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Comic Potential By Abby Bertumen These days, pop culture has enjoyed a mainstreaming of what many once called an "under culture" of shameless sex, violence and turmoil within the backdrops of dark alleys and dwellings of a highly industrialized society. There are the fetishes we call Britney Spears and the rest of her tube-top wearing slumber-friends, the theory out there that kids shoot up their schools because they are "bored" with learning and the recent goal of a 21-year-old to live (including ordering food) solely through the Internet, never leaving his room and interacting only with the computer. That's a lot of pizza boxes and jacking off. However, there exists a "pulp" culture where these concepts, and numerous other psychological and historical undercurrents of our society, supercede what the mainstream could ever imagine concocting. Enter today's comic book. David Witanowski, a senior cinema and photography major,
is about to explore and contribute to this world, which is now called
a "graphic novel" or "pulp literature." After graduation, Witanowski
will begin work with a partner writing his own comic book in the hopes
that Darkhorse Comics, a company which publishes the "Stars Wars" and
"Xena, Warrior Princess" comics among other things, will publish it.
However, Witanowski's project is more of a prospect than just a hope.
He has already made a contact at Darkhorse and has begun to organize
and outline a series. We sat together and discussed his comic book and
the comic industry. "He said it's actually surprisingly easy to get into the comic industry," Witanowski said. His friend, who has been working on small to medium-sized projects for Darkhorse which includes instruction manuals, trading cards and recent work for the "Star Wars" and "Ghost" series, also said that if he works hard enough, in about a year he will be given his own series-the chance for his and Witanowski's project. "It's strange because I never really planned for it," Witanowski says, joking that he now questions the use in going to college. "This has really been a heaven sent occurrence for me because the chances of something like this happening seems so slim. "The funny thing is I was never a really big comic book fan [in high school]," he continues, though he used to read comics like "Batman" and "The Sandman." Now, Witanowski says that he is a big fan of a lot of Darkhorse Comics, like "Hellboy," as well as famed comic writers like Frank Miller and Alan Moore. Witanowski's collaborative effort with his writer friend and the Darkhorse artist takes place in the future where the main character, a cop named Grendel, is trying to escape the totalitarian state society has become, complete with a Big Brother figure only known as "The Leader." "[Grendel is] trying to take himself out of society because he think it's corrupted," Witanowski says. However, Grendel lives a rural existence until he is sucked back into the society as an unwilling government dissident. "One thing about comics is that you can rip off a lot of stuff from popular literature and films and not feel like you're really stealing it as long as you're doing something, you know, different with it," he says. Other characters in the series include Grendel's uncle, a wealthy head of a robotics company, who wants to be a superhero. "He's sort of the comic relief because he wants to be like Batman or just someone who's really smart, an incredible human being, not one with superpowers of any sort," Witanowski explains. Grendel's uncle convinces him to help his group of rebels. "He's forced into starting a sort of pseudo-rebellion,"he says of Grendel. Witanowski and his collaborators have constructed a unique future for their characters, hearkening to historical rather than technological influences. "If it's the far-flung future, we thought it'd be interesting if, instead of things being better or more technologically advanced, if they were actually worse and society had retrograded back to almost a feudal existence," he says. "There would be a return to guilds, and citizens would utilize lost crafts from centuries ago." "It'll have a very interesting, distinctive look," Witanowski says. He and his co-writer are self-proclaimed "history buffs," and it is evident in the context of their comic book. Other dissident groups in the story include a breakaway sect of priests who think they're Crusaders and a faction of third generation Luddites-named for a group who, in 1830, smashed printing presses and killed people in the name of societal preservation against the evils of technology. Witanowski said that one of the main concepts of the comic is of people attempting to reconcile the things they regret: Grendel attempting to separate himself from his cop/soldier past, the Luddites for their past involvements in the government, etc. "I think a lot of it is about atonement for what you did in the past,"he says. "[Grendel] feels like 'Oh, I've helped build this.'" The context of Witanowski's series mirrors many modern comic book backdrops: a dark vision of the present or a radically projected future, often with an oppressive form of government which prompts the emergence of rebels or heroes. Such a desire to express dissidence and alter the control of a society is part of the universal appeal of comic books, Witanowski says. "Comic books are usually some form of escapism,"he says. "One of the things that made me want to do this was [reading] 1984." He says he remembers thinking, "Why has no one ever done a really good version of this?" Hence, the advent of the anti-hero Grendel. Also, Witanowski had a negative experience in high school, where he was part of a student government who was pessimistic about action against the administration and was ultimately dissolved. He believes that many young adults and even college-age people have similar experiences which draw them to the idea of anti-control in the comic books. "I sort of wondered if maybe that kind of attitude of [student government apathy] had carried up somehow to the top level of government, because I figured we sort of train our children for a long period of time to live in a totalitarian state because a school is not run like a democracy," he explains. "I want to bring some form of justice to something I think is bad," he continues. "If this is the only way I can do it in what's considered 'pulp literature,' then okay." Also, the comic book is an outlet for Witanowski and his writing partner to convey an anti-gun and anti-abuse of technology message, a goal that resulted in such plot devices as the feudal existence where none of the "good guys" have guns. Such a toning down of high-powered violence seems uncharacteristic for a genre that has been criticized for its excessive violence. Examples of this: Xena being nailed to a cross in the most recent installment of "Xena, Warrior Princess" and a man dreaming of performing vivisection on his young female neighbor in a comic called "Corny's Fetish." "There's some times where I just think the violence is maybe unnecessary or just done for exploitive reasons,"Witanowski says. "There are comic books which are sort of just ripping off other comic books, [those comic books] feel like the difference is 'ours is really violent.'" While he says that many Darkhorse comics are pretty violent, Witanowski contests that some violence is functional, such in the case of Miller's "Hardboiled," where 300 people are murdered under an extreme capitalist government, conveying the message that "people just don't matter" in the system. "He's not using [violence] because he's callous, I think he's using it because he's saying 'oh this capitalist society is very callous,'" he says. "When it's within a proper context, I think it's really effective. I don't want it to be totally like 'Well, we like violence.'" Also, the comic book genre has come under scrutiny for its portrayal of women. Darkhorse's featured comic for this month highlights a comic book called "The Dirty Pair," in which two big-chested female protagonists battle the forces of evil in metal slivers of bikinis. "Maybe it's just that it [the comic genre] started out as sort of a primary male interest, so because of that development, it's become very misogynistic and bad," Witanowski says. He adds that if there were suddenly an influx of female comic book readers, "suits" at the head of the industry might crack down on it, but sex is part of the appeal of the comic industry to males, namely teenagers, as of now. "I tend to like comic books that don't [use sex appeal in such a way], but it's hard when that's like a part of something," he says. "I think it's hard for artists to get away from it." But Witanowski said that if writers write responsibly and not give in to stereotypes, the strength of a female character (he uses the example of "The Sandman") would come through. However, he also refers to the "Silver Age" of comics where the really violent horror series emerged and the industry enacted "comic codes," which dictated that comics always had to have a positive message like "crime must never pay," etc. Witanowski believes such a policy is bad, and calls for a different type of change in the genre concerning women. "Maybe it's not so much that they crack down on it,"he says. "I think there should be more women involved in the industry." However, this may not guarantee a certain end to misogyny. Oddly enough, "Corny's Fetish" is written by a woman. Despit the criticisms, Witanowski finds a lot of talent and literary merit in the comic book genre. "The only reason I read comics is because I found that there's some that are very well done, I think that they're just as well thought out and interesting as any book I've read. I don't feel there's some sort of stigma attached to it," he says. "There's some I just consider to be amazing works of art, just in terms of literature alone." Witanowski plans to return to his hometown of Syracuse, where he and his friend will begin work on the deep background of their story: doing extensive research, including collecting visual effects like photos of buildings for the artist. Witanowski also keeps an extensive file of articles concerning things of the future: articles on technology and fashion of the future, as well as political cartoons detailing possible futures. "I was amazed because it's only like a 12 or 16-page comic book," he says. "I can't imagine how much stuff we'll have to design." Abby Bertumen is a junior print journalism major at Ithaca College. |
