A Jab in the Butt

The Best Way to Get Reaction from Comic Readers

by by C.C. Beck

From Alter Ego Vol. 3 #5

EDITORS NOTE: The following opinion article is taken from FCA's C.C. Beck essay archives. It is previously unpublished, and was written in the mid-1980s. There will be Beck material in each issue of FCA, all previously unpublished. -PCH

Opus the penguin looks over C.C. Beck's shoulder as he writes this article.
Art ©2000 the estate of C.C. Beck; Opus ©2000 Berke Breathed.

In a recent Bloom County panel, Opus the penguin was shown being jabbed in the butt with a sharpened pencil. Actually, he wasn't shown being jabbed in the butt, but having been jabbed in the butt. The picture showed him leaping into the air with a surprised and pained look on his face.

Berke Breathed, Bloom County's creator, knows that the moment after an action is more important than the action itself, which is better imagined than seen.

If this panel had been drawn by most comic book artists, we might have been a picture, probably a closeup, of Opus' butt with the sharpened pencil penetrating it and producing an outlandish sound effect and spurts of blood, flying feathers, and other special effects. The panel would probably have been put into a circular frame or a triangular shape, or it might have been expanded to a double-page spread and repeated on the cover and in the opening title panel. Comic book art, almost since its beginning, has put far too much emphasis on violent action of all kinds and not enough on the reaction of the characters in the stories. This is one of the reasons why comic book characters are denounced as "cardboard characters" and why the art is not considered to have much value.

Comic book artists, unlike good cartoonists, don't leave anything to the imagination. They put everything into their panels - every eyelash, every tooth, every hair, every shadow, every wrinkle, every bit of action whether important or unimportant. As a result, their pictures don't show any action at all, for it has all been stopped and frozen in time. The panels in a comic book story are as cold and dead as so many dead fish lying side by side in a frozen food locker.

All successful artists - and Berke Breathed is one of the most successful artists working today - know that the less you show in a picture, the more a viewer will imagine he sees in it. As a cartoonist, he knows that things that don't exist in the real world, such as penguins that talk and wear neckties, make great comic strip characters, but that realistically drawn characters (human or animal) with complete sets of teeth, eyelids, eyelashes, and bulging muscles and with every hair and wrinkle brought out in detail, don't. He knows that to hold the reader's attention the picture must show only the high spots of a story, not bury it in a mass of complicated and overdone detail.

Good art, whether cartoon or realistic, appeals to the viewer's imagination and causes him or her to feel the joy or the pain, the triumph or the defeat, of the characters in the picture. Paintings of landscapes and "still life" pictures of objects contain no movement or action, and no living, moving creatures. They appeal to art lovers, not to people who want pictures to appeal to their emotions. When too much landscape and too many objects are put into story illustrations, they cease to arouse emotion and become simply "art," much like the material seen in art galleries and museums.

The attempt to make story illustration into art gallery art is misguided; buyers of comic books and of newspapers containing comic strips are not looking for art, but for stories and action. When the art in a story overpowers the story itself, as it does in far too many comic books, the panels become simply a series of still-life pictures without appeal, and are quite boring and dull. "Action-packed" pictures are not exciting; imagination-packed pictures are. A good illustrator knows that his imagination is not what the reader is interested in, but the reader's. He wants to have his own imagination stimulated, not deadened by a mass of detail and artwork which, most of the time, he can't even understand.

Everyone needs a good jab in the butt now and then. Breathed showed Opus' reaction to one; I hope that I have succeeded in jabbing a few butts with the sharpened pencil with which I wrote this article.

C.C. Beck's mid-'80s sketch for a re-creation of the cover of Marvel Family #6, courtesy of the collection of Bruce Pritchard.
[Art ©2000 estate of C.C. Beck; Marvel Family ©2000 DC Comics]

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