{"id":2606,"date":"2017-05-02T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T18:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=2606"},"modified":"2024-01-09T11:48:02","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T19:48:02","slug":"maggies-world-051-heres-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/maggies-world-051-heres-how\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggie\u2019s World 051: Here\u2019s How!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maggie\u2019s World 051: Here\u2019s How!<\/h1>\n\n\n
Maggie Thompson<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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A picture is worth 1,000 words? That saying became traditional in the early 20th century, and the combination of many pictures and words \u2026 Well, the worth is multiplied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, when it comes to conveying information, clarifying a mood, or adding details to a description, comics have been doing it for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comic books can provide clear perspectives on history, conveying architecture, fashion, technology, and more\u2014while dealing with the actions of those involved. Left:\u00a0Age of Bronze<\/em>\u00a0#24 (December 2006) \u00a9 2017 Eric Shanower. Right:\u00a0The Beast of Chicago: The Murderous Career of H.H. Holmes<\/em>\u00a0\u00a9 2017 Rick Geary.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Viewing History<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Comics about historic events offer a boon to the reader, even though they must be a challenge for the writer and artist. Is that a hairstyle anyone would have worn in the Middle Ages? What were the vehicles of ancient Japan like? What shoes did they wear in India in the early 1700s? What did the city streets of Washington, D.C., look like after the Civil War? How did Greek archers hold the bow and arrow? Did it differ from the way Native Americans used the same tools?\\<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert L. Ripley\u2019s Believe It or Not<\/em> focused briefly on that sort of question. But what about more extensive explorations of what came before today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way to look at historical events is to view them through the lens of editorial cartoons. Thomas Nast brought us the donkey and elephant as party symbols in 1874, and a collection of his cartoons provides perspectives on an era many of us have never closely explored. The 20th Century in Cartoons: A History in Pictures,<\/em> edited by Tony Husband and released in 2014 annotates the century decade by decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political activist Eduardo del R\u00edo, under the name Rius, produced Los Supermachos<\/em> in Mexico in the mid-1960s and went on to develop such releases as Cuba Para Principiantes<\/em>: humorous informational comics designed to convey historical and sociological background of his topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larry Gonick\u2019s Cartoon History of the Universe<\/em>, starting in 1978, had much of the feel of Rius\u2019 work, and the collected volume became a bestseller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1995, writer-artist Rick Geary launched the A Treasury of Victorian Murder series in which his stylized comics approach took readers through the details of famous\u2014well, infamous, then\u2014murders of that era. Starting with Jack the Ripper, he focused on such cases as those involving Lizzie Borden, Mary Rogers, and H.H. Holmes and eventually expanded his focus to later cases and other famous people, in his A Treasury of XXth Century Murder series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2004, Archaeology<\/em> magazine interviewed writer-artist Eric Shanower about his painstakingly researched (and award-winning) Age of Bronze<\/em> series, begun in 1998. His focus was on the Trojan War, and Shanower said, \u201cI was fascinated with the challenge of reconciling all the different versions and coming up with one long, coherent story line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Shanower interview pointed up the work involved in going beyond text to provide what amounted to the full picture\u2014from costumes to armaments to hairstyles to tools. He had a friend take photos of the area from angles that aren\u2019t often pictured. To draw the palace at Mycenae, he built a model\u2014and to provide the backgrounds of the walls, he looked at frescos from Pylos. When he wanted to draw musical instruments of the time, he wanted to go beyond the lyre, so he included instruments from ancient Egypt. \u201cI hope that was sort of correct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It Can Be Personal<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Taking readers into memoirs via comic art can make them more powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1980s, Marvel released writer-artist Sam Glanzman\u2019s account of life aboard a Navy destroyer during World War II, and Dover provided an expansion of that memoir in A Sailor\u2019s Story<\/em> in 2015. Glanzman combined such technical details as maps, monthly logs, and ship layouts with anecdotes of life at sea, re-creating his experiences with memorable vividness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Writer-artists offer personal views of what happened to them. Left:\u00a0\u00a0I Saw It<\/em>\u00a0\u00a9 2017 Keiji Nakazawa. Right:\u00a0Fax from Sarajevo<\/em>\u00a0\u00a9 2017 Joe Kubert and Strip Art Features<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Chillingly, another viewpoint of World War II came from Keiji Nakazawa in Ore wa Mita<\/em> in which he brought the horrors of the effects of use of the atomic bomb to the next generation of readers. Initially a magazine feature in Japan, it came to America translated by Educomics in 1982 as I Saw It: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Joe Kubert began working with Ervin Rustemati\u0107, he didn\u2019t expect that the head of Strip Art Features would suffer from what would happen during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s. But the challenges of living in a war zone were brought home in Kubert\u2019s picturing of those events in Fax from Sarajevo<\/em>, colored by SAF\u2014and containing accompanying photos and text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her 2013 book collection of Hyperbole and a Half<\/em>, Allie Brosh conveyed, as the cover says, \u201cUnfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened.\u201d Though her imagery bordered on the abstract, it made her messages clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a memoir doesn\u2019t demand a solo artist-writer. Sometimes, a team can work elegantly. Harvey Pekar was a writer, not an artist\u2014but his American Splendor<\/em> series (self-published \u201cfrom off the streets of Cleveland\u201d when it began in 1976) made brilliant use of a variety of collaborative illustrators. Later, his award-winning Our Cancer Year<\/em> with Joyce Brabner and Frank Stack in 1994 took readers into the personal challenges following a cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How-to comics sometimes provide procedures by the numbers. You can do judo!\u00a0Black Cat Comics<\/em>\u00a0#13 (September 1948) \u00a9 2017 Lorne-Harvey Publications, Inc.\u00a0Marvel Mighty Micros: Wolverine vs. Magneto<\/em>\u00a0#76073 provides a total of 17 steps to guide construction of Magneto\u2019s car. (Hey, it\u2019s plastic, so he needs non-magnetic help to build it, right?) \u00a9 2017 The LEGO Group and \u00a9 2017 Marvel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
How To<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

When kids in the 1950s pulled the bricks of Nabisco\u2019s Shredded Wheat out of the box, they also found illustrated cardboard rectangles separating the layers of biscuits. On those were illustrations by Fred Meagher of \u201cStraight Arrow Injun-uities\u201d by Gardner Fox, who was also writing the comics series based on the radio show. Cards included \u201cSwimming, Do\u2019s and Don\u2019ts,\u201d how to use a bow and drill with a fire board, how to make an \u201cIndian Kiln,\u201d how to put together a \u201cBlanket Roll and Pack,\u201d and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will Eisner collectors, of course, know that one of the geniuses of the field put together P.S. Magazine, <\/em>the \u201cPreventive Maintenance Monthly,\u201d for the Army beginning in the 1950s. \u201cDistribute trailer loads equally between rear and fifth wheel. This transfers the load to the trailer.\u201d He produced ongoing, memorable, clear, instructional comic art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, of course, the field of \u201chow to make comics\u201d itself is rife with texts, many in comic-art form. Henry<\/em> artist Carl Anderson advertised a \u201cCartoon & Comic Strip Course\u201d in 1930 and produced How to Draw Cartoons Successfully<\/em> in 1935. Scott McCloud\u2019s award-winning 1993 Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art<\/em> has become a classic reference work. And, of course, his 2006 Making Comics<\/em> has joined it as a fundamental text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Online, Matthew Inman\u2019s The Oatmeal<\/em> may attract viewers for his humor, but his instructional grammar posts have become available as posters\u2014though some may be deemed too edgy for public-school placement. Nevertheless, such features as \u201cHow to Use a Semicolon\u201d (\u201cthe most feared punctuation on Earth\u201d) are clarified by his images. Who could forget Mr. Jenkins in the course of his spider-tossing demonstration of \u201cwho\u201d and \u201cwhom\u201d? And I\u2019d never heard of the mantis shrimp before Inman called its terrors to readers\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comics readers in the 1950s might find self-defense instructions, illustrated dictionaries of Tarzan\u2019s jungle terms, Julius Schwartz\u2019s \u201cFlash Facts\u201d or \u201cMysteries in Space.\u201d These days, well, yes: We often still need sequential diagrams to put together complex constructions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a comic book can be priceless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maggie\u2019s World by Maggie Thompson appears the first Tuesday of every month here on<\/em> Toucan!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Maggie Thompson<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n