Singular Sensations by Michelle Ann Abate – Cultural History of U.S. One-Panel Comics
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Michelle Ann Abate, Associate Professor of Literature for Children and Young Adults, has a new book: Singular Sensations – A Cultural History of One-Panel Comics in the United States (Rutgers University Press), “the first book-length critical study to examine” single panel comics.
It is not a history of the comic panel genre, it is an academic look at some selected titles and cartoonists and what Michelle finds as under investigated aspects of their work.
Thomas Nast. “Nast’s talents as a caricaturist exerted an undeniable impact on the power of his cartoons, the discussion that follows examines another equallyimportant but neglected aspect of his work: his use of backgrounds.”
Richard F. Outcault and The Yellow Kid. “The discussion that follows remembers and recoups another cultural phenomenon that was taking place during the time of Outcault’s work in The Yellow Kid and that can be regarded as playing an important, and heretofore overlooked, role in his cartooning: the tableau vivant.”
Peter Arno and his New Yorker cartoons. “In the same way that Arno revolutionized the mechanics of the single-panel comic through his through his interplay and word and image, he also revolutionized the source of its content … Peter Arno’s work captured what might be called the extraordinary ordinary of daily life.”
Marge’s Little Lulu. “While the single-panel comic certainly featured a plethora of amusing gags, a variety of installments presented the title character engaging in a markedly different activity: pulling a prank … Whereas gags seek to amuse, delight, and entertain, pranks seek to question, challenge, and even provoke.”
Jackie Ormes and Patty Jo ‘n’ Ginger. “Although the series has often been dismissed because it ‘was a big siter-little sister setup’ … Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger offers a complex portrayal of the interplay of race, class, age, and gender in the postwar era.”
Bil Keane and The Family Circus. “The Family Circus appears as a single image enclosed by a black circular frame; the text that forms the gag – and which is usually uttered by a figure depicted in the image – is printed underneath as a caption. Of course, below-the-frame captions have appeared in an array of past and present single-panel comics … However I’d contend that this feature is especially pronounced in The Family Circus … [and] is significant from a cognitive, aesthetic, experiential standpoint.”
Tom Wilson’s Ziggy. “… Ziggy has been regarded as not requiring or even meriting much analysis … Ziggy is not only worthy of critical study, it rewards such inquiry with new interpretive insight about Wilson’s series and, just as importantly,U.S. comics as a whole … [and it] contains elements of overlap with an equally well-known figure from the middle portion of the [20th] century: Kilroy.”
Gary Larson and The Far Side. “The discussion that follows explores this signature aspect of Larson’s single panel series. As I argue, ugliness is more than a simple iconic feature of this equally iconic strip; it is both critically and culturally significant.”
The epilogue considers Dan Piraro’s Bizarro and his use of mashups – taking two characters from current events, history, classic literature, popular culture and pairing them in a gag.
Professor Abate take is academic naturally, and as is common in such works we get discordant statements such as, “his comics are both serious and sacrosanct, cultured and uncouth, highbrow and lowbrow.”
There is a tendency to veer into long stretches of over explaining, such as digressing into pages of tableau vivant history and her constant use of that term as if she is needing to ingrain it in our minds to confirm the connection. Though I now know more about tableau vivant than I ever would have guessed I would.
She prides herself on finding something that no one else has noticed and in doing so some assertions seem a stretch. Comparing Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley pages to tableau are good, but it works for any and every panel, whether as a stand-alone or part of a strip. I find it difficult to picture Arno as an everyman. Her jokester/prankster bit about Little Lulu would seem to be a better fit for John Stanley’s comic book more than Marge’s magazine panel. The point about the ugly drawing in The Far Side being a plus is excusing Gary Larson not being as an accomplished artist as Dan Piraro. And so on. Of course any critical study will find that itself will have critics.
All that said Michelle does bring in new ideas and thoughts about comics and she writes in an agreeable style that keeps the reader engaged, not the dryness found in many scholarly works. Bonus: the book isn’t outrageously expensive as are some university press titles.
On the whole the book gets a recommendation for expanding critical thinking and evaluation of comics.
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