Punch Up: The Undefinable 9th Arts
“…Comics will brake your heart.”
-Jack “King” Kirby (as said to James Romberger)
Prologue to American Comics
Past being prologue, and in the tradition of American folklore, this telling of American comics history begins thusly: Arts had a process during the West’s Renaissance period, on ceilings and on tapestry. In the process of making these images soot was “pounced,” or punched even, through pinpricked holes in thickly plied paper or poster board, modellos, onto plastered fresco or loomed tapestry. A tracing guide for painters and weavers eyes, these massive initial drawings were discarded by artist, these cartone, karton or cartoons were, to collectors, valued representatives of “Fine Art.” Centuries later the cartoon would be synonymous with punching, tracers, collectors, discard and classism. Making comics is cartooning and visa versa. Cartooning comics is the making of a fine art.
Stepping back for a wiz bang paced abridged path through a mapping for corrective contexts:
Tens of thousands of years, and hundreds to just about ten thousands of miles, dependent on time, location and direction, from storytelling markings within caves;
Four millennia, and a couple thousand miles north west, from the first Hieroglyphs;
About seven hundred years, and five thousand miles, to the east, from the earliest known codex;
At least the same distance in time, and over five thousand miles to the West from Toba-e scroles;
One hundred years further, but just three hundred miles north of where the Bayeux Cathedral first hung;
Three hundred years even farther and twice the distance north west of the Biblia pauperum publishing;
One hundred and sixteen years, yet just seven miles east across town from Chiswick and William Hogarth’s proto-comics;
Twenty-nine years, nevertheless 5,936 miles west rom Katsushika Hokusai’s giving comics a name, “manga,” (whimsical or impromptu + pictures = involuntary pictures, whimsical drawings or impromptu sketches), AKA manhwa (Korean) & manhua (Mandarin);
Another sixteen years after and six hundred and twenty-one miles north west of literary professor Rodolphe Töpffer’s Histoire de M. Vieux Bois;
In fact, about a year after and 3,459 miles east of Töpffer’s The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, English printing in this stories primary location, America;
Granted, fourteen years prior and north of the publishing of “historieta” (history, story, tale);
…Art, narrative, a visual lexicon, fitting the definition of Will Eisner’s sequential art, one and all; thusly comics, one and all. Eventually, ink was added to paper, just so, which brought conveniently elements together neatly enough to begin an Americanized folktale about American comics; just not in America.
In 1843, inhabitants from throughout Africa, Asia and Europe intersected daily, in the world’s largest city, London. Where conveniently comics marginalizing erasure and social justice intersection for those of us sitting upon America’s comics corners, to spit lyrics. Here enters our first big boss supervillain.
Judeophobic and anti-American, caricaturist John Leech punched up from a privileged position for his white middle class audience’s satyrical tastes. Leech trafficked in hate and justice with earnestly applied efficient whimsy, through skilled line work. On this 1843, London day, he satirized cartoons cultural status changing language for future English speaking generations. Punch Magazine from its inception, set out to be a lighter, yet more literary comic magazine; to continue to be attuned with “the now” and “punch” the establishment. Leech’s penciled commentary, transferred onto a printing plate, depicting “absurdity.” So off we go, with Cartoon No.1 in the pages of Punch with the depiction of pauper Londoners viewing “Fine Art” cartoons hanging in Westminster. One can entertain the idea that Punch’s sales increased, because of the allure of visual elements in its cartoons and its populist disruptions. Subsequently, as legend has it, every telling of a comic whose sales actually increased and likely many which did not, speak to allure of the visual elements. Artist as hero, on inspection or perhaps just rumor a villain emerges, but their impact can outlive and proceed the inspection. Society makes of creatives what they want, hero of villain or of course, visa versa. The whole person, being an inconvenient truth.
Cartoon No. 1 features a framing of foundational elements for major players of the story of American comics. Collectors market, morality police, and establishment cast as one, fittingly in a monarchy. Leech and Punch utilizing a comics take centering a marginalized cultural representation, while ignoring their own privileged and hatful context. Upending the traditional storytelling narratives and “Fine Art” with hubris of a humbled line art, an expanded audience by contemporary technology. Cartoon No. 1 inverted elements and used a visual lexicon to taking the lead over the literary, to communicate Leech’s artistic perspective, while expanding the audience accessibility and appeal of Punch. Cartoon No. 1 took a punch at narratives, cultures, processes, economics, communication, etc…and in doing so, ripped the terminology of the word “Cartoon” from the hands of power. A price to be paid, by cartoonists, as the story goes, fitting into the mythology of the white male cartoonist curmudgeon; white victimization, a foundation of the American Dream narrative.
Cartoon No. 1 is not special among threads in 20th Century propaganda. In American culture and society, whiteness has been spinning yarns for over 400 years that the fundamentals of America fetishize London. America’s foundation is in actuality rooted over three myriad of years in Indigenous tribes, being significantly also Latinx ancestry’s settlement of this continent. Furthermore, from where we sit, today, this telling of this tale finds us on the presuppose of the five hundred year anniversary of American binary black and white propaganda, not four hundred years. The London narrative thread meets with; an established Indigenous, Latinx society on both American continents; the first African & European arrival on what would become “The Continental USA” in 1526; the first Muslim, a Moroccan, so also African, a year later; some 60 years later, in 1587 Luzonians arrive on the West Coast, originating from what would become the Philippines, other Asians having been likely to have arrived well before this across a land bridge; also in 1587, the word Atheism entered the english lexicon, conceptually having been with all humanity, all along; still perhaps the most impactful moment, the 1619 establishment of slave trade in what would be the USA; a year later the arrival of the Mayflower and her puritanical cult; then you have the 1770 catalyst for revolution, the death of Wampanoag and African, Crispus Attucks; the “official” birth of American “democracy,” American “capitalism,” and American “imperialism” in 1776; the 1790, diaspora delivered Sephardic Jews; multiple threads converging on these shores. American comics are but a medium of diffuse cultures utilized by a fraction of the over one hundred billion storytellers and eclectic collection of mediums. Comics become a thing in the next world’s largest city, New York City.
