Style Imitates Content: Horror Comics

Thus far we’ve seen two main styles of comic drawing, first the playful style from comic strips like Tintin, and the more realistic superhero comics. The Crime Suspenstories introduced another style of art, one better adapted to the stories included in the volume.

The quality of the image, not how well its drawn, but rather the manner in which it is drawn, is incredibly important to how the reader interacts with the work. In stories meant for children, and in comedy, there tends to be a simpler aesthetic. Thus, when you open up a comic book and it’s drawn in that style, you as a reader don’t expect to find a story about more mature topics. The same can be said in a more nuanced way for this week’s readings and the previous superhero comics. Both feature fully formed figures, that include anatomically elaborate figures, detailed clothing and hair, facial structure and background images that are detailed and complete. However, there is a markedly different ambiance and feel to the comics, even just looking at the artwork, subject aside. The heavy, geometric shading features in Crime Suspenstories, lends a dark, almost film noir appearance to the work. It reads as shadowy, scary and harsh. The line quality tends to be sharp and scratchy, building showads with broken and jagged edges. The superhero comics tended towards a simpler shading style, leaving much more light and open. They used friendly colors, more pastels and primary colors, versus Crime’s more neon brights and shadowy gray dark colors.

The combination of all of these factors lends an air of creepiness and creates a sort of tension within the artistic style itself. The harsh play of light and dark, the shadow opaque quality of the dark spaces and the almost sickly bright colors, the scraggly shadows, they generate a feeling of unease in the viewer, setting the reader up for the creepiness of the story and adding to the discomfort the images are supposed to conjure up. As we explore this new genre of horror and suspense comics, we also are viewing a new artistic style within comics.

Narration & Cliché in "Crime SuspenStories

One of the most entertaining aspects of "Crime SuspenStories" arises from the dynamic narration, eminent throughout the entire series. Depending on the format of the story, the narrator fills various roles, some of which are listed below:
 an anonymous objective narrator
 an assistant defense attorney in the protagonist's trial
 a witch, who is the reader's "hostess in horror"
 the protagonist's conscience
 the protagonist.
Especially in some of the earlier stories, the narrative voice introduces the story in a passage, which reveals the ending as well. This in particular caught my attention, as it seemed too literal to be incorporated into a suspense story. How is it that comic writer's were able to achieve suspense despite giving away the ending at the beginning? Furthermore, why would EC choose to include this aspect in the first place? As I continued to read, the narrator's role in Conniver! also caught my attention. In this particular story, the narrative voice is that which exists inside the protagonist's, Tom Brogan's, head. The narrator pesters Tom about his lowly office position every time he sits at his dilapidated desk and furthermore, develops the plan according to which Tom hopes to murder Mr. Gaynor. In this case, the narrator greatly augments the psychological depth of the comics. Although the narrator does not serve as an internal voice throughout all of the stories, the psychologically thrilling aspect permeating the volume, was in my opinion, surprising. By incorporating psychological depth, the stories alluded to the universality of madness and were therefore even more suspenseful. The subjects of the comics were diverse (i.e. artists, writers, businessmen, engineers, business agents, assistant editors, doctors, etcetera) and for this reason, the stories were written as if they could happen to anybody. This combined with the psychological nature of the stories, juxtaposed the clichés, ubiquitous in plot and character content, thus surprising the readers despite otherwise expected circumstances.

The Emotions of Arrangement

    When reading Crime Suspense Stories I was often paying the most attention to how an artist decided to arrange objects within a panel. In older works like Superman, panel construction was used to give information very explicitly. Things like who's talking and the location of the scene are brought to our attention first through image, and dialogue and additional text reveal the inner workings of relationships and characters. This simplistic almost-dichotomy works well for the superhero narrative, where we are interested with exterior sources of tension such as catching the bad guy. Yet, in suspense comics, we need to know the emotions of a character to be compelled to keep reading, so we need more revelation in the image.
    Looking at 'High Tide,' we can see from the first page that perspective is important. From the splash page opening, we get the feeling of watching or being watched, our perspective as audience from above and focused on the horizon. This set up is the utter opposite of the last panel on the page where we are looking from below eye-level, over the skipper's shoulder, at the boat passengers. Instead of seeing the freedom to see everything, our eyes have to move past a character (who is later revealed to be the killer) in order to see the scene. The perspective is reminiscent of a movie that introduces you to the killer at the beginning only to have you realize they're the killer 90 minutes later. Perspective not only reveals here, but it hints at tensions not revealed by words.
   Moving to the climax of the work on page 40-41, we are treated to an ever-changing perspective reflecting the struggle at hand. This was used in former comics as well, but here we are up close and seeing every change in expression, every little detail that is building and building until the revelation in the last panel of the top row of 41. Here, we are learning the identity of the killer at the same time as the last innocent man, almost as if we are being the ones shot. A movie equivalent to this comic would be the final scene of The Great Train Robbery where the robber shoots directly at the crowd. The artist is not only showing us the killer, but showing us the depths of his evil, that he would shoot any one of us to get off that boat. And by enveloping him in the black of the gun blast, the artist strips him of any humanity, leaving him as nothing but a killer.

The Hands of Crime and Horrer

As we discussed in class, the images in Crime and SuspenStories draw upon a different artistic influences than any of the comics that we have read up to this point. The aspect of the images in these comics that stood out to me immediately was how hands were drawn. The comics consistently draw bony hands with long fingers that are often curled with fear or out of frustration. This is more common among male characters but there are certainly instances where female characters are portrayed in this way as well. Often hands are the central features of panels where suspense is high.  I just found it interesting that a body part that we do not often associate with emotion would be used so consistently in this genre of comics to indicate fear or climaxes in the plot.

Moral Ambiguity in Death's Double-Cross

Although written pre Comics Code Authority Crime Suspenstories Volume One offers a number of interesting stories to evaluate using the CCA. Death's Double-Cross in particular is a more problematic example in that it makes little distinction between hero and villain. Although not overtly gory the story portrays three characters all making poor moral choices to varying degrees, deterring the reader from sympathizing with any one character.

Death's Double-Cross depicts the love triangle between Ruth and twins John and Ronnie. Although Ruth prefers Ronnie with time she falls for John and marries him. However, when Ronnie returns from traveling the two reconcile and develop a plan to murder John so that they can be together. Ronnie plans to lure John to a nearby lake to drown him. The plan is executed although it's later revealed that John has actually drowned Ronnie and has attempted to kill Ruth by smashing her with a chandelier and a safe.

Although the story doesn't contain bloodshed or gruesome displays of violence its storyline does pose a challenge to the CCA regarding General Standards Part A which states, "In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds" and General Standards Part C which states, "The treatment of love-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage". Although all three characters have immoral intentions John could be the considered the overlying villain in the story given he does actually kill a person, but nevertheless the morality in Death's Double-Cross is overwhelmingly ambiguous. Evaluated by the CCA the comic also depicts scenes of love outside of marriage, although it could be argued that to a degree the "sanctity of marriage" is maintained because Ronnie is killed. In evaluating the story to the CCA it could be argued that although it doesn't meet the code's standards the moral ambiguity makes for more complex characters and therefore a more thoughtful and beneficial story. Perhaps readers can learn more from a story that depicts a reality in which individuals can't be separated into groups of good and evil. In this light, Death's Double-Cross provides a more nuanced approach to the traditional good/evil dichotomy.

The Literary Influence Present in Crime Suspenstories

Hi, all.

During class we briefly mentioned how Crime Suspenstories was heavily influenced by the suspense stories and mystery novels of the time. I just wanted to follow up with a few examples from the text about how the panel layout and plot development suggest a literary influence on the way in which the comics artists approached storytelling. As can be seen in High Tide and Murder May Boomerang, there is a self-referential relationship that exists between the first and last panels. In Murder May Boomerang, the panels are actually identical (see pp. 11 & 18), adding a cyclical nature to the story which - although simple - seems to be something we haven't seen in previous comics. This paralleled narrative is more in line with literary and cinematic devices than traditional comics storytelling approaches. Likewise, in High Tide, the narration on the last panel (pp. 41) is taken directly from the title page (pp. 35). Although the images presented are different (symbolic movement from day to night as suggested by the color of the sky in the reflection of the water), the typography of the phrase "HIGH TIDE!" and the sentences leading to it is consistent. This technique of juxtaposing the identical text with opposite images also seems rather symbolic or literary.

SuspenStories...? Or Horrifying logic stories?

Rather than reading suspension and crime, I feel more like reading the logical horror stories that I am usually fascinated by. It really reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe and his Tell-Tale Heart. In almost all of the SuspenStories, the stories are told from the main character's point of view. They introduce the character's background, giving them a motive to commit crimes, and then takes us through the process and the aftermath. I personally don't think that it's the stories that are horrifying, but rather the logic behind the stories that I find them creepy.

In the Tell-Tale Heart, the narrative is the person who is obsessed with, and hates the old man's eyes. While I follow the narrative down his path of thought, I begin to empathize with the narrative, especially about how even though some people are kind, there is just that one thing that bothers me. While the narrator repeatedly claims that he is sane, I also convince myself that I, a completely sane person, agrees with him so he should be calm and collected. And then I begin to agree on why he killed the old man after killing him. Throughout the entire story, I am on the narrator's side. I believed that he is perfectly normal. But it wasn't until the end that I realized that it was not true. And then I began to question my sanity. It is the ending that really makes you think back to the beginning and realize how all of this all made sense, and how I missed all of the little cues laying here and there. So am I sane?

This comic book is a good example of the importance of narrative in comic books. Because the main character takes the audience from the stories, it gives the characters a more all-round/human perspective of the crimes. Even though they almost all face karma in the end, the stories are really interesting.