Corriere dei Piccoli

A window onto a past window onto the past
This weekend I was excited to receive a gift of 38 tearsheets from Corriere dei Piccoli, the legendary children's supplement to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. A friend had owned them forever, forgetting just where they came from; having no idea what to do with them, he gave them to me! From hints in the articles I gather they were originally published in late 1933 and perhaps early 1934.

The pages were from two series of educational color pages illustrated by an artist whose signature I can't make out. The first series, "Come vestivano" ("How They Dressed"), pictured costumes from different regions and historical periods. Most of the subjects were Italian, though topics included things like "Costumes of the French Revolution" and "Costumes of Characters in The Three Musketeers." The example below presents Italian dress in the late 1300s. The text characterizes the "trecento" as having planted the seeds of modern united Italy. The drawings are rather nice and are given plenty of space.
The other series, closely related to the first, was "L'oriente favoloso" ("The Fabulous East"). Like the first series the pictures concentrated on costuming. The text presented general information about various Asian countries and their culture. This example discusses India, with an emphasis on how the caste system creates strife between classes and ethnic groups.The reverse sides of these pages provide an interesting glimpse into Italy of the 1930s. The pages are divided between a long article on some kid-related subject (this one is about "The World of Toys") and display ads. The ads are a mixed bag: many are directed at the kids themselves, but most seem to be aimed at their parents. In the sample below we find ads for a meat extract, a salt solution for soaking tired feet, a dentifrice (available as liquid, paste or powder), and a supplier of uniforms for the several Fascist youth organizations (flags and badges, too!).I have a particular fondness for Corriere dei Piccoli (roughly, The Children's Courier), because through it I was introduced to the world of European comics. In the late 1960s an Italian deli near my university stocked a handful of Italian magazines, among them CdP. Though I didn't know it, by that time CdP was in its final decline after running over half a century (the supplement began in 1908). It had long ago transformed from a newspaper supplement into a glossy weekly magazine of some 60 pages. Most of its comics were translations of Belgian Tintin features: Bruno Brazil, Bernard Prince, Michel Vaillant, etc. Being ignorant, I assumed at first these were Italian series. Only later did I discover the Belgian connection. 48-page adventures were serialized several pages per week. Occasionally a special issue would run a long story in its entirety; for example an adaptation of The Great Locomotive Chase by Argentinian cartoonist Arturo del Castillo.

Though a minority, original Italian material appeared, too. It was in CdP that I first encountered Aldo di Gennaro, Giorgio Trevisan, irrepressible Benito Jacovitti, and above all the incredible Dino Battaglia. Even Hugo Pratt popped up from time to time, though I didn't appreciate him until later when I discovered Corto Maltese.

During the time I was reading Corriere dei Piccoli signs of change appeared. The biggest change came in 1972 following a reader referendum. The venerable magazine's title was changed to Corriere dei Ragazzi. In 1908, piccoli, like its English equivalent children, was commonly applied to all pre-teens. But by the 1970s youths found the term demeaning. Ragazzi carried a connotation similar to kids in English. (Interestingly, children/kids went through a similar process in America about the same time.) Interior pages began appearing in black plus one color rather than full color. Going through a succession of editors, cost-cutting, and format changes, CdR finally limped to a conclusion in 1985. By that time I'd lost track of it.

Here's to dear old Corriere dei Piccoli, to which I owe a great debt...if only for introducing me to Battaglia and Jacovitti. As for also introducing me to I Puffi... well, we can't win 'em all.

Storytelling--1

Plus That Script!
In an interview given many years ago, Alex Toth advocated that comic artists should "plus" a script when converting it into drawings. The term comes from animation, and refers to enriching a story by inserting visual bits--background details, poses, actions--that don't appear in the script.

It's similar to what happens in movies. If a scene features two actors talking, the actors seldom just stand there and yak at each other. They'll perform some sort of business that tells something about their character while adding movement to a static scene. For some reason, though comic artists frequently enliven scenes with interesting camera angles, they often don't go much further.

Recently I re-read two stories that showed what a master Toth was at plussing a scene. One was from the 1970s, when he was drawing romance stories for Charlton; the other is a Dell movie adaptation from the late 50s. Before looking at the Toth panel, let's look at a typical dialogue exchange from another story in the same issue. The penciller is Charles Nicholas.
This setup tells the basic story well enough, but the eye-level camera and static poses lend the scene a generic look. The impression isn't helped by the casual background. This room has no personality; it could be any room anywhere. Now let's look at how Toth illustrated a dialogue exchange that could easily have been presented in the same way:Not much happens in this panel. The narrator (a movie star) drives away while her friend and the guy they both love discuss her departure. But the panel is exciting because everything Toth draws gives the scene a unique personality. Instead of a generic house Toth has created a "Bel Air mansion" appropriate to a temperamental movie star. He stages the scene in deep perspective. Matt strikes a dynamic pose we understand without needing to see his face. The star is driving off not in some generic car but an expensive Porsche. Its cockpit is crammed with luggage. All the smaller background details--the shadow of palm trees, the cobblestone street, the tile roof--shout "Southern California Richville." This scene has individuality, and the story is better for it.

Creating well-thought-out backgrounds is a great way to plus a script. Consider this panel from the Dell adaptation of Clint and Mac, a youth-targeted mystery-adventure set in London. It's easy to picture the script for what might have been a throwaway panel. Smith, the guy in the trench coat, returns to his apartment expecting to meet his accomplice Toby. Smith calls out but Toby isn't there. Here's how Toth interpreted the scene:
This panel is an entire book about Smith. As written the character is a typical bad guy without much depth. But when composing this scene Toth asked himself, "Who is Smith? How would he live?" So we see a cheap, impossibly cramped room with wet laundry hung over an old-fashioned stove to dry. A couple of magazines are thrown onto the rumpled bed. He's not a total slob, though: while his clothes are tossed over a chair, his dishes are done. Smith (like Toth) is apparently a car fancier: other than the calendar his only decoration is a print of an old automobile. The blind is pulled halfway down; Smith dislikes either the sunlight or prying neighbors. Smith has become a real person. This is what plussing a script is all about.

Still one might ask, "Is there a point to this?" It's a fair question. After all the Clint and Mac panel really was incidental to the story. Its basic idea could have been got across in a simpler way. Is Toth just showing off? Comics as a medium are admittedly less involving than movies. People tend to read them quickly without scrutinizing each panel. However I believe that, just as happens in movies, thoughtful plussing subliminally adds to a reader's experience of the story, allowing him or her to take away from it more than was originally there.

Technique Talk--4

The Need for Speed (continued)
In the last post we looked at speedy Frank Godwin fighting the Deadline Doom in some old Connie strips. We agreed that speed is king in the commercial art world.

In my day the undisputed kings of speed were the Filipino comic artists. Almost to a man they could produce quality finished work at dazzling speed. Alfredo Alcala, Nestor Redondo, Fred Carillo, Tony de Zuniga, E.R. Cruz...the list goes on and on.

When these guys stopped working for comic books they moved to the better-paying animation industry as designers and storyboard artists. That’s where I got to know--and admire--many of them. One artist I especially enjoyed talking to was Abel Laxamana. Out of all the Filipino artists I knew Abel was the only one inclined to intellectualize about comic art. In one of our discussions I asked him how Filipino cartoonists came to be so damn fast.

Above, Abel Laxamana

He explained that during the heyday of Filipino comics (the 50s and 60s) there were plenty of comics published, but the pay rate was abysmal. To make even a modest living an artist had to produce lots of pages. You either learned to be fast or you sank.

Interestingly, this situation shaped the entire culture of Filipino comics. Though the pay was low publishers demanded a high standard of artwork. Face it: when you have to live up to guys like Francisco Coching and Alfredo Alcala, you’d better be good.

Above: The Man, Francisco Coching

This was the origin of the Filipino studio system. An established artist, eager to make more money, contracted with publishers to deliver more work than he could possibly do himself. To keep his commitment he hired assistants, often newer artists who hadn’t yet cracked the big time. The veteran artist paid his assistants from the income and took a percentage for himself. The assistants got plenty of experience and dreamed of the day they’d be good enough to approach publishers personally, overcommit on their own contracts, hire their own assistants, and take their own percentage.

Above: Nestor Redondo

The publishers didn’t care whether artists used assistants, but they did insist that the art delivered to them look like the veteran artist’s work. Thus it was critical that assistants learned to imitate closely the master’s style. Out of this system arose the Filipino National Style.
Americans often criticized Filipino artists for “all looking alike.” Like all generalizations this was simplistic; Filipino artists had individual styles just like all cartoonists. But like all generalizations, this one had a grain of truth. The similarity between Filipino artists’ styles was greater than that of artists in any country except perhaps Japan.

At the root of this phenomenon was, of course, the studio system. If you’re assisting Nestor Redondo, you learn to draw like Nestor Redondo. Later when you become a lead artist yourself and establish your personal style, you’ll still show a strong Redondo influence. Inevitably you’ll pass some of that influence to your assistant, and so on.

Above: Fred Carillo

Once I asked Fred Carillo for his Secret of Speedy Drawing. To him the key was visualizing exactly what you would put on the page, then drawing it directly with a minimum of wasted movement. While visualizing would mean a second or two spent not drawing, the time taken to make the drawing time would be cut dramatically. Fred pointed out how I (and so many other artists) wasted time figuring out what to do on the paper, sketching, scribbling and redrawing. His approach was like alla prima painting: visualize the stroke, put it down, and leave it.

As I said last post, speed drawing reveals just how good you really are. The downside is that no matter how good you are, to stay ahead of the game you make compromises.

Above: E. R. Cruz

Instead of researchiing a car you draw a generic car, or re-use stock characters. Perhaps all your characters start looking alike. This was the Achilles’ heel of E.R. Cruz, a speed demon among speed demons. He had one young-man face and one young-woman face; if there were two young men in a story it was difficult to tell them apart. And finally, as Abel once suggested, when you wanted to slow down and really take time on a piece you might find you don’t remember how.

All the same, if you want to see top-grade comic art done at speeds that would make an American’s head spin, check out the oeuvre of Coching, Alcala, Redondo and their brethren. It’s amazing.

The art in this post was found at the website museum.alanguilan.com. This guy's collection is incredible; you mustn't miss his site if you appreciate great comic art.

Technique Talk--3

The Need for Speed
While working on a Connie collection recently, I encountered an example of a capable artist pushed to the wall by deadlines. Frank Godwin was known as both a prolific and a reliable craftsman. He always seemed to be doing several things at once: magazine illustration, his own comic strips, ghost work on others’ strips, book illustrations, agency work. But in 1938 work seems to have gotten the best of him.

Godwin always drew Connie quickly. Even when at the top of his game he worked in a fast, calligraphic manner quite different from the lush style he used years later on Rusty Riley. But during the course of four short stories we see him working faster and faster until, it seems, he is overwhelmed.

At the beginning of the period, Godwin looks like this: fast, but taking time to work up his figures and putting thought into staging and atmosphere.Gradually his drawing speeds up. Figures are sketchier, often looking as if Godwin has drawn them directly with the pen. Backgrounds (admittedly seldom of much interest to Godwin during this period) become little masterpieces of indication. Check out the last panel.By the time he starts the third story line, the strain is beginning to show. Finished panels still appear occasionally, but backgrounds are often reduced to a couple of lines or vanish altogether. Godwin begins cheating with head shots and talking airplanes.By the fourth story Godwin is desperate. Almost every panel is a head-and-shoulders shot, and backgrounds--well, just take a look at this sequence, which opens at a Central American airport, then moves to the hero’s hotel or wherever he’s staying.Alas, the effort is in vain. The last week of the continuity is ghosted by another artist, and the following story is entirely ghost work.So what happened? Illness? Taking on too much work? Too much partying? Of course we’ll never know. But the story told by those ever more rapid drawings started me pondering the role of speed in comics.

Anyone who’s been in the business knows that speed is king in the art world. Speed trumps quality: a mediocre artist who makes every deadline is more valuable than a supremely talented artist who’s unreliable. Interconnected demands of clients, publishing schedules, busy printers, and overloaded distributors don’t leave much wiggle room. You want to survive as an artist, you have to be fast.

An interesting thing about working fast is that it strips you down to your basic abilities. No time for reworking or redrawing; you wham it down and leave it. Your good points stand out and your weaknesses jump up and down screaming. Looking at this Connie speed session one sees just how good a draughtsman Godwin was. Even at breakneck speed he still draws beautifully--he just draws less.

In my next post I’ll talk a bit more about speed, represented by the record holders of speedy comic book production: the cartoonists of the Philippines’ “golden age” of comics.

Marking time

Where You At?

It's been too long since I posted here. Life has been a bit too interesting...spent a couple days in the hospital after going to Emergency with what seemed to be the big Heart Attack. After countless tests and investigations it became clear my heart was fine--thank heaven! I seem to have experienced the notorious Acid Reflux (which American TV viewers know intimately thanks to endless commercials). Its symptoms can resemble the Big One but it's considerably less serious. So I'm taking my medicine like a good boy and paying closer attention to my diet. I can take a hint!

More soon.

George Tuska, Comics Artist

Why Weren't the Tuska's Looser?

Lately Ger Apeldoorn has been posting a retrospective of work by George Tuska, one of the underrated comic artists of the 50s and 60s. Ger has a fine collection of both newspaper and comic book pages. I strongly recommend taking a look.

Seeing this work reminded me about an aspect of Tuska's work that puzzled me ever since my unsuccessful trip to New York in the 1980s seeking work from Marvel. Art director John Romita gave me photocopies of pencilled pages to ink as samples. He chose work by the tightest pencillers, so I went home with covers by Gil Kane and Jack Kirby, and interior pages by the Georges Perez and Tuska.

(At left is a page from Iron Man #8, in which Tuska got a better-than- average ink job from Johnny Craig.)

Tuska was the regular Iron Man penciller. He was almost always inked by Mike Esposito. Like most fans back then I found the book capable but dull--a judgement often applied to Tuska's work in general. Personally I'd always had a soft spot for Tuska, having grown up with his Buck Rogers newspaper strip. In college a collector friend introduced me to Tuska's crime strips for Lev Gleason. I gained a new appreciation for the artist. The crime comics showed a skill range that wasn't always obvious in Buck Rogers. Still, based on his Marvel art and his occasional appearances at Harvey and Gold Key, I'd concluded that Tuska was a competent artist with a somewhat simple, cartoon-oriented style that didn't belong in superhero comics.

(This page from Crime Does Not Pay is typical of George's Lev Gleason work, though some other strips were heavier on backgrounds. Two Gleason trademarks: some guy hit some other guy once a page, and the #@$%! dialogue was so heavy there was little room for the art.)

I wasn't ready for what I saw in his Iron Man pencils. They were beautiful! The first surprise was how fully they were rendered, sometimes almost to the point of being tonal drawings. Many pages, especially the "street clothes" pages, featured elaborately worked out light and shade. The action pages burst with both enthusiasm and careful drawing. The stuff knocked me out. I diligently (though unsuccessfully) tried to do them justice. One page I especially liked. Tony Stark was out of costume and floating in the East River. A tugboat rescued him, after which he returned home to maunder awhile. The lighting on this page was worthy of the finest Caniffist. Several months later the comic came out. That wonderful page had become a bland nonentity indistinguishable from the other equally lifeless pages in the issue. It wasn't like Esposito pulled a Colletta and ignored Tuska's pencils. The backgrounds were complete and the shadows were still there, but somehow all the life had been sucked out of them. Looking back I wonder if it was even possible to do them justice in ink.

(This pencilled panel, lifted from Kurt Busiek's website, is from later in Tuska's career. It's nice, but looser than the ones I remember.)

I came away with a new appreciation for Tuska's craft, but I was also puzzled by the disparity between these pencils and the way Tuska drew when he inked his own work. The assembly-line specialization of American comics encourages the presumption that "nobody can ink his own pencils." But whether an artist's inks are weak or strong, stylistically they usually resemble his pencilling. In Tuska's case it was almost as if two entirely different ways of thinking informed pencils and inks. Inked Tuska drawings were two-dimensional: postery, outline-driven, cartoon-like if you will. The Tuska pencilled drawings were three-dimensional, driven by light and form--illustration-like you could say.(This Scorchy Smith daily from 1959 is inked in the Buck Rogers style Tuska also used for his solo comic book work.)

A couple of years ago I found Tuska's official website, run by a relative or a friend or somebody with access to the artist. It was my chance to hear the artist's own thoughts about his differing styles. The webmaster passed my question to him and I received a cordial reply. Unfortunately my enquiry must not have been as clear as I thought, for Tuska answered an entirely different question. I felt it would be rude to press the issue, so I didn't write back. Now I'll never know.

I wish I had copies of those pages. Back when I did them, in the days before scanners, it was a big deal for a starving fanboy to find a copy shop and pay for oversize copies. I returned the copies with my inking samples and that was that.

(Postscript: I must confess that seeing those Iron Man pages prejudiced me, probably unfairly, against Mike Esposito's inking. This surely isn't fair to a major figure in the history of American comics, but when one starts out as a fan it's hard to shake the fannish propensity to judge artists by unrealistic standards.)

Comical Politics

The Laughing Right and the Action-Packed Left: Part 1 of 2

This is the first part of a two-part ramble inspired by Allan Holtz's comments regarding a small-circulation conservative-commentary strip. In this post I wonder, “Why is it so hard to create a successful conservative satire strip?” Next time I ask, “Why is it so hard to create a successful liberal action hero strip?”

[Prefatory note: In these posts I use the generic terms “liberal” and “conservative” as they are understood--or misunderstood--in modern popular American discourse. I don't pretend to follow classic definitions of these terms. Americans threw those out the window long ago. Furthermore, since I've never lived anywhere but in the USA I can't speak about anyone else's varieties of liberalism and conservativism.]

It's easy to name topical comic strips from the last 50 years with a liberal slant. Pogo, Doonesbury, and Bloom County spring immediately to mind. Yet despite the overwhelmingly conservative bent of American media, only one conservative strip has gained much of a foothold: Bruce Tinsley's Mallard Fillmore.

Mallard has been successful in readership terms, but it's hard to call it funny. Funny isn't what Mallard Fillmore is about. A typical daily is a frontal attack upon something Tinsley doesn't like. Though presented in strip format, Mallard Fillmore is less a conservative take on liberal strips than it is an extension of the old-fashioned partisan political cartoon. Liberal strips can be equally partisan--during its heyday Doonesbury was frequently run on the opinion page--but they usually follow story strip traditions, peopling a world with a cast of characters and presenting commentary within the context of a storyline.

Setting aside this matter of form, if American values are as reliably conservative as the media claim, why haven't the last few decades produced as many right-wing satire strips as left-wing? The knee-jerk answer is to blame the “liberal media,” but that's as useful as saying “the devil did it,” especially considering that the conservative giants who own modern media would probably love to have a few more strips on their side.

The Leftersons, produced for small weeklies, regularly ridiculed liberals for being liberals. (Source: Holtz)

I think a key point is that much American humor concerns the Little Guy putting one over on the Big Man. Americans have always pictured themselves as Little Guys. Both liberal and conservative “Little Guys” delight in seeing someone in power cut down to size, be it a boss, a politician, or a millionaire. This kind of humor is rooted in dissatisfaction with the way things are and a desire to find a vaguely-defined “better life.”

A similar dissatisfaction underlies liberal criticism. Liberal satire suggests that while things may suck right now, we can improve them by changing the power structure. On the other hand, American conservatives think the power structure is fine as it is; problems arise when malcontents insist on messing it up. This puts conservative satirists at something of a disadvantage. You can't collect laughs at the expense of the Big Man if you share the Big Man's views.

Holtz says George, another minor weekly, alternated politics with generic gags.

Another factor is that modern American conservatism holds certain core assumptions as inarguable. This is a visceral, not an intellectual, position. A bumper sticker I once saw sums it up: “God said it. I believe it. That's that.” American political conservatism interlocks so well with religious fundamentalism because both take certain questions (e.g. the Bible is God's word, American wars are just wars) off the table. The possibility that following these core beliefs may have caused serious errors can never enter the discussion.

Contrast this to American liberals, who in their quest for societal justice tend to analyze and question almost everything. This isn't to say that liberals don't have their inarguables. Liberals don't like to consider whether racial and gender equality really are desirable, or whether some people are born superior to others and will inevitably rise to wealth and power. But for the most part liberals thrive on intellectual debates rich in analysis and nuance. Faced with a war liberals want to dissect its origins, morality, and consequences. To conservatives the mere fact the war exists trumps everything. They want to talk patriotic duty and to rally the home front in support of the troops.

On reflection one realizes that an analytical, nuanced world view provides more satirical ammunition than an absolutist view. A liberal satirist has more things to talk about. Liberals can attack a war from a dozen different angles. Pro-war conservatives are limited either to defending the conflict (seldom a great source of jokes) or attacking the liberals for objecting.

An amusing aspect of Mallard Fillmore's direct commentary approach is that this parody, from America (The Book), could easily have been the real thing.

Unable to attack a status quo they support, conservative cartoonists wind up attacking attackers of the status quo for daring to attack it. It's rather a second-hand sort of humor. It definitely lacks the satisfying immediacy of a good right to the Boss's chops.

Another galling restriction on conservative cartoonists is that many earlier traditions in America-first humor were based overtly on racial or ethnic prejudice. Times have changed, and today even many conservatives find that kind of humor distasteful. Racially motivated criticism has reinvented itself as (safer) economic criticism: yesterday's shiftless “Negro” has become a resource-sapping Welfare Queen; the old “Brown Tide” threatening racial purity is now an army of economy-wrecking immigrant laborers. Old standby religious prejudices are equally tricky. Ridiculing Jews clashes with the religious conservative's obsession with protecting Israel. Blasting Catholics irks Hispanics who, though part of the Brown Tide, provide support for conservative positions against abortion and homosexuality. No wonder that conservative humor's safest bet is to attack liberals for being liberals.

Just why it's bad to be a liberal is left vague. Questions of “why” would introduce nuance into the discussion, and liberals might seem to have valid points. The conservative media's most awesome achievement during the past forty-some years has been to recast the very word “liberal” into a badge of shame which even liberals take pains to avoid. The perception of “centrist” has been driven so far to the right that today's wishy-washy liberal is given treatment once reserved for ultra-left Godless Commies.

As American business and government have merged into a corporate super-state, actions necessary to maintain profits--outsourcing manufacturing, curtailing social programs, narrowing individual rights--increasingly hurt small-town voters who form the traditional conservative base. Embracing the notion that someone is ridiculous simply because he bears the “liberal” badge makes it possible for conservative Little Guys to rally to defend the very people who are foreclosing their homes and sending their jobs overseas.

The upshot of all this is that the conservative cartoonist attacks not the liberal's issues but the liberal's credentials. A viewpoint is ridiculous simply because a liberal holds it. That's how we get cartoons like this “Mallard Fillmore” daily:

To a conservative cartoonist this panel may make some kind of sense. “Hate crime” is just a fancy label for somebody hurting someone a liberal likes. But people are always hurting other people, so trying to categorize and prioritize the hurts is typical liberal silliness.

But just beneath the surface this joke equates the commission of hate crimes--crimes motivated solely by racial or ethnic prejudice--with the natural forces that drive carnivores to eat weaker creatures. In other words, it's natural for heterosexuals to murder homosexuals. I suspect if the point were presented in this way even some rock-ribbed conservative Little Guys would holler. By carefully remaining on the surface the conservative cartoonist avoids too much analysis. That means endless variations on one joke--”aren't these liberals silly!” And that just ain't funny.

Next post: why it's damned near impossible to do a liberal action hero comic.