Always one to pursue useless knowledge wherever he can find it in a seemingly never-ending quest to achieve the improbable and downright unlikely status of modern-day Renaissance man, Mark Bittmann has indulged his desire to never be lost in any conversation, by developing an arcane understanding of things of little consequence or import while maintaining his alleged status as a small fish in a small pond.
As long as his self-indulgent whim is catered to, he manages to sustain the facade of someone under the misperception that others care about what he thinks. With a ubiquity normally reserved for greenhouse gasses, he chases his random and inconsequential thoughts with all the tenacity of a banana peel. This is his life, his curse, and his twisted and maniacal way of impressing the ladies.
Now that I find myself approaching middle age, the usual feelings of mortality and reflection that I’ve been led to expect will occupy a certain amount of the goings on in between my ears as I reach the precipice have begun and I find myself having a greater urge to think about some of the happier aspects of my youth. No, I’m not talking about a past Benzedrine jones, heroin DTs or acid flashbacks and I’m not going to start telling lies about women either. I was thinking more along the lines of life-forming entertainments I’ve either read, watched or listened to in my youth that seemed to help me, for lack of a better cliché, find myself, as it were. The more I think about it, the more I see the influence that a youthful exposure to the various forms of storytelling at our disposal has had on my alleged character and personal taste in things artistic. And not just the high-brow stuff I was lucky enough to have occasionally experienced either. In fact, it seems that the earliest influence on my taste in static visual art goes back to when I began to appreciate the various rendering styles the comic book artists brought to the page, just as my personal taste in film and television probably goes back to that which I was exposed to whilst sitting in front of the idiot box, enraptured by the assorted characters populating the reruns of what was then considered classic television and old movies.
On the comic book front, I had always liked the drawings and knew the names of the various practitioners of the craft. I was an early fan of John Romita Sr., due to the fact that the first superhero book I latched onto was Spider-Man. I wasn’t around for his original run, but as soon as I grasped the concept of back issues of the ongoing saga of the Webslinger being available for purchase at what I learned were referred to as specialty shops, I began buying up old issues of Amazing Spider-Man like they were going out of style, in an effort to possess a run of Amazing from issue #50 forward. With the vast majority of my disposable income derived from my paper route (to the tune of a whopping $70.00 dollars a month – relatively big money in the late 70s for a kid to enjoy the fruits of), I was fortunate enough to feed my growing taste for new Marvel comics and some back issues, but not enough to realistically pursue a complete run of Spidey’s adventures. The Ditko stuff would have to wait until much later, and it’s only now, now that I’m being addressed far too often as “sir” by kids, that I’ve begun purchasing them. But now I’m getting off-point.
As I grew older and became further exposed to various comic book artists, I began to pick up on individual styles and after a time was able to name the artist of a particular book without even looking at the credits. All I had to do was see the work and I could tell you who had drawn it. Although in today’s world of new, rotating and fill-in talent often found in the credits, it has become a little tougher, despite greater freedom allotted personal style in comics nowadays. It takes a little longer to mentally catalog all the players. Particularly when equipped with the ever-diminishing faculties inherent in us over-30 folk.
The more I became aware of the personal style of comic book artists, the more I realized just how much I like art and how much comics had been teaching me about it. When I took my first trip to an art museum and felt like I had actually gotten something out of it (in other words; after I entered adolescence) I found myself immediately drawn to a branch of the museum’s collection that was displaying pen and ink work from the masters of the craft, Gustave Dore and the like, and realized the level to which the rudimentary elements of comic illustration could be taken. A pen and ink could be used to render anything from the hands of artists ranging from Charles Schulz to M.C. Wyeth. Up to that point, the work of Neal Adams was about as fine an example of comic book illustration as could be found, from both a technical and storytelling perspective. (The level of technique in Adams’ work created in his prime, in my view, still has yet to be even approached. Few working in comics since have even come close. Art Adams (once upon a time) springs to mind. Jay Anacleto has serious chops, but his contributions are minimal, he isn’t much of a storyteller and is better suited to covers and posters. Alex Ross: ditto. What’s more, let’s see any of the above keep up the level of artistry Adams did on a monthly basis. I’m afraid those days are over.) Looking at Adams work was a primer for what could be done with only the contrasts of black and white to play with. The trip to the museum showed that the same tools could be employed in conveying a message completely different than comic art and be even more personally expressive.
In my case, comic books served as a sort of training ground for my personal taste in art. They taught me the rudiments of composition and to trust the significance of where my eye is drawn when enjoying a piece. Given that the pen and ink basics of comic book art are a veritable lecture in light sourcing (in skilled hands), it wasn’t a stretch to apply the elements of comic book art that make up a fine page to analysis of visual art in all mediums. Along the way, they seemed to encourage a further understanding of characterization and storytelling structure as well. Due to their being a combination of both visual and literary storytelling, comic books and the techniques used to execute them are somewhat akin to cinema and it seems that the more cinema I watched, the more I looked for similar techniques adapted to the medium of comics and vice versa. The more I looked, the more both their differences and similarities became apparent. It also became apparent that the more analysis I devoted to both mediums, the more confident I became in expressing my opinion when it comes to all aspects of art because they helped me learn both what to look for and how to properly articulate my subjective response. While my opinion is just an opinion, no more or less valid than any other (although some opinions demand being deferred to. For example, my opinion of theoretical physics is nothing compared to that of Stephen Hawkings’ and my thoughts on the practical application of a zone defense pale in light of Phil Jackson’s), at least I began to feel I had the tools to express it to my satisfaction and that of the poor soul listening to it, whether or not they agree with it.
So it seems my early attraction to comic books wasn’t merely founded in a desire to witness the further adventures of Spider-Man and others, but seems to have sprung from some sort of personal need for pursuing a fledgling interest in art and storytelling. I guess I was drawn to visually arresting and dynamic works of art and just needed a little serendipitous self-discovery to help in realizing that my love for visual arts is all-encompassing and need not be limited to one medium, but that visual arts tend to overlap and are subject to similar aesthetic boundaries in addition to having strict rules of their own and individual appeal. Comics have taught me more about art appreciation than any other source of tutelage, be it scholarly or from exposure to art in all of its various mediums, largely because they were so influential in my formative years. Reading them has helped to teach me what I like and why I like it and that a subjective yet educated opinion is far more desirable than reactive and uninformed one, particularly from the standpoint of one who consistently finds himself at loggerheads with an opposing viewpoint. Comic books have also taught me to be more tolerant of the opinions of others as well. Even if they’re just a stupid butthead who wouldn’t know a good comic if it walked up and bit them on the ass!
Ok…so maybe I haven’t learned as much about tolerance as I’ve led myself to believe. Guess I’ll have to read some more X-Men.
