Hemingway in Comics , livre ebook

The Kent State University Press - K. Elder Robert

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

277 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Ernest Hemingway casts a long shadow in literature-reaching beyond his status as a giant of 20th-century fiction and a Nobel Prize winner-extending even into comic books. Appearing variously with Superman, Mickey Mouse, Captain Marvel, and Cerebus, he has even battled fascists alongside Wolverine in Spain and teamed up with Shade to battle adversaries in the Area of Madness.Robert K. Elder's research into Hemingway's comic presence demonstrates the truly international reach of Hemingway as a pop culture icon. In more than 120 appearances across multiple languages, Hemingway is often portrayed as the hypermasculine legend: bearded, boozed up, and ready to throw a punch. But just as often, comic book writers see past the bravado to the sensitive artist looking for validation. Hemingway's role in these comics ranges from the divine to the ridiculous, as his image is recorded, distorted, lampooned, and whittled down to its essential parts.As Elder notes, comic book creators and Hemingway share a natural kinship. The comic book page demands an economy of words, much like Hemingway's less-is-more "iceberg theory," only in graphic form. In addition, he turned out to be the perfect avatar for comic book artists wanting to tell history-rich stories, as he experienced beautiful places during the most chaotic times: Paris in the 1920s, Spain during the Spanish Civil War, Cuba on the brink of revolution, France during World War I and during World War II just after the Allies landed in Normandy.Hemingway in Comics provides a unique lens for considering one of our most influential authors. Not only for the dedicated Hemingway fan, this book will appeal to all those with an appreciation for comics, pop culture, and the absurd.

Informations

Publié par	The Kent State University Press
Date de parution	08 septembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	2
EAN13	9781631014116
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	13 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Hemingway in Comics
Hemingway in Comics
Robert K. Elder
with Sharon Hamilton, Jace Gatzemeyer, and Sean C. Hadley

The Kent State University Press Kent, Ohio
For Dylan and Eva,
who grew up in
Hemingway’s hometown,
surrounded by comic books
© 2020 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242 All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-60635-400-1 Manufactured in Canada
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.
Cataloging information for this title is available at the Library of Congress.
24 23 22 21 20 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Foreword by Brian Azzarello
Introduction
A Note about That Sweater
1917–1960: Hemingway’s High School Yearbook to Tintin
Hemingway’s Superheroes by Sharon Hamilton
1961–1990: Hemingway’s Suicide and Early Guest Appearances
1991–2000: Hemingway Goes Meta—Time Travel and Hero Worship
Topolino: Hemingway in Italy’s Disney Comics (1987–2001)
2001–2005: The Hemingway Comic Universe Expands
“I Think We Should Steal Some Money”: The Left Bank Gang and Jason’s Hemingway by Jace Gatzemeyer
2006–2013: Hemingway: Illustrated by His Grandson, as Papa the Indie Icon, and His Graphic Canon
Moral Formation and Graphic Adaptations of Hemingway’s Works by Sean C. Hadley
2014–2019: Hemingway at Sea, in the Afterlife, and Beyond
2020–: Hemingway Comics and the Future
Hemingway Oddities and Ephemera
Hemingway Comic Roundup
Acknowledgments
Bibliography and Further Reading
Index
Foreword
Brian Azzarello
Whenever I’m asked about my biggest influences, I always say Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway. Now, if you know my work, that last bearded guy might not be an obvious choice. There are no homages or references to him in my comics.
But Hemingway shaped me as a writer, and as a writer of comics specifically.
Let me start at the beginning. My first experience with Hemingway was when I was six. My uncle Elmer made me watch The Old Man and the Sea movie with him. I didn’t like it as much as he did. For a six-year-old, it’s kind of a boring movie, except the shark part. The whole theme of the movie was lost on me immediately. I asked Uncle Elmer, “Why didn’t the old man just let that fish go?”
He tucked me into bed, said, “Bahhhh,” and waved a hand at me.
But now I understand why the old man didn’t let the fish go—because the fish isn’t a fish!
The Old Man and the Sea is very simple and tribal. Great literature tends to be simple—elementally simple—and lends itself to graphic storytelling. Comics operate on a similar level. Why does Batman work as an iconic character? Because he is defined in elemental terms. He hangs around at night. He wears black.
Elementally, Hemingway writes and drinks and wears that sweater. It’s the image Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West uses. For better or worse, that’s what the shorthand has become, the iconography. Unfortunately, his myth tends to overshadow his writing, so people form an opinion of Hemingway without reading his work. I knew who he was before I knew what he did. But once I learned what he did, I started to appreciate him. His stories are fantastic; they still have a pulse.
Like everyone else, I read him in high school. First, The Sun Also Rises, and then I started reading his other work on my own. What I like about The Sun Also Rises is that Hemingway isn’t telling you exactly what is happening—the aimlessness, the promiscuity, Jake’s mysterious injury, etc. The moral structure of the time had something to do with that. Hemingway couldn’t come out and say exactly what was going on. But I understood it—or I thought I did. With Hemingway, you become a really active reader.
Comics make a similar demand on you. You, the reader, are part of the language of comics. You have to fill in a lot of blanks, and the space between panels. These are static images that really move when you’re inside the story and things start to pick up speed.
Through Hemingway, I learned to celebrate weakness in my characters. Almost every character in The Sun Also Rises is weak in some regard. That’s what the Lost Generation is about: Life is a party when life has no meaning. I’d argue that all the Minutemen in my series 100 Bullets share this profile. They’re killers who behave on the surface—by nature of their jobs—like life has no meaning. Only rather than being broken by a war, they’ve been fractured by personal tragedies.
Hemingway’s characters have rich inner lives, so their actions have meaning. When I’ve talked to younger writers about characters with inner lives, sometimes they look at me like I’m speaking a foreign language. Well-written characters never act out of character because they have such a strong inner light. Even if you’re not getting into their heads, their words and actions tell you who they are.
Take gunrunner Harry Morgan in Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. On the surface, he’s brutal and compromised, but in reality, he’s a moral, strong character. He’s doing wrong things for right reasons. My own Agent Graves in 100 Bullets certainly fits that definition.
Comic book writers can learn a lot from Hemingway. There’s only so much room you have in a panel for dialog, and, in dialog, there’s nobody better than Hemingway for saying the most with the least amount of words. I wish more of my colleagues knew that. Some of these guys act like they’re getting paid by the word.
Hemingway’s characters rarely exactly say what they mean, which means you have to interpret what they say. For instance, with The Sun Also Rises, you could ask three different people what the ending means, and you’d get three different answers. The storytelling makes you a participant.
So, go out there and participate. Read Hemingway’s original work and see what sparked the people in this book to make him a part of their comics.
And remember, the fish isn’t a fish.
Introduction
Robert K. Elder

From Thierry Murat’s adaptation of Le Vieil Homme et La Mer (The Old Man and the Sea) (2014). Used with permission of the artist.
Comic book creators and Hemingway share a natural kinship. The comic book page demands an economy of words, and—for multi-panel stories—a lot of the action takes place between the panels. It’s an interactive reading experience, much like Hemingway’s work. It demands that you interpret and bring yourself to the text, like Hemingway’s less-is-more “iceberg theory,” in graphic form.
In Death in the Afternoon (1932), Hemingway expounded on his theory that what is left out of a story gives it power, that the act of omission strengthens a story. Hemingway contends that in the hands of a talented writer, a reader “will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” Comic book artists and writers similarly make choices that require both surface and thematic readings, with narrative information being absorbed through a spare, meticulous pairing of text and artwork. Done well, comics are visual experiences that plumb emotional depths.
Hemingway’s influence continues to permeate pop culture, and comics are no exception.
While researching my book Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park, I started collecting Hemingway references in pop culture, including more than 40 appearances in comic books. That research turned into several articles for the Comics Journal and the online Hemingway Review. To date, I’ve cataloged more than 120 Hemingway appearances, references, jokes, adaptations, homages, and doppelgängers from across the globe—and the list keeps growing. Even as I write this introduction, a colleague has just sent me a new story starring Hemingway from a comic book artist in Croatia.
Celebrity appearances aren’t new to comic books. Both Stephen Colbert and President Barack Obama got guest shots with Spider-Man, and Eminem got a two-issue series with the Punisher. Orson Welles helped Superman foil a Martian invasion, and President John F. Kennedy helped the Man of Steel keep his secret identity. Even David Letterman got a studio visit from the Avengers. But, using the crowd-sourced Comic Book Database ( comicbookdb.com ) and my own research, I’ve discovered that Hemingway by far exceeds other authors in number of appearances (Shakespeare: 22, Mark Twain: 13). As historical figures go, only Abraham Lincoln comes close to touching him, with roughly 122 appearances in comics (and counting).
Hemingway casts a long shadow in literature, one that extends into comic books. In my first wave of research, I found him battling Fascists alongside Wolverine, playing poker with Harlan Ellison, and leading a revolution in Purgatory in The Life After. He has also appeared alongside Mickey Mouse, Captain Marvel, Cerebus, Lobo—even a Jazz Age Creeper. In comics, the Nobel Prize winner is often treated with equal parts reverence, curiosity, and parody.
In 2001, on the fiftieth anniversary of Hemingway’s death, Reed Johnson wrote about how the author’s image had been treated in pop culture. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Johnson reflected on the “Hemingway caricature handed down to posterity: a hard-drinking, womanizing, big-game trophy-hunting, fame-craving blowhard who pushed his obsession about writing in a lean, mean prose style to the point of self-parody.”
Five decades after Hemingway’s death, Johnson observes, “There’s another, more serious and respectable Hemingway still duking it out with this comic imposter in the ring of public perception.”
That fight continues and is unlikely to be won anytime soon, because as author Tim O’Brien has pointed out, there is more than one Ernest Hemingway. In the many appearances I found, Hemingway is often the hyper-masculine legend of Papa: bearded, boozed up, and ready to throw a punch. Jus