The Walrus Blog

Thanks to a couple of other comic artists I admire stumping on his behalf, lately I’ve been revisiting and reconsidering Matt Groening’s cartoons. Not his television cartoons, mind you, but his pen-and-ink ones, which feature a rotating cast of doomed and bickering rabbits and have been appearing in alternative papers since the early ’80s under the name Life in Hell.

I’ve gone back to The Simpsons, too, but the episodes I’ve rewatched have for the most part confirmed my earlier opinion of the show as complacent, predictable in its unpredictability, far from pointed in its social commentary, and comforting and permissive where it wants to come off as damning and critical. I had feared I would find the same schmaltzy problems in Groening’s comics work. It seems that, in the years since Toronto’s NOW ceased publishing the strip, and in the absence of any online presence or new print collections, I’d allowed Life in Hell to become unduly blackened by the Simpsons associations sullying my recollection of it.

I’d also started accepting much of the received wisdom I’d hear about the strip — that it lost its bite after Groening went commercial (it didn’t), that it looked xeroxed or repetitive or lazy or favoured text over art (well, it does, but those aren’t bad things), and that regular characters Akbar and Jeff kind of suck (um, okay, so they kind of do). But talking recently with Lynda Barry, and reading Sammy Harkham’s latest volume of Kramers Ergot, had me ready to approach Groening’s work from more sympathetic, less dogmatic directions. Reading Life in Hell in the specific contexts those two cartoonists provide, I’ve been rediscovering an incisive, authentically bilious strip carried off in distinctive visual shorthand. I value the strip not a little, and have ended up with not a little to say about it: this will be the first of three posts I’ll devote to Life in Hell over the next week or so. This time out, we’ll start with my latest “in” to Groening’s work—namely, his Kramers Ergot page.

By rights, having Groening contribute to the monolithic new Kramers anthology, the current standard-bearer for lit- and art-comix, shouldn’t come across as such a bold move. The man’s underground pedigree, after all, is unimpeachable—graduate of the early ’80s L.A. DIY scene, groundfloor of the alternative weeklies movement, buddy-buddy with avant-hero and Rozz Tox mastermind Gary Panter—but I still can’t recall another venue that’s placed him in such direct dialogue with other cartoonists (barring Barry’s Best American Comics volume).

By inviting Groening to fill one of the 16×21 inch Kramers pages, editor Harkham encourages us to view Groening simply as a cartoonist among cartoonists, a practitioner of the art, rather than as some anomalous success story, or Life in Hell as another bit of toilet-reading sandwiched between Heathcliff and Love Is… on the bookstore Humour shelf. In these pages, Groening numbers among the oldest of the old guard, and if he’s a fresher hand perhaps than your ’60s underground icons like Kim Deitch, he’s still roughly a contemporary of your ’80s alternative stars like Jaime Hernandez, both of whom appear here too. Ranking Groening alongside such esteemed peers, as well as the usual Kramers upstarts and radicals, is an editorial decision that bespeaks a level of respect and admiration that almost dares readers to quibble with it.

That said, Groening’s Kramers page isn’t exactly a stand-out, though its gargantuan dimensions do help reveal several of his strengths. Entitled “Life in Heaven”—and not a strip so much as a type of map he occasionally turns to, where he charts out a brutalising territory of certain defeat his characters nevertheless must pointlessly cross—Groening depicts “The Road to Success” in agonising, soul-crushing detail. (Obstacles: unconscious self-sabotage, undiagnosed depression, general angst, and, uh, bad clams. Instructions: Run Til You Die. Yow.)

Seeing this entry in the Life in Hell saga in the midst of strips by other cartoonists—most in colour, and either classically cartooned, or considerably art-damaged—made me realise just what an affront to the eye Groening’s strips can be. Which isn’t to say they’re ugly; this Kramers page, like other Groening cartoons, is composed with a certain easy grace. Rather, it’s to remark upon the way that Groening’s art is at odds with itself, his thin and simple lines opening up generous white regions at the same time they cram the available space full of detail, or compulsive repetition, or text. So Groening’s cartoons appear to us alternately as vast empty areas, inviting our attention, or as chock full of pattern and noise, resisting careless reading. His approach to cartooning is one of maddening accumulation, and of deceptive simplicity.

Plopped in the middle of a book full of comics like this, or onto a newsprint page surrounded by ads and type in your weekly paper, Groening’s drawing can’t help but look confrontational, or at least vividly different. Like the defiant but trampled-down philosophising that goes on within its panel borders, Life in Hell at once stands out on the page, and then buries itself in all sorts of complications. If, per Karasik and Newgarden, you can read Nancy without realising you’ve read it, you often can’t read Life in Hell without fully committing to the task.

* * *

Next, I want to look at how we read Life in Hell‘s dense pictures and words, and how Groening understands the ins and outs of weekly strips. Part two will appear in a couple days.

Tags
Posted in Four-Colour Words

  • http://sequential.spiltink.org/?p=2401 Sequential | Canadian Comics News & Culture

    [...] Rogers writes about Matt Groening for the Walrus blog. The article (part one of two) examines some [...]


Canada & its place in the world. Published by
the non-profit charitable Walrus Foundation
TwitterFacebookRSS
On newsstands now
New Issue on Sale
March 2012
Subscribe online for as little as $2.49 an issue. Visit The Walrus Store
to buy prints of our covers
The Walrus Laughs
Search the web, support the Walrus Foundation
COPA
Recent Blog Comments

In Defence of the Confession

best seo forums: Thanks for sharing such an brilliant post. I make sure to visit this post regularly. keep sharing more and more..

Seenloitering: The “gender analysis” in this article is upside down. Marie Calloway is a threat to the status quo because she threatens the myth that women are morally superior, above...

Jefry: I do not really like to read a story like a novel or a real story but I think this is very interesting and need to be read

Big Trouble in Little Africa

Legong: I know I am replying to this pathetic, racist statement a little late and the whole ignorant rant probably doesn’t even deserve a reply. Wanhenglo, if we were all to generalise about...

Legong: I know I am replying to this pathetic, racist statement a little late and the whole ignorant rant probably doesn’t even deserve a reply. Wanhenglo, if we were all to generalise about...

We Are Potential

Sky Goodden: This is startling, refreshing, overdue, and damn good. Thank you, Shary.

Where’s the Love?

Mark: It’s not just in Canada, it seems all over artists don’t get the local recogtnition they should. I was in Malaga where Picasso was born and it is much different, but then he is...

The End of the Family Line

Guest: I didn’t want babies or a period any more.  I KNEW without a doubt I did not want children so I had been asking for a hysterectomy since I was 19.  I finally got it at 39.  My...

Cairo Chameleon

Djzklj: Pretty interesting article, despite that I don’t wanna make a voyage there

Craftwerk

Sanyo Seiki: I love this game! Very addicted! Sanyo Seiki

Archived Blog Posts
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007