Some more notes on the WORLD WITHOUT PICTURES theme
Our next deadline for CBA is Feb 15 for the following theme:
WORLD WITHOUT PICTURES – ART ON STRIKE
As main editor of the issue, I thought I’d share a few thoughts about it…
A few years ago, we published CBA vol 56|57: UNCOMICS, with Allan Haverholm as main editor, where the storytelling aspects of comics were peeled off to emphasize the art form as visual to the point of abstraction. This time we’re doing the polar opposite. This time, we’re taking away the images, leaving the stories bare, stripped, if you will (sorry)
In a way, the purpose is very much the same: a celebration of the image. But where UNCOMICS did it by reducing the importance of everything else, now we’re pointing to the importance of pictures by forcing the reader to deal with their complete and utter absence.
THE RULES
It should be a comic with no pictures.
You can use panel frames, you can use speech bubbles and captions.
Don’t use logos, don’t build images using letters/numbers, don’t write in hieroglyphs.
Don’t use sound effects, unless they’re very subdued and not too graphic.
Don’t cheat by using captions to explain what would’ve been in the pictures.
You could take an already existing comic and remove the pictures, or you can make something new, made with this in mind.
The absense should be tangible. The reader should be very aware that something is missing.
This doesn’t mean the comic should be impossible to read.
Ideally, you would make it work as a story even within this limtations.
READ MORE ABOUT THE RULES, and find our submission guidelines, HERE
I realize these rules may not cover all the angles a comic creator may come up with, so feel free to contact us with any questions: submissions [at] cbkcomics [dot] com
BACKGROUND – ART ON STRIKE
The strike is about witholding labor to show the importance of the worker. Show the capitalist that they need to properly value the workers or they will loose profit (which is a huge part of why they now want to replace us with AI, but that’s another(?) story). We’re doing something similar here, but we’re not just demomstrating the importance of labor but of art itself.
There were a few inspirations for the WORLD WITHOUT PICTURES – ART ON STRIKE theme. The most immediate ones came from a talk I had with [comic artist and CBK crew member] Marie Tillman about how undervalued pictures are in [not only] Sweden.
For one thing, it seems that as soon as a book has illustrations, it cultural value is diminished and it’s relegated to something that’s only for kids. One example is a book in Stephen King‘s Dark Tower series, where the English version had beautiful illustrations by Dave McKean, but as far as I know, none of the Swedish editions have any illustrations. And this is Stephen King, a massively popular author but one who is probably still seen as kind of low-brow entertainment by some. But even in that case, publishers won’t dare to lower the status of the book by adding pictures, even if they’re made by such an artist as McKean.
Granted, I have done zero research about these editorial decisions, but even if this is only my discourse analysis/impression of the situation, I think it’s still valid as an example of the low status of the image.
It’s especially true when it comes to comics. The making of a comics page is a lot of work, with many different elements, from scriptwriting to illustration to typography and graphic design. Yet, with few exceptions, a single illustration is worth more payment any day in most publishing situations. So if illustrations are already undervalued, imagine how low comics rank among employers.
So what would happen if art went on strike? Would the absence be felt?
INSPIRATION – WORLD WITHOUT PICTURES
Because there’s art and pictures all around us, from street sign pictograms to sefety instructions to blueprints, apart from the obvious examples like actual comics, animation, newspaper illustrations, instagram, covers for books, movies, games, records (virtual or otherwise). Open your phone and see how long it takes until you see a picture that someone’s made.
I once saw a piece of art at an exhibition in Skellefteå in the late 1990s, which was just an empty frame, with the title: Saknaden var stor men ingen tröst fanns att finna (The absemce was great but no consolation was in sight) – or something similar. It was a long time ago, but it made an impression. If I ever knew the name of the artist, I’ve forgotten.
For another part of the puzzle, I once talked with [Portuguese artist/publisher in Chili Com Carne] Marcos Farrajota, who talked about an old (1980s) issue of Alpha Flight, where writer/artist John Byrne made an issue where the main character of the story is blinded by a blizzard for several pages. So when I had the chance I had to get that issue becaue I liked the idea. It’s clearly still a comic, with comics storytelling, there just aren’t any pictures.
That is what I’m looking for with this theme.
A THOUGHT ON LIMITATIONS
There’s something to be said for limitation as a tool to get a creative process started. Maybe it’s an innate anarchism that can just get you going.
“How can I break these rules while staying within the spirit of them?”
“How can I live up to this idea even if it severely limits what I can do with it?”
Same as how a theme will negate the daunting possibilities of the empty page. It gives you something to hold on to, something to focus your imagination on. This is like that, it’s just that the limitations are more severe in form, while being wide open in content.
So that’s the challenge. We look forward to see what you’ll do with it!
/Mattias
CBA vol 73
