Time for another installment of Sketchy Komiks™. Click to enlarge.
Category: Comics
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Sketchy Komiks: Influence
I was moving some stuff around the apartment when I stumbled on this little 3 panel strip in the margins of an old sketchbook. I must have drawn this in the late 90’s or maybe early 00’s. I’ve been also re-reading some biographical material on the Polish writer Bruno Schulz. I’m a big admirer of Schulz’s fiction and art. The strip instantly reminded me of Schulz’s drawings of submissive males, prostrating themselves under the feet of princesses, amazons and dominatrixes. I don’t remember anymore if the strip was conscious or unconscious imitation of his themes, but in my mind it’s still instantly recognizable as a Schulz homage… in a sketchy-90’s-emo-mini-comics kind of way.
Click to enlarge.
Here is a couple of Bruno Schulz drawings:
Procession from Xiega Balwochwalcza
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Sketchy Komiks: Leisure
It’s Christmas Eve and it’s time for an extra special edition of Sketchy Komiks™. This time instead of he customary one pager, it’s a 16 page sketchbook comic! I’ve put this out as a mini in the past. But the books are sold out and I don’t really have plans to reprint them. I’m still fond of this story and in the seasonal spirit of sharing and giving, I’m putting the whole thing online. -
Sketchy Komiks: Popping Bubbles
A satisfying post on Modern Missives transposes the current art market insanity onto another older one: the legendary Tulipmania of 17th century Holland. It reminded me of another recent story about Damien Hirst laying off 20 people as a response to the financial crisis. Then I remembered that I had done a little comic about it in my sketchbook… and this is how today’s installment of Sketchy Komiks™ came to be.
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Sketchy Komiks: The Original Affluent Society
A bonus second Sketchy Komik™ this week. At couple of years back I was reading several books on primitive societies. The phrase The Original Affluent Society kept popping up in various texts. It referred to early hunter-gatherer cultures which worked the equivalent of four hours a day to feed and clothe themselves. The rest of the day was spent in leisure. The farm based cultures that followed spent a lot more time toiling in the fields, trying to get the earth to grow some food for them. Farming set the civilization on a work oriented course for the next several millennia. Only the wealthy ruling classes (artistocrats, etc.) were afforded any kind of leisure time, hence the phrase ‘the leisure class’. The modern society we live in is the first time leisure has been experienced by a wide portion of the population. We work eight hours a day or more, I guess we still have some way to catch up to the hunter-gatherers.
This sketchbook comic really has very little to do with any of this.
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Apocalyptic Vehicles: Segway Chariot
Gary Panter has been very visible lately thanks to a couple of recent awe-inspiring books. Gary has renaissance-man-like abilities as a painter, cartoonist, TV art director, musician, light manipulator, etc. I’m sure this list of his talents is not exhaustive. I’m not going to add much to that list… except ‘postmodern conceptualist.’
I just received the new Jimbo mini-comic from Picturebox. It’s short, but full of deadpan funny non-sequiturs and great drawing. It’s another Gary Panter quality product. It contains one image-concept that encapsulates the Panter sensibility: Jimbo, cruising around on a Segway chariot! A Segway chariot! This post-apocalyptic vehicular imagination rivals Mad Max! It slices right through the Gordian Knot of late-capitalist, apocalyptic imagination: modern/ancient, primitive/advanced, peaceful/war-like, banal/sublime, etc.
In moments like this, I’m tempted to view Gary Panter as an unsung postmodern conceptualist masquerading as a cartoonist. I mean that in the best possible way! In any case, it’s time to dig out Gary’s Jimbo, a post-apocalyptic Gesamtkunstwerk, for a closer read.
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Comics in Poland: Zbigniew Lengren’s Filutek
A looooong time ago I promised a series of posts about Polish comics. I never got around to starting that until now. Without further delay, here’s the first installment about Zbigniew Lengren’s, Filutek, a long-running cartoon known to practically every Polish person.
The Polish Peanuts
One of the first comics I remember looking at was Professor Filutek by Zbigniew Lengren (1919-2003). It ran weekly in the Przekrój magazine for over 50 years, a record run in Polish comics. It was ubiquitous in Poland. The closest analog in the USA in terms of name recognition was probably Peanuts, though Filutek never achieved the kind of commercialized ubiquity of Peanuts merchandising. As far as I know, there were no Filutek toys. Perhaps that was just how things worked in Communist Poland. Or maybe it’s because Filutek had a more “New Yorker” sensibility and wasn’t translatable into plastic baubles. I don’t know. There was an animated cartoon though. I’ve never seen it.
Gentle Modernism
I recently stumbled on a small collection of the Professor Filutek strips on Abe Books. I was struck by a kind of gentle modernism that’s rarely seen in western cartoons. The art is minimalist, with that 1950’s clean pen line. Lengren renders the characters and objects with precision and economy. Professor Filutek is a kind of cartoon version of Monsieur Hulot. Absent-minded, generous, Filutek resembles a child-at-heart full of wonder at the everyday chaos of a rapidly changing world.
How Old is Filutek?
The introduction to the book claims that Lengren himself didn’t know the age of Professor Filutek. According to the cartoonist, the character’s beard might not be real! He implied that Filutek glued it on!
Filutek often interacts with children. He waits in line with kids to see a Tarzan movie, buys art supplies to help a boy create better graffiti on a wall, or entertains a toddler with a bicycle pump. But this isn’t a simple endorsement of childishness. In a famous strip, Professor Filutek corrects the spelling of vulgar graffiti. Write on walls if you must, but at least learn how to spell! Break rules, but do it well.
Gentle Zen Master
In some ways he reminds me of eccentric Zen Masters; older than dirt, wise, but with the impishness of a child. The strip is playfully didactic in ways similar to other cultural products of Eastern Europe of that time (for example, the Czechoslovak Krtek and Russian Cheburashka cartoons). It encourages playful co-operation, generosity, and good manners. It punishes selfishness, greed, and rudeness. The possibility of human progress and betterment is palpable in every frame.
Cartoon Optimism
I’m not sure if that’s true of all Filutek cartoons. The collection I have is from 1957. At that point in time, the communist project in Poland was still young. It was a few years after Stalin’s death and a only year after the death of Poland’s Stalinist Prime Minister Boleslaw Bierut. These were the early years of the cultural thaw, de-Stalinization, and Roman Polanski‘s early films. It was an optimistic time. It would be interesting to compare Lengren’s work from the 50 years of its existence. I wonder if Poland’s numerous political shifts would be detectable in the absent-minded life of Professor Filutek? The center cartoon above may be a playful reminder of the frequent power outages that plagued Poland during various periods of its Communist history. Or maybe it is just a general comment on man vs. technology?
Zbigniew Lengren’s memorial featuring Filutek’s dog Fafik, his umbrella, and hat in the Old Town in Toruń, Poland. Fafik joined the cast of characters later after the collection pictured above appeared. Photo from Wikipedia.
