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Poetry, Design and Comics: An Interview with Seth by Marc Ngui

Seth is a cartoonist, illustrator and book designer based in Guelph, ON. His

work is well known and admired in the world of independent comics and

magazine illustration. He recently had an exhibition of work at the Art

Gallery of Ontario (the first for a cartoonist) and is currently designing the

complete reprint of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip for Fantagraphics.

In a recent online interview Seth began to talk about the relationship

between comics and the seemingly polar disciplines of graphic design and

poetry. As the conversation turned, he was unable to elaborate on his ideas

about the language of comics.This interview rectifies that situation.

In regards to comics’ relation to poetry, you spoke of the fundamental role

that rhythm plays in both mediums. I was wondering if you could describe

this rhythmic connection?

I have felt, for some time, a connection between comics and poetry. It’s an obvious

connection to anyone who has ever sat down and tried to write a comic strip. I think the

idea first occurred to me way back in the late 80’s when I was studying Charles Schulz’s

Peanuts strips. It seemed so clear that his four-panel setup was just like reading a haiku; it

had a specific rhythm to how he set up the panels and the dialogue. Three beats: doot

doot doot— followed by an infinitesimal pause, and then the final beat: doot. Anyone can

recognize this when reading a Peanuts strip.These strips have that sameness of rhythm

that haikus have— the haikus mostly ending with a nature reference separated off in the

final line.

Comics and poetry are very condensed media; they rely on an economy of

language where every little word or picture counts. It is the interplay of

meaning generated by using limited symbols that creates the dense imagery

that both media are capable of. Both make use of the symbolic and both ask

that the reader fill in the gaps to complete images in their minds.What are

your thoughts on this matter? How does it affect the way you write comics?

The condensing of real life experience into a comic page is the very essence of what

making a comic is about.The choices made in how you condense this information and

how you arrange it to tell a story is the barebones of what your job as a cartoonist is. If

you wish to tell a story about how you got up this morning and went to work, there are

a great number of choices you could make in how to tell it as a comic. Most of the

decisions will be determined by the amount of space you have to work with; traditionally

cartoonists had very limited spaces to tell stories in — usually 6 or 7 pages — and

therefore they developed a language based on economy.You would have a character get

out of bed in panel one and be on the train in panel two.This is no longer always the

case today — in a graphic novel, you can have as many pages as required —
and cartoonists are learning how to use this condensed storytelling language in new ways.
Let’s assume you can do whatever you wish and use as much space as you like: you will still be

condensing information onto the page as you take life and plot it out in little pictures.

If you do five pages of large panels showing night turning into day followed by five pages

of little panels showing yourself waking and taking in the details of the room and the

light changing colour and then rising — well, these choices are utterly important in

conveying experience to the reader.While it’s true that choices have to be made on how

much information to include and what to exclude in writing for any medium, the difference

in comics is that this medium is inherently about condensing information.What you are

getting is a series of ‘still’ pictures combined to tell a story… panel one: eye opens;

panel two: shot of face, awaking; panel three: see whole room; panel four: behind the

figure now, see light coming in window; panel five: close up on light beam; panel six:

dust motes in the light… you can see the condensed language right there.

For myself, this is the great pleasure in arranging the information of the story: the choices you
make in how to apply this language. 

Is this condensed language a strength or a weakness? 

Probably a bit of both… there are strengths and weaknesses to every medium; comics are no
different. Increasingly, I think we are seeing that cartooning is just another artistic medium and
is not limited by its language; as a medium, it seems capable of handling any kind of story.
However, comics are very young and it is hard to determine what they

do best yet. Clearly they are capable of many different narrative approaches but each of

them has their challenges. An interior monologue is something comics do much better

than film, but you have to work hard to keep it visually interesting when you employ

this.The same goes for a long conversation between characters: you don’t always want

ten pages of two heads talking to each other. Prose does not have these problems. Prose,

however, has to point out everything visually. If someone is wearing a red sweater in a

novel then the author has to comment on it; in a comic you can just draw it and let the

reader take it in less conspicuously. I could go on and on.

How does graphic design relate to the language of comics?

The ‘words & pictures’ that make up the comics language are often described as prose

and illustration combined. A bad metaphor: poetry and graphic design seems more apt.

Poetry for the rhythm and condensing; graphic design because cartooning is more about

moving shapes around — designing — then it is about drawing. Obviously when creating

a strip about a man walking down the street you are drawing pictures of the man and the

environment… however, you are also trying to simplify these drawings down into a

series of more iconic, graphic renderings.The more detailed the drawing — the more it

attempts to capture ‘reality’ — the more it slows down the story telling and deadens the

cartoon language. Don’t get me wrong; the cartooning can be very specific, it doesn’t

have to be generic. It simply has to properly ‘cartoon’ the images.The drawings become

symbols that are arranged on the page (and within the panels) in the most logical way to

make the reading of the story work; you place these cartooned images together in a way

that does what you want them to do.You aren’t concerned with drawing a proper street

scene so much as you are concerned with moving the reader’s eye around the page in the

way you wish it to move.Trying to draw realistically just sets up a myriad of frustrations

for the proper use of cartoon language. Think of the cartoon language as a series of

characters (letters) being purposefully arranged to make words

What is the difference between looking and reading?

Ideally, when the viewer ‘reads’ a comic strip they are ingesting the information in the

same way that they would when they are reading text.They take the words and the iconic

condensed drawings, and process this information to make the story come alive, much

like they do when reading the printed letterforms of a novel.

When viewing a painting, you don’t tend to read the image in the same way; instead,

 you look.The eye wanders around deciding what it all ‘means’. Some paintings are more

directed in how they control the eye, but I still think that this is an entirely different

process.You don’t look at a comic— you read it. Even if there are no words in the strip,

you are reading those panels; it’s all little blocks of information. A drawing or painting

tries to impart the experience of living in the world in a much different manner: it is

more of a sensory experience, an outside experience. Comic reading happens more

inside the reader, it is a different mental process… a solitary experience

The idea that “the line drawing is a blueprint for experience” came up during

a lecture you gave about Thoreau Macdonald at the AGO. How is this a useful

model for a cartoonist? What is the role of memory in the generation of

effective symbols in comics storytelling?

If you went out into the backyard and stood there and then returned to the house and

drew the scene with just an eye for simplifying it, you might have a good cartoon drawing.

Imagine that the real scene was quickly decomposed down to a black & white, high-contrast

photo, and then traced: a sort of memory drawing.

The drawings in a comic are generally memory-drawings; the simplicity of the ink lines

can act as a memory trigger.You fill in the blanks of experience and remember, for

example, a field you have been in.You recall the colour, the smell, the way the grass

moved; like a memory flash you create the textures… the reader/viewer ideally is a

ghost floating over a dream world of memory.

The cartoonist is trying to boil down real life experience into an image that is capable of

conveying the depth of life by only suggesting it.This is what good cartooning is about.

It is difficult to do properly.To see a good cartoonist suggest a winter day in just a couple

of lines is to understand the beauty of a thing done well

During this same lecture you spoke about how cartoonists have to navigate

between the figurative and the abstract in their work; this is an intriguing

paradox. Can you explain the role/use/function of this paradox in comics?

If you are drawing a picture of a house, you want it to look like a house, a specific house.

However, to cartoon it properly you have to simplify it down to a usable graphic.You have

to walk that fine line between trying to convey some ‘real’ element of the living world

that is recognizable as just what it is, in all its specificity, and to make the image iconic

and simple enough to be moved about on the page effectively as a piece of the cartoon

 language.This tension between the ‘real’ and the ‘cartoon’ is the central tension in drawing

a cartoon strip.You don’t want to fall too much into the iconic because then the strip

becomes visually boring, and you don’t want to become too detailed (or real) because

then the drawings become dead things sitting there on the page and slowing down the

reading of the cartoon language. Of course, this attempt at balance can be broken anytime

to its own effect: once in a while you may want a strip that is entirely iconic/generic and

once in a while you may wish to stop a strip dead in its tracks with a ‘real’ drawing

Comics in North America have a long, rich and mostly forgotten history.

Can you outline one or two important lessons regarding the production

of comics that you have learned from your study of its history?

 I don’t even know where to begin with such a question.The history of cartooning is

mostly a history of mediocrity.There have been a few artists of great talent who suffered

lives of thwarted desire as they tried to apply their aspirations to a stilted commercial

medium, a medium in perpetual adolescence. But mostly it has been a field dominated

by huge numbers of small-minded hacks churning out reams and reams of 2nd rate

(9th rate, really) material.

Like film and photography, which eventually shook off their biases from the art world,

comics have recently begun to come out into the sunlight. I do have some fondness for

the medium’s junky pop culture background, but ultimately I am happy to see it go

elsewhere. If there is anything to be learned from comics history, it is that it takes a great

deal of dedication and perseverance to pursue cartooning as an art form. It is a painfully

slow and labourious process to draw comics; most who tried in the past burned out

from lack of public interest or the inability to make a living. Only now are these two

stumbling blocks being pushed aside. A lot of the old time cartoonists seem to have

become a bit nutty in the end. Perhaps it is just the type that is drawn to cartooning;

I suspect it may have more to do with a life of isolation and frustration. Certainly it is a

lonely career…

…Personally, I love it.

Aqui o link original.

Mister Wonderful e George Sprott (1894-1975)

Direto do arquivo do NY Times. Aqui.