This post is in honor of Mister Jim Roeg, he of the Double Articulation, who recently explored the paralells between Jean-Paul Sartre and the struggles with identity of a comic book character in a Marvel Two-in-One.
Specifically, Jim explores the fractured self of the Valkyrie as she struggles to find an identity once she realizes her biological father (or the father of the body she inhabits) has died. “I am but an empty façade—a fiction,” she sputters. Benjamin Grimm disputes her analysis, telling her that whatever she might be, she’s real—because “[p]aper dolls don’t cry.”
Intellectually, this is a challenge and a pleasure—because of course she’s a fiction—she’s a literally two-dimensional character. The wonders of one fiction consoling another, and assuring her of existence, is a spectacular piece of work by Steve Gerber, the writer whose words grace the two cartoons in these pages.
Twenty or so years later, Grant Morrison would confront the same insistence on existence when his creation, Buddy Baker (a/k/a “Animal Man“) would posture and threaten the writer himself, the superhero asserting his concreteness, demanding the acknowledgement of the pain he suffered over the loss of his family.
I wanted to do create something to illustrate the wonderful conundrum of fictional characters confronting their (un)reality, and to commemorate Jim’s commendable post, but I quickly realized something: paper dolls might be a bit hard to come by. Jaxxie reminded me I once made my own (which actually works, if you print it on cardstock!), but I really wanted to utilize a commercially available product.
The best I could do was a Barbie whim-wham that had some “fashions” that were suspicously shoulder-padded and bow-heavy, complete with pink tracing paper (don’t ask). So you get the above, and . . . whatever this is, here:
Thanks again for a very thought-provoking post, Jim.
Love. this. Both versions are awesome, but I love the second, like, 80 times more—all those fragile stamps in the background are perfect.
Man yes! This is great. The red-n-purple flamey parts of Left-Barbie’s dress make it look like she’s being launched at something (this is a compliment). I am also much enamored of the id-protecting black bar for Right-Barbie. Well done!
gorjus—I’m…speechless. These are just beautiful. This is the nicest…. sniff
Sorry, sorry…pulling myself together. Hrm
I hope you won’t think it too obnoxious of me if I throw in a few (highly subjective) impressions of these amazing pictures!
What I love about the first one (in addition to its austerity and the absence of dolls for the clothes) is the way the text in the third panel suggests a subtle reversal of Ben Grimm’s maxim: in the original he asserts that “Paper dolls don’t cry,” but here the phrase sounds more soothing, like, “Paper Dolls. Don’t Cry…”—a change that complicates the original meaning in precisely the way Gerber seems to be doing in the Two-In-One panel. This is such a brilliant piece—it captures the doubleness of Gerber’s own existentialist scene subtly and cleanly, in a way that I find really moving. I could seriously look at this one all day. The other fantastic thing about it is the way the shift from vertical to horizontal text in the third panel suggests a kind of narrative development within the sentence—as if the “speaker” of these words is actaully experiencing some an unexpected emotional surge by the end of the sentence. The upside down R in “CRY” (in literally the last line of the piece) pushes this narrative development ever further, as if ordinary language is no longer adequate to convey the transformation the speaker (a paper doll?) is undergoing. Ah, I’m getting carried away here, but that rotated “R” is… it’s… oh, I’ll just say it: it’s “The Real.” And that place where the stamp has (accidentally?) touched the page in the “T” for “DON’T” is another weirdly wonderful tear/tear in the image where somethign real seeps through. And those empty clothes… This is quite simply amazing, gorj.
The second one—where do I even start? The palimpsest of “Paper Dolls Don’t Cry” over the banal script of everyday commerce, “This Purse Will Look Great With That Dress!”—not to mention the punky hair on the Barbies, the tatoos. The image being consumed by a fire that seems to grow out of the dress itself. The whole image, to me, is about the yearning for some authentic transformation by “dolls” trapped in sterile, rigid poses. (I love the fact that you’ve found images of Barbie—a “real” doll reduced in the original images you use to a “paper doll.”) And I second what Sally says about the “Fragile” stamp—a stamp whose original meaning and function (Don’t break my products, mailcarrier!) have been transformed into something existentially profound by the context. And of course, the original meaning of the “Fragile” stamp (consumerism; the “gift”) and its new connotations (the nature of being?) echo the palimpsest of the “purse/dress” line and “paper dolls don’t cry.” Sorry, sorry… I’ll stop.
You’re a fantastic artist gorjus. From the bottom of my (paper) heart: thanks.
Jim, thank-you for your wondrous commentary and exceedingly generous interpretations. It’s certainly not obnoxious; it’s refreshing.
I hadn’t realized that in the first cartoon I didn’t actually have any paper dolls, or representations of people! That perhaps pushes the panels even further towards a comment on materialism and perceptions of “femininity” in society. Viewing the empty, uncolored, out-of-date clothing through crumpled pink tissue, contrasted with the “paper doll” invocation—I suppose this is my frustration at a society that seems determined to further commodify and dehumanize women and their sexuality, and then turn around and sell those “products” back to women.
The Pepto-pink messages is also numbing as it goes down: after the near-constant assault on self-image and self-consciousness, one certainly no longer has the capacity to cry or complain. “This is just the way it is—the man does this, and the woman does that.” I’m struck by the fact that the five-year old son of a woman I work with was recently teased at school for wearing a pink shirt, because “that’s a girl color.” Where in the hell do kids even learn this stuff??
The second piece was done first, actually. I just didn’t say all I wanted to say. A lot of what I do is grounded in what some folks would call irony, but it’s really absurdity. I like talking birds and ghosts that jump out of mouths, and it just felt right to contrast the Thing-spoken, gruffly sweet truth of “paper dolls don’t cry” with the vapid “this purse will look great with that dress!” One can find wonderful things when one confronts ridiculous things, or contrasts them, and can perhaps speak a subtler, greater truth: how great would Calvin had been without his Hobbes? Who, you know, wasn’t actually real? You just have to dig a bit. I think I prefer this now to the bluntness I favored in my youth: teaching has always worked better than telling.
(Quietness can be subversive: I was talking to Sally yesterday when planning these pieces, and it struck me that the Doom Patrol story “The Empire of Chairs” and the the movie version of The Wizard of Oz are actually spectacularly similar: and that the terrifying impression is that the real world is sepia-drenched pablum, while our fever dreams may be brilliantly-colored magic).
I turn again and again to the presence of Grant Morrison at the end of his run on Animal Man, a creator-god literally in the machine. The great “truths” of that book—that we can transcend the banality of our own lives (there are no magic foxes in real life) and the morbidity that plagues us (our beloved cats will never die in comics) through the wonders of fiction. That dialogue—those truths—could only be explored between the panels of a comic (which Buddy Baker and Jim Hightower fought so hard to burst through/transcend).
I think Steve Gerber plays with this a bit, too. Isn’t it wonderfully absurd that the living incarnation of a Norse death-bringer is upset over . . . death? Isn’t it absurd that she is comforted by a six-hundred pile of rocks that is less human than she is? Yet in crafting this dialogue Mr. Gerber eased great truths into muddy newsprint: in our society, we are sometimes embarrassed by our feelings, ashamed of our grief and vulnerabilities. And sometimes we feel so goddamn lousy that we don’t even feel real.
I wanted to bring duplicate the headiness of Mr. Gerber’s conversation and overlay it upon the banal cast-off products of our modern culture. The superficial, black & white conversation between two 2-D characters over fashion gets soaked in fear, doubt, and “Ken” and “Skipper” tattoos.
Also, when you invoke the word “palimpsest” it is almost literally true. I used what any kid would use to color this figures—crayons. The waxy coating they leave can be distressed, smudged (to an extent), and to a lesser extent, scraped away. It never works all that well, though: there is always the shallow and smudged image below.
Thanks again for your fantastic comment, and for continuing to seek art in comics and truth in absurdity.
I’m relieved to hear that the impressions were “refreshing” and not “obnoxious”—it’s a fine line! One hates to ask, but I love hearing artists talk about their work, so thanks for that lengthy and fascinating reply to my musings (I really do have to dig into those Morrison Animal Mans!). And by the way, nice catch on this point: “Isn’t it wonderfully absurd that the living incarnation of a Norse death-bringer is upset over . . . death?” I completely missed that—and of course you’re absolutely right. Gerber!!
to add on jim’s riff on panel 3 of the 1st set, i have to say the mark below the apostrophe looks like a tear, emphasizing, perhaps subconsciously, crying. The conotation is there for sure. also, the R being backwards tells me, or at least makes me feel like its not real. the statement is actually a falsehood. ‘don’t cry’, meaning ‘i wish you weren’t unhappy, but go ahead and let it go’.
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