Graphitti as comics? Has anyone seen this?

I saw a documentary on graphitti and graphitti artists back in high school and I was inordinately impressed with the skill some of the artists had. Where I grew up, though, we had no such cool art. In fact, the only graphitti of any sort I recall seeing in person was on a nearby underpass where the word "pharoahs" (yes, it was spelled incorrectly) was crudely scrawled out over the eight support pylons.

Now, I know there are plenty of examples of comic style illustrations in graphitti. A quick Google search will turn up images like these...

But these aren't really comics, are they? There's no story, certainly, but nothing to that even suggests sequential art. They're still images, and they speak more to the symbology represented by the characters than telling a story.

And then you've got projects like this...
... which is very cool and impressive AND tell a story of sorts but, again, it's not comics.

Now, admittedly, I've never really lived in an area where graphitti was really raised to an art form and most of what I do see is painted over very quickly anyway. So my question goes out to the folks who live in closer proximity to good graphitti: have you seen examples of graphitti being used as the medium for a comic story or sequential art? Where there are a series of still pictures conveying a deliberate sequence? (Wow. Sounds a little like I'm channelling Scott McCloud there. Not intentional, I assure you.) Are there good examples out there for comics created as graphitti?

Fumetti, if you're unfamiliar with the term, is a form of comics where the images used are photographs instead of drawings. It's never been a particularly popular style here in the United States. I suspect this is largely because that the mass printing technology available didn't work on photos very well until the 1960s and, by then, the superhero genre was already doing a good job of crowding out other possibilities.

My introduction to it was in National Lampoon where the used to run short "Foto-Funnies." They usually seemed to center around the double entendre inherent in the word "strip" although I don't recall that reference ever being made explicit. The humor was generally pretty juvenile, and the comics seemed largely like an excuse for the magazine's producers to stare at naked women. Here's an example of the type of comic they often went with...

Really? Even when I was 13, I knew that didn't make sense and was an excuse to get a woman to undress in front of a camera. (Of course, I was 13 and didn't care because, well, I was 13 and looking at a naked woman!)

I don't remember seeing any that were actually sexy at all. There were some, in fact, that it was completely irrelevant who the people were -- there just needed to be two talking heads -- but they'd still have the woman topless for no reason. Still photos of boobs were pretty much the extent of the rationale behind the comics.

In that sense, I understood the benefit of fumetti (a term I wouldn't learn until years later) over illustration: you could get a greater sense of realism in depicting the human figure. If that was all you were really trying to show. It was easy to see you couldn't easily replicate, say, Spider-Man swinging through the New York skyline or an alien invasion that didn't look like guys in rubber suits. But if you just needed to have a couple people standing around talking, and you wanted them to look better than you could draw them, fumetti was the way to go.

This, of course, gave me a somewhat distorted picture of the style. It would be YEARS before I saw any real reason for fumetti besides the realistic depiction of naked people.

I just found that Farrell produced a comic called The Flame in 1954-55. This seems to be wholly unrelated to the more famous version published by Fox in the early 1940s. Not only are his costume and secret identity different, but this Flame does not need a flame gun, but can shoot blasts directly from his fingertips. Although in the one issue I've read, the only time he even does that is on the initial splash page which doesn't really take place in the story. He certainly doesn't have the panache of the Will Eisner/Lou Fine version that was more recently used in Project: Superpowers!

Technically, as noted in the indicia, it picked up the numbering from Lone Eagle so the first issue is actually listed as #5. But the second and third issues are simply called #2 and #3 (though none have issue numbers on the cover anyway). Also, interestingly, #3 was the first to sport the then-new Comic Code Authority seal, but it was also the last issue of the series.

Here's issue five/one, so you can check it out for yourself...

• Peter Sanderson directs us to this notice that about the Metropolitan Museum hiring Sheena Wagstaff as its new curator of contemporary art. It's relevant for comics fans because Wagstaff also curated a show for the Whitney Museum about comics' influence on fine art. If her interest hasn't subsided, it could suggest that comics might make an appearance at the Met in the near/semi-near future.
  
• The mystery behind why Justice Traps the Guilty #60A was numbered "60A" is solved!
• Seth Godin has some high-level thoughts/reminders about "fair use."
• Over at Anime Diet, M. Olivarez responds to Charlie Maib's "questionable statements" about the anime/manga industry that are "lacking in any grounded fact."
• Girl-Wonder.org is holding elections for the Board of Directors.
• Al Bigley digs out some old John Romita Sr. art for a never-produced Fantastic Four medalion.
  

There have been a great many creative team-ups in comics over the years. Stan Lee & Jack Kirby spring immediately to mind, but there's also Marv Wolfman & George Perez, Denny O'Neil & Neal Adams, Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird, Mark Waid & Mike Wieringo... Regardless of how well the folks meshed and how good of friends they are, it would seem that their work is inevitably broken up. In mainstream comics, of course, the creators themselves historically don't have much say in who they get to work with and there are often outside factors preventing further collaborations. In the worst cases, though, there's a falling out and one of the partners walks away with extra baggage that keeps them from ever even considering teaming up with their former partner again.

I'm a fan of prog rock. Especially old school stuff like King Crimson, Nektar and Pink Floyd. My favorite band, though, was Genesis. Forget about Invisible Touch (with maybe the exception of "Domino" and "The Brazilian"), go back to A Trick of the Tail, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or earlier for their really good stuff. Basically anything from before Steve Hackett left. (Though, since this is a comics related blog, I feel the need to point out that the first album after Hackett departed included "Scenes from a Night's Dream" which was about Winsor McCay's famous Little Nemo.)

In any event, I've read and heard more than my fair share of interviews with the band members from Genesis. One of the later ones that struck me was when Mike Rutherford was talking about that period I just mentioned. Peter Gabriel had left to do his own thing. Steve Hackett had just done the same. Phil Collins was having marital troubles. The band ended up putting itself on hiatus in 1979 after recording their first album without Hackett. Rutherford and Tony Banks did some solo work, Collins went on tour with Brand X and started playing around with some solo material himself (which would ultimately become Face Value in 1981). What Rutherford said in that later interview was that, in retrospect, that hiatus was crucial for them because it gave them all a chance to explore other avenues. So when Collins, Banks and Rutherford came back together in 1980, they had already worked on all their independent pet ideas and there was no jockeying to get this idea or that idea into the Genesis effort. They could focus on collaborating together and not vying to get their own musical ideas onto the album.

Now, arguably, their albums after that weren't as good creatively (though I do like the "hidden suite" on Duke and handful of their lesser known songs from subsequent albums) there's no question that they became more well-known and financially successful after that. And, individually, they all created a lot more. Mike + The Mechanics have ten albums, Rutherford has two solo albums, Banks has eight solo albums, Collins has eight solo albums and two soundtracks, plus they collectively have twelve more albums as Genesis since 1980. Not to mention an assortment of singles and Collins had a brief acting career in there as well. I'd call that a pretty impressive output, especially there's very little, if anything, there that's outright bad. Some not as good as others, obviously, but nothing you're going to stop mid-song.

Where I'm going with this is that, if an individual has a need to be creative, as many musicians and artists do, then their creative desires need to be given room to flourish. And that may not be on the project they're working on! Getting work done and creative expression are not necessarily overlapping goals. Creative folks need to express themselves, and a group setting isn't usually perfectly conducive to that. They might be able to get some of their ideas out, but probably not all of them. They can't not scratch that itch indefinitely, so they need some space to go off and do whatever it is they need to do -- write, draw, play music, sculpt... Hopefully, they'll be able to satisfy their creative urges before they become resentful of their partner inadvertently stifling them.

Back in the day, I played Dungeons & Dragons. I had a good pile of the books, and a stack of maybe 50-75 issues of Dragon magazine, the official mag for the game. I didn't have every consecutive issue, in part because distribution in my area was spotty and in part because, well, I didn't always find enough in every issue to warrant the cover price. In fact, with some of the issues I had, the only part I wanted to read was the comic section in the back, only a handful of pages in each issue. Early on especially, they consisted largely of spot gag cartoons with a sword-and-sorcery theme. But through a good chunk of the 1980s, they had three ongoing comics with regular characters and a consistent plot (sort of).

I probably enjoyed Phil Foglio's "What's New?" the most in part because there was very little in the way of continuity. So with my sporadic collection, I could pick up any random issue, read "What's New?" and be totally versed in what was going on. Not to mention that Foglio had an energetic drawing style and a clever, if occasionally juvenile, sense of humor. ("Next Month: Sex and D&D!") You may have seen Foglio's more recent work online. A comic called Girl Genius, which he works on with his wife Kaja. If you check out their online store, you can buy collected editions of "What's New?"

Larry Elmore's SnarfQuest was also a favorite. There was an overarching storyline, but it progressed pretty smoothly with a series of not-always-related mini-adventures. I think I also had the first couple of installments, so I understood the set-up from the start. But overall, it wasn't difficult to follow, even skipping the occasional chapter. I reviewed the collected edition here but I believe it's out of print.

Lastly was David A. Trampier's Wormy. It was a story about... I'm not sure exactly. Wormy was this dragon that lived by himself. He was pretty laid back and seemed to always be setting up some kind of huge role-playing game that he was maybe going to play against the dwarves. (I think?) His game "board" was so huge he had to hire out trolls to assemble all of it. The strip had a kind of meandering quality to it, with lots of tangents on side characters that at least didn't superficially seem to be related to the main plot. Here's a couple of sample pages...

It proved to be a rather difficult extended read, especially if you didn't get each and every issue. But the characters were so colorful and well-defined that even reading quick, unrelated snippets was deeply enjoyable. Imagine trying to read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy with every third or fourth chapter taken out. You could tell that what you were reading was wonderful, but you knew you were getting just how wonderful the complete version must be.

I stopped getting Dragon towards the end of high school, and apparently Trampier departed the strip quite suddenly and unexpectedly right around that same time. Wormy was left incomplete. No one seems to know his whereabouts. Dragon editor Kim Mohan said his checks came back uncashed. Trampier's brother-in-law said he thought he was in Illinois back in 2004, but he hadn't actually talked to him since 1982. I don't want to get into the mystery of what happened to him, but it's worth mentioning as why the story was never finished and why you're unlikely to ever see it in collected form.

Wormy was very much a character-driven comic. There weren't splashy layouts and the plot was, at best, obtuse because of the format. But the cartoons were very clean and stylish, the dialogue was usually exceptionally clever and the characters were ones that you could understand and appreciate. They were trolls and ogres and imps and demons and everything, but you could still recognize them as your friends, relatives, people down the street, etc. It really was a wonderfully engaging strip, even if you could never see the whole thing.

Several years ago, Haroog got copies of all the Dragon issues and posted scans of all the strips here. (It's where I got the above samples from.) The site doesn't seem to have been updated in a decade, and it looks like all the image links after the 1984 material are broken, but you can get a sense of the strip from pages prior to that.

In doing a little research for this post to get my facts straight, I came across plenty of stories of old gamers talking about Wormy and what may have happened to Trampier. While there's always questions surrounding his disappearance, everyone always talks about how they loved Wormy and were sad to see it go. Testament to the talent Trampier had, and the engagement readers felt with his characters.

Whether we consciously recognize it or not, every decision we make has a motivation of some kind behind it. When I first started writing for The Jack Kirby Collector back in 2003, my aim was primarily one of remembrance. In fact, I believe my first published article there actually mentions this in passing. That I wanted to there to be a record of my having contributed something to comicdom. I wasn't expecting to be another Will Eisner or Alex Raymond. I wasn't even shooting for the level of Bill Blackbeard or Shel Dorf. Just a small footnote in a short chapter would be sufficient.

I'd like to think that I've managed that much by now. I'd like to think that a comic historian several decades from now, if they're researching some topic I wrote about, would come across my name at least once. Of course, the more I continue to write, the more chance I'll have of that happening.

The reason motivation is interesting is because you can have several people doing the same thing, but because they have different reasons for doing it, they come at it differently. You can see this quite plainly at a gym. Especially in January.

Some folks are clearly there to get stronger and build muscle. Some folks are clearly there to lose weight. Some folks are clearly there as a social activity. Some folks are clearly there as some form of physical therapy. There's no right reason for going to the gym, of course, but some people you look at and wonder what prompted them to come. I don't mean that as an insult; it's just that they don't seem to have a big motivation to be there. Those people tend to stop showing up in February. They're not strongly motivated to continue.

It's a little less externally obvious, but it's evident in comic readers too. Some folks read for the escapism. Some folks read for the entertainment. Some folks read to study the craft. Some folks read as part of a social activity.

And that's significant because, as someone creating a comic that's intended to be read by these people, it would behoove you to have at least a basic understanding of why potential readers might read your comic. Beyond the "it's really cool because it's got a ninja" or whatever your superficial rationale for it is. That it has a ninja might be a selling point, but it won't be the underlying reason it's being read. Do readers find some emotional attachment to ninjas? Are they looking for examples of societal mores in feudal Japan?

That's not to say that every reader has the same motivation, of course. But my point is that if you, as a comic creator, begin straying away from the fundamental elements that the bulk of your readers are looking for, you'll likely start to lose them EVEN IF you keep the same basic characters and plot.

Of course, if you don't care about that, or find it irrelevant next to your desires as a creator, that's another issue. But if you're looking to become the next Bill Watterson or Milt Caniff, you should probably at least keep it in mind.