ESSAY // 1.23.03

CITIZEN KAVALIER
by Mike Medina

Comics creators have long acknowledged that the form needs to recognize the accomplishments of other media in order to expand its own borders. Art is not created in a vacuum, and in its own struggle to develop comics finds itself in a position to benefit from the experiments of diverse form. As media that only came on the scene in the last century, film and comics have had a peculiarly symbiotic relationship to one another. At its best, the form of comics should not be merely dismissed as story boards for film; the dynamics of page layout and spatial juxtaposition firmly differentiate comics and movies. While film has surpassed comics in terms of popularity, it still turns to comics not only for content, but for its visual vocabulary. However, a recent piece of fiction illustrates how comics can learn fundamental lessons of storytelling from film as opposed to simply emulating popular content.

In the novel THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY, author Michael Chabon tells the story of a pair of cousins who create an adventure hero called The Escapist in the late thirties. After having great success with the character, both creators begin to feel disappointed by the comics medium. Writer Sam Clay tiredly accepts comics reputation as a low art form, while his cousin and partner, Joe Kavalier, is frustrated by the formal limitations placed on the medium and the self-perpetuating cycle that keeps him from being able to free himself from the confines of those "nine little boxes." When the partners see the film CITIZEN KANE, they are inspired to change their approach to comics storytelling. Kavalier, the artist of the team, perceives Welles' masterpiece as the ultimate manifestation of what comics could be: the seamless integration of narrative and image.

Among the many innovations of CITIZEN KANE is the use of camera shots in which the eye is constantly led back to the focal point of the image and, thus, the narrative. Director Orson Welles and Cinematographer Gregg Toland have essentially taken all the elements of perspective, lighting, scenery, character, and arranged them to create narrative through imagery. They constructed image in the frame to reinforce the plot. This is akin to what comics artists like Jack Kirby did. The techniques that people associate with Kirby, dynamic staging and simplified drawing style, are very much in tune with the Expressionist techniques employed by CITIZEN KANE, albeit with a more action-oriented approach.

Expressionism as a movement eschews natural representation in favor of exaggerated forms, skewed angles and subjective lighting in order to convey an emotional position relative to the narrative. In this light, it could be argued that comics have been the chief pop-culture proponent of Expressionism for last half of the 20th century all the way up until the present day. Add to that the fact that pretty much every artist worth mentioning since Kirby has come into contact with of The King's style by virtue of its sheer ubiquity, and it becomes readily apparent that Expressionism's tropes, if not its highbrow stature, have been a constant influence on comics for decades.

Even those who fancy themselves realists cannot escape Expressionism's grasp. Will Eisner makes it a point to say that he has always been interested in comics ability to convey a sense of realism. Eisner, however, relies heavily on caricature to give the reader insight into the nature of his characters. While caricature may not normally be considered a staple of Expressionism, it still operates on the principle that the artist is using his lines not to represent thing as they really are, but as he or she would like the audience to perceive them. Eisner has also said that he often chose to use theater lighting whenever possible to make his compositions more dramatic. As demonstrated by CITIZEN KANE, the use of lighting is an integral part of establishing mood or directing the viewer's eye to relevant details.

While KAVALIER AND CLAY is a work of fiction, it plausibly illustrates how comics can learn from other media. In this example, comics uses film to learn the lessons of Expressionism. While Expressionism's direct influence on the pioneers of comics art is debatable, the two still share many of the same characteristics. In this way, comics and film have played off one another to assimilate these characteristics and thus perpetuate them in the current era of mass communication.