot of the cartoons that you write about and have had some childhood trauma

to say the least. I mean, going back to the origins of Superman and, bullying or

bad relationships with fathers or parents who lived through the Holocaust or

sexual assault. It's not happy town USA in the world of cartoonists, it made me

think a lot about how they say good comedians had some horrible childhood.

You spent a lot of time with the cartoonist themselves, including very famous

people like Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Alison Bechdel. What are they like in

person and what do you think the act of making these very personal drawings

and dialogue and craft really? A craft of a book. How does it help them or what is

their goal? What are they trying to do in writing these very personal works?

[00:21:00]

Hillary Chute:

[00:21:30]

That's such an interesting question. So, right. So two of the cartoonists I write

about in this book who I'm now very close to, are Art Spiegelman and Alison

Bechdel. And they both have had a parent commit suicide, for example. Art's

mother, Andrea committed suicide and Alison's father Bruce committed suicide.

So, you know, these are two of the biggest graphic narratives of the past 30

years, Fun Home and Maus.

And they're both about a suicidal parent, and the relationship of the cartoonists

creator at the center to a volatile parent. So, I've often thought about this,

they're lovely people in person, and Robert Crumb is a lovely person. I've slept in

his home.

Dan Cohen, Host:

It actually scares me a little bit. In France.

Hillary Chute:

In France.

Dan Cohen, Host:

His nine story home in France.

[00:22:00]

Hillary Chute:

His beautiful home in France and I was there actually at that point to interview

his wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb. Who I write about in Why Comics, who I think is

an incredible under sung comics pioneer who also had a horrible relationship

with her parents.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:22:30]

We should pause here that Robert Crumb, of course, is in a sense, the sort of

father of underground comics and had very sexually explicit comics in the 60s

and 70s. And Aline is an equally talented artist who also explored very taboo

subjects. Right?

Hillary Chute:

[00:23:00]

Right, but I think because her comics were about female sexuality, they just got a

lot less attention in the 60s and 70s than his did, which were sort of about

picturing female bodies, but were ultimately about male sexuality. But it was

funny in the Manohla Dargis review of my book in The New York Times, she

mentions this amazing thing, which is that her father was arrested in the 60s for

selling Zap comics. He was arrested on obscenity charges for selling a comic book

in his store. It just blew my mind you know?

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:23:30]

I noticed that in her review. And it is important, I think, for us to remember in

2017, how outrageous these were and really out of bounds. Someone like an R-

crumb comic of Zap Comics or many of actually the cartoons that you talk about.

Hillary Chute:

[00:24:00]

Yes. And in a way it's almost related. It's like the flip side of trauma. It's almost

related to what we were talking about when we're talking about what is

unphotographable, especially in an event of great physical suffering, for

example. You know, what I love about comics, and there's a whole chapter on

comics and sex in my book is that one can also draw what is not photographable

in comics, right?

So it's giving sort of free reign to the id. It's like the unfettered id in this sort of

space of fantasy and imagination that's not necessarily documenting something

but is creating a fantasy. And I think that's what we see in a lot of Crumb comics.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:24:30]

I was definitely ... you know, that that whole section on sexuality, I think, the lack

of filter that many of these cartoonists are getting rid of their filter and putting

on paper fantasies or strange or sort of erotic scenes that almost look like

medieval paintings of the inferno or something like that, yes.

Hillary Chute:

Oh yes, they're every pornographic.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:25:00]

Thank you. You have this line about making hidden visible and so much of what's

hidden is in fact in the ... it's in the brain, right? And Aline, I think in particular is

really fascinating as a subject. She sort of puts to paper all these fantasies and

her own sexuality about her body that you just don't see anywhere else.

Hillary Chute:

[00:25:30]

You really don't. I think Aline is a sort of an artist unto herself and I'm thrilled,

the prestigious Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly, which publishes a lot of

the most beautiful graphic novels these days is just about to republish this year,

Aline Kominsky Crumb's book, Love that Bunch. So I think she's about to start

having another moment now that she's in her 70s and people are rediscovering

this incredible work that for decades didn't get a lot of attention I think because

it's so wrong.

[00:26:00]

Because people aren't as used to, as I said before, seeing these images of female

sexuality as they are used to seeing sort of more taboo shredding images of male

sexuality. So I have to say about Aline and Robert though, because you asked

before, I didn't want to leave this loop unclosed. They are both the most lovely

people.

So when I went to stay with them, we had sit down meals. We had chicken and

chocolate cake. Robert drinks milk for dinner.

Dan Cohen, Host:

That was a great detail.

Hillary Chute:

[00:26:30]

They're so kind. I did my first and only, bout of yoga with Aline in a class that she

teaches in her local village. Intergenerational group of women in this tiny village

in Paris. I mean, they're so nice. Their daughter Sophie came over and she and

Robert spent hours drawing together. I mean, they're just a truly lovely family.

So the kind of freakiness that you get in their comics is not at all something that's

reflected in how they exist in time and space as actual people.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:27:00]

That's great to know. I think it seems to me that the medium has been important

for people like the three of them, Sophie included, who's also a very gifted

cartoonist. Also for marginalized people, queer people. It's been a medium

where they've had actually success. I mean, Alison Bechdel had not only huge

success publishing, but obviously Fun Home became a very important musical on

Broadway and received Tony Awards.

Hillary Chute:

The Tony Award for best musical. I mean, you can't get any more mainstream

than that.

Dan Cohen, Host:

Right. And these subject matters, I mean, it's interesting that even Matt

Groening who created the Simpsons, I mean started out writing about a gay

[00:27:30]

couple, Akbar and Jeff for 30 years. It's interesting how mainstream these

marginalized stories and people and experiences have become.

Hillary Chute:

[00:28:00]

Well for me, that's just a great thing. And so that's the sort of thing I'm pointing

to in my title here. I feel like people like Matt Groening who were really working

at the edges. I think it's hard now that The Simpsons is the longest running

scripted prime time television show in America and has been for a while to recall

how marginal Matt Groening was.

[00:28:30]

I mean this was a kid who graduated college, moved to LA, was working five jobs

at a time. He was a chauffeur. He did landscaping at a sewage treatment plant.

He worked in a copy shop. He worked at a record store. He was just doing his

own work and a lot of his early work is really dark. As you mentioned, he also

created some of the very first sort of sustained gay characters in comic strips.

And now that he's become so mainstream with the Simpsons, I think it's useful

to remember that he was this kid who was living in LA trying to scheme about

how to recreate popular culture. And he did it.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:29:00]

He sure did. I think everyone's familiar with the Simpsons, and you have a great

coda to your book, which is that I think our audience is probably familiar with

much of this world now that they wouldn't have been Comic-Con. You have a

great essay that ends the book of just your experience at Comic-Con. I thought it

was amusing, you know, you bump into a fellow professor who's dressed up in a

superhero outfit.

Hillary Chute:

That was amazing. I have to say yes, he asked a really good question after my

talk too. But in full costume.

Dan Cohen, Host:

You go to the Starbucks and someone is dressed like a Knight next to you.

Hillary Chute:

Oh yes. Full gray on the head.

Dan Cohen, Host:

[00:29:30]

Do you have a concern now that it is so mainstream and tens of thousands of

people go to San Diego every year for comic-con and a lot of them are there of

course to see the next Marvel trailer or something like that? Is there still a world

out there for these more hidden worlds of comics?

Hillary Chute:

[00:30:00]

I think there absolutely is. And I think Manohla Dargis didn't buy it. This was the

one critique that she had at the end of her view of my book. I think she said it

was utopian. But, I have to say having gone to the biggest comic-con in the

country and one of the biggest in the world at San Diego a few times now,

there's everything there.

You know, they're the huge studios, but they're also the little old ladies selling

felted animals. I mean, it's the whole range of stuff. And that's something that I

find sort of like this inspiring democratic playground. I mean obviously the huge

companies get a lot of play. They get a lot of attention, but there is still space

and still a really active space for people doing all sorts of weird work.

[00:30:30]

I mean the cartoonist Dan Clowes, who I interviewed at Comic-Con a few years

ago and I were joking about it, he said that he heard at comic-con about a new

comic that had come out that week about pugs, the dogs.

Dan Cohen, Host:

Sounds good, I'm a dog person.

Hillary Chute:

[00:31:00]

And then when I tried to look it up, there were actually a couple different ones

that had come out that week about pugs. So it's just the world is so rich and so

diverse and proliferating so rapidly that you can't even figure out which comic he

was referring to in a two-week period that had just been published about pug

dogs. Right?

Dan Cohen, Host:

Well, Hillary, it's been great having you on the program.

Hillary Chute:

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Dan Cohen, Host:

Hillary Chute is the author of, Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere.

We'll be sure to link to the book from our show notes at whatsnewpodcast.org

and I hope you pick up a copy. Hillary, thanks again for being on the program.

Hillary Chute:

Thank you.

[00:31:30]

Dan Cohen, Host:

What's New is a production of the Northeastern University Libraries. It is

produced by Thomas Bary and engineered by Jonathan Iannone in Snell Library’s

Recording Studios, with assistance from the Library’s Podcast Team: Evan

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as well as the advice and input from Northeastern's College of Arts, Media, and

Design.

[00:32:00]

You can subscribe and check out more episodes of What's New on iTunes or

wherever you get your podcasts, as well as on the web at

whatsnewpodcasts.org. I'm Dan Cohen. See you next time on What's New.