Strip Search: Fixed Art Comics
On alternating Thursdays, Jennifer M. Babcock reviews and recommends comic strips available in print and on the web.
What are they?
Usually they look like comics that are made with Clip Artwork or have images that are copied and pasted from panel to panel (or both). Here’s one example:
Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North
Here’s another example:
Red Meat by Max Cannon
What’s up with this? I thought comics were supposed to be about striking a balance between word AND image.
In Red Meat, the panels are basically the same pictures repeated over and over again – it is essentially a “talking head” comic but without the expressive emotion of an artist’s hand. With Dinosaur Comics, you’re seeing the exact same panel layout today as you did yesterday but with different text. In both examples, it doesn’t seem like the images matter at all – and if that’s the case, what’s the point of using a comics format? Can’t this work just as effectively without the pictures? Not so much.
And here’s my 2 cents on why: Much like how there was a point behind Warhol’s Death and Disaster Series and his numerous Campbell’s Soup Cans, I think there is something to be said about the visual affect of fixed art comics. The repetition of figures in Red Meat creates a mechanical visual pattern that heightens the sense of the quotidian. By the time we reach the last panel containing the often violent or dark punchline, the discrepancy between the text with the dull rhythm of the repeated images creates the ultimate non-sequitur. What else can we do but laugh at the absurd?
Dinosaur Comics has the same affect, though it achieves this slightly differently from Red Meat. Red Meat has the same image repeated in its panel in a single strip though the characters and layout may change the next day. Dinosaur Comics, however, has a different panel per strip. Its repetition lies in its layout, which has been used in almost every update since its beginnings in 2003. The text doesn’t always (ever, maybe?) fit what’s going on in the panels but I suppose that adds to its absurd humor. If you took the images away, the comic would just fall flat on its face. I mean, what’s funnier than a T-Rex screaming “Lesbians!”? Doesn’t it make you wonder what that crazy dino going to scream tomorrow? I’m sure wonderin.’
So you see, it’s not that these creators are lazy or bad artists. It’s a choice that best serves the comic.
Jennifer M. Babcock holds her MA in art history and is currently pursuing her doctorate in Egyptology from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, where she is also known as a comics scholar. A creator herself, she is the artist and writer behind C’est La Vie, which is syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate and available at http://www.gocomics.com/cestlavie.
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