I am so taken by the art of graphic novel production that I can easily find myself drawn into a world felt so dearly in my youth, of comics: peppered with Dilbert and Calvin & Hobbes and Beano, Dandy n Beezer.. and of course, Tintin. But now, beyond that, struck with Watchmen, one of the most epic beasts of literature in all fields, with full illustration to boot, itself a wonder of parallel narratives, endless connected tissues throughout mankind’s repertoire making the text actually infinite.
Otherwise, I’ve experienced other adult comics that also seem to employ the mass appeal of the square box graphic in similar fashions, using windows to share theme through numerous focalizers while depending on a variety of complex and non-complex visual art. Watchmen itself was nearly all highly complex art, Curses, another recently acquired favourite by Kevin Huizenga, utilizes a mostly simplistic drawing technique, a feature with a lot of open, blank space for areas of textual breathing, of reader absorption and deep consideration. The book explores a great deal of theological philosophy, mirroring each comic in motive but never in expression. The nuances between each piece within the text are moderate while explicit, unexpected while brazenly indiscreet. Like Watchmen, it reaches deep into the soul of humankind, the lonely wretched product of a masterful evolutionary process, but unlike Watchmen, which does its delving from a bleak sense of postmodern pragmatism, Huizenga’s Curses challenges the exquisitely obscure primate intellect through a rich and attention-filled look at its own deep culture of folklore, one that has not lost its significance in the world today, if perhaps the attitudinal reason behind such significance.
This said, Huizenga’s book is an extremely contemporary read, one that makes informed connections between the ever-growing history of theological reason, folklore, and the era that such concepts have led us to, whether we can gladly accept that or not. In any case, such notions give endless justification to the ongoing study of language and its communicative transmission, and, oh yeah, stories.
No matter what, even if (god forbid) in (knock on wood) so-ever-many-years-from-now when the planet’s inhabitants have run of luck (as it were..), and Earth has thus been reverted to a Wall-E-esque existence of post-sapien proportions (can barely picture it), these graphic novels would remain significant long after the last fading novels of pure text, of yellowed script and smudged ink were gone! So any graphic novels left on this beautiful and remote lush island of the universe could be left to whatever alien entities (oh gee whiz, there he goes!) that might happen to traverse this spatial plane at one particular moment in later time! That they might piece together the wonders that were, the joys beheld, the beauty perceived, the essence realized. For here on Earth, life is good. From my meager n feeble subjectivity I can perceive a balanced and comfortable idea of “good”, and I know of this good in my own self. My essence is realized in my happy comprehension of these facts, and in the contented effort to contribute my feelings and ideas in moments that I can to those that might be receptive.
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