In Review Of: Genius, Isolated by Mullaney and Canwell

The artist biography writ large, that is what Genius, Isolated (2011, IDW) is. Unexpectedly hardback and beautifully art directed, one wonders why all biographies can’t be like this.

Well, for one thing, there is pretty much no one like Toth. I say this as both good and bad really, since his reputation precedes him. It colors our opinion of his work as much as the scribbled postcards that show up in Alter Ego, as much as the nostalgia factor of seeing his hand in Space Ghost, Toth the perfectionist crank has become as much of a charicature as the real thing.

But given that this is the first volume of the three volume series, lets get a few things out of the way, because this review is partly a review of the biography, and partly a review of Toth, and how he is a symbol for discussing comics from the past in a general sense. IDW has pulled out all the stops and the volume does practically what I’ve always hopes that an artist biography would be: Plenty of scans from original pages, older photographs, correct annotations, arranged thematically as opposed to simply chronologically (which accounts for the second third volumes breaking both a person’s life up as well as the different periods of work that they created), clear art direction in both layout, and great readability in the typefaces. Hardback, meant to last, even a bookmark ribbon for keeping place. Crisp printing with deep black blacks, essential for someone like Toth.

It does everything right. Interviews with everyone still living that, and research to dig up quotes from past contemporaries to illustrate both Toth’s employment situations as well as his reaction to them. Mullaney and Canwell do a good job of not trying to sweep Toth’s legendary anger under the rug, but, perhaps, trying to give it some context.

So lets ask this question: for a beautiful book like this, is Toth deserving of it?

It may seem like an odd question really. Toth epitomizes “the artist’s artist”. His work had a documented profound effect on his contemporaries, and he’s been labeled a genius too many times to count for his brevity of line, precise and deliberate negative space and pacing acumen, his work drives many an artist to simply shake their head and say, “I can’t layout that panel better than that.” But a read through the book simply points out the utter mediocrity of the early decades of comics, and how, twenty years on from Bob Kane and Bill Finger on Batman, the industry had learned less than nothing about how to do better work.

Small wonder that Toth fumed and exploded on his bosses at, it seems, almost every opportunity. All that artistic talent and no where to go with it.

So yes, to answer my own question, yes Toth the artist deserves a biography of this magnitude, Toth from the pages of the comics doesn’t. Far too many of his stories were utter crap and then they were colored by hacks who lacked the rudimentary ability to simply determine a light source for the panel that they were rolling their crayons over. I go back to the Miller quote, back before Frank went off the deep end, when he said (and I’m paraphrasing here): “People act like we’ve got fifty years of behind us when we have fifty years of crap.” And its true.

And he’s not infallible either. While the letter that he wrote to Steve Rude ripping apart a story that Steve had penciled has circulated around the internet for years, there are certainly choices where his panel to panel transitions don’t quite up. In a way, it’s a relief to see a story where there are times that he’s not perfect either.

And that moves us to an integral part of the artwork: as the Artist's artist, I certainly can look at superior storytelling and recognize it when i see it. I can also recognize lazy storytelling or inept storytelling pretty damn quick. Trying to explain the nuances of WHY Toth's work is superior is an entirely different science, and one that the book doesn't even try to do. And I'm not sure it should. Digging into the semiotics of comics is a complex science, and one that is fraught with misunderstandings. There is not a common language sometimes that even allows to have that discussion on the interwebs, so no wonder the book decides to circumvent the entire discussion. Toth's work passes the smell test for those of us who know good storytelling when we see it. And if you don't give a damn, then you're not likely to be reading this biography.

But it is a joy to see some brilliant pages where Toth’s simplicity and expression shine through in the original black and white, as opposed to through poorly printed and designed color. It is then that all the elements that make Toth that artist’s artist shine through. Beautiful examples are the originals from “The Crushed Gardenia” (Who is Next #5) pages 115-122 and “I Fooled My Heart” (Popular Romance #24) on pages 123-129.

As professionals in this industry, we take on illustrating stories like the ones presented here, stories that almost seem to prove the long held opinion that comics are for mentally deficient humans. Could Toth have adapted to deeper, more adult work had the industry been there for him to work in? Almost certainly.

It’s a shame that he didn’t have the opportunity to work in a world were Maus had won the Pulitzer, where comics had become a medium to be respected. But, sadly, one is left with the idea that Toth, the tortured artist, Toth, the emotionally immature, Alex Toth, always his own worst enemy, would have fucked it up. And that's sad. This was, after all, Toth, the man who refused to get help for his depression and his OCD tendencies.

So I’m left with two questions: when is the next volume coming out? And… if you can do this sort of treatment for Alex Toth, a true luminary, why can’t this be done for the true king of 20th Century comics, for Jack Kirby?

In Review Of: The Hunter by Cooke and Stark

There are a number of exciting works that are coming out or have just come out begging to be read, and one of the ones that was most anticipated, by me at least, was the adaption by Darwyn Cooke of the Richard Stark noir classic, The Hunter.

(Scanned here is the limited edition San Diego Hardcover, which I thought a nice enough package to splurge on while there, even though i have a history of not always keeping the jackets in the best of condition over the years.)

To brass tacks: The Hunter is an interesting adaption for a character who is exceptionally internal, leading to a tremendous amount of information needing to be communicated in the silences and the pauses, in the calm before the storm of Parker erupting on yet another individual. It is a book with a difficult protagonist to get behind in some ways, and yet terribly easy to in others. As a crook, he's the audience's bad boy identification, the life that we could lead if we all had the balls and savvy to do so, but he doesn't make it easy for the reader: very few of us, with fantasies of ripping people off and living the high life imagine taking a knife and cutting off the face of our ex-wife. its like vaccinated time travel: we don't want to travel back to the middle ages with out knowing that we can't catch the plague, and we want to live our vicarious crime fantasies in a bloodless way. Stark (and i use Westlake's nom de plume here as that is the part of him writing the book, so i feel its appropriate) isn't going to make anything simple about Parker.

Except that there is little difficult to get about the revenge plot. The devil is in the details here, we've seen revenge stories, and what sets them apart from one another, like romantic comedies, is how well all the small stuff plays out. Do we buy the details? The answer, in some places is yes, but not in all places.

Cooke's The Hunter is an admirable effort and a hell of a lot of work, but it doesn't succeed on all levels. There are moments where Cooke's monochromatic pallette is somewhat limited in its ability to convey everything that he's trying to do. An early scene between Parker and Lynn plays perfectly, Cooke moves the camera focal point around, dropping outlines around the softness of Lynn's hair without sacrificing the density of black in Parker's suit as well as his shadowed face. The strength of his physical presence is portrayed powerfully even in the small shots, as is Lynn's vulnerability. Later in the book, however, when the same scene is portrayed twice, from two different vantage points of the naked gangster leaping for his gun as Parker comes in through the window, neither of them has the clarity necessary to make the visual aspect of the scene as powerful as we want it to be, nor as powerful as the story needs it to be.

Oddly, the advertising for The Hunter is less monochromatic than the book itself. I saw the promo poster again today at my LCS, and the blacks were highlighted by reds and oranges, and I fully expected that the book itself would change colors as we went along, but no, all i got were the same muddy dark aqua tones mixed with the black. Its not that it doesn't work but its also not what i was expecting given the way that they advertised it.

I've seen Cooke taken to task on another review for not being able to play down his own "cuteness" with his character design and it is true: all the women in the book pretty much come from his own style of the adorable 50's chick, which may be a minor quibble, but it does pull us out of the graphic nature of the road weary Parker making his way across the country to get his revenge. The waitress on the cafe on page 13 is beyond cute, and I'm not sure that it was until later in the book when Parker and Wanda have their conversation that i thought that a female character broke the mold. Wanda, make no mistake is a hottie, but as the conversation progresses and Parker pushes her for information, does her mask slip and we see her other face: the calculating and scheming side. As an "actress", Wanda needs to move from the soft to the hard, and there has to be a coldness as well as an instinct for self preservation that has to show through.

The set pieces are good, and Cooke doesn't hit us over the head with the details to sell the book. If every chair is an Ames chair, then so what, most of us weren't buying funiture in the 1950's. This is a stylized look at 1962, not a literal look. Cooke's storyboard ability to make us understand the action works particularly well at the finale, when another artist might have botched getting us through the chase sequence. the action is clear and storytelling solid, something that has to happen for us to "buy" the ending.

I find the decision to drop the panel borders through the entire book interesting, just as i was reading some of Bryan Hitch's FF issues, where he does the same thing. As a formalist gesture, I'm not sure that bleeding every panel out into a loose gutter works, just as i'm not sure that you need to heavily border each panel as well. Scott McCloud must be licking his chops to put together another first person essay on the merits of borderless comics. There are moments where I want the eye to not be able to flow into the negative space between the panel, even with how careful Cooke has been with creating a lack of bad tangents through out the entire book. I think that I would want to limit the movement with the borders and bleed off others. (The short subway scene inthe book reminded me of Eisner's subway into to an old Spirit story, with the panel's being jostled back and forth like an out of control "E" train. The openness of the layouts always bothered me, as I was always terribly conscious of the ceiling, the closeness of the wall, the limits of my vision on a subway car. Anytime i draw a subway, i show the ceiling.)

Is it perfect? No. Does Cooke's version of The Hunter kick some butt? yeah, its a solid read. In trying to hit the ball out of the park, however, I think that it falls a little short, but its a hell of a lot of work, and i'll be right there to pick up the next one next year when they release it. For now, it goes on the shelf next to Steranko's Chandler and my Black Lizard crime reissues of The Thin Man and The Long Goodbye.