Artistic Instinct and Artificial Intelligence

I recently posted a PDF to the store for this five thousand word essay I’ve written over the last six months. It came out as I spent more time reading and thinking about Chat GPT and Midjourney and other such image- and word- generating computing models. I included Artificial Intelligence in the title because that’s the term getting all the press.

I’d be grateful if you read the thing. I put a price on it, but if you want to read it and would benefit from a free copy, send me an email and I’ll send you a copy. I printed a hundred copies, mostly so I could put some out in the real world at a few stores that might be willing to waste a little shelf space on it, and a printed copy is included in the price of the PDF if you want one.

Here are a few sentences from the essay, purposely out of order and free from context:

I think Chat AI could actually be an interesting step in the workflow for fiction writers. Let it kick out a bad idea and begin to iterate.

The reality is that humans aren’t that precise either; we mentally cover gaps in grammar and syntax when communicating.

[F]orty years ago a meme was an idea or a static image (What, me worry?) but today is used to refer to an image, or chart, or even a video.

I am trying to reckon with AI art in its most hopeful expression, knowing that it will continue to improve.

Is this the end for artists and craftspeople?[…]I don’t see it.

If that interests you, either get some help, or click on the Shop page.

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew

I don’t seem to have the nostalgia bug that many comics readers have. I don’t feel the need to reread the Herb-Trimpe-drawn Hulks that were my first purchases from 25-cent bins. There are books that I can reread many times — Paul Chadwick’s “Concrete” and “Jar of Fools” by Jason Lutes come to mind — but those are rare. I like to move forward.

Art by Sonny Liew

“The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye” is a book from 2016 by Sonny Liew. The cartooning brings to mind a cliche of reviews: It is a bravura feat of artistry. In terms of the styles of art, the design of the various materials that the story presents through layout, and coloring and tones, Liew demonstrates such a facility with his goal of depicting the various layers and levels of a long-lived artist’s life that I had to study the book for several minutes to determine that it was the work of only one artist.

Art by Sonny Liew

The story, in the aspect of comics-making, may go too far in depicting the different styles of the titular artist. When I think of the people who made comics and art for more than 50 years such as Kirby, Davis, or Eisner, none of them changed their styles so drastically once they reached maturity. While I love 1940s Jack Kirby art, once he hit the 50s, his style had mostly coalesced and he only made incremental stylistic changes to his art, revising layout approaches and fine-tuning the mark making over time. Will Eisner’s brush seemed to loosen and gain emotion in the last 30 years of his life, but other than that, I don’t see a dramatic shift in style, he was already experimenting with his layouts in the 40s. Jack Davis got looser but was immediately identifiable to fans of his overwhelmingly detailed 50s EC work.

In service of making the book look like the work of another artist, one who had a long career with many various projects, Liew went a little too far in varying the styles. The transition from the rudimentary, early-career manga-style work to Kurtzmanesque 50s work, to Mort Drucker-style 60s to Walt Kelly to Frank Miller to Carl Barks storytelling designs seems an unlikely transition for a lifelong comics maker who is renowned. I can see the oil paintings as a reasonable change in style; the medium can change the message, of course.

Interestingly, this flaw actually highlights a great strength of the author. I hadn’t seen such adeptness in his comics work previously to suggest such an ability to ape styles and techniques from throughout comics history. The Tezuka-influenced early work of the fictional artist is obviously drawn by the same artist as the Pogo riff mid-book, or the 80s grim and gritty comics that appear later, but the change in styles is admirable. Even Mad Magazine would have different artists for most parodies, Wally Wood being a notable exception in the ability to ape fellow creators (“Never draw anything you can copy…”). Art seen in an early aughts Sonny Liew Marvel story intended to be in 60s style didn’t show a desire to copy the stylistic ephemera of Ditko or Kirby. It remained wholly identifiable as Liew.

Here I have to admit to being a poor reader for a major aspect of this book. I had honestly never thought twice about the history of Malaysia or Singapore. My entry into this story was comics, and being quite familiar with the history of them allowed me to not become overwhelmed by the density of the historical material. I fully admit that I finished the book with a nominal knowledge of the facts behind it, which is not a flaw of the author.

Art by Sonny Liew

Coming to the history and politics of Singapore so cold, I had a hard time evaluating whether the metaphors designed for the work of “Charlie Chan Hock Chye” were heavy-handed or adept. Liew is constantly providing context, but I am probably missing some subtleties that make these allegories more creative and engaging. For example, it was difficult to tell if the political message of the Harvey Kurtzman E.C. pastiche was broad and unsubtle because many of Kurtzman’s stories were the same, or if it had a subtext that I was missing as an ineffective reader. There is a Walt Kelly Pogo-style strip later that feels like it holds a little more nuance, but then a later story, with running commentary by “Sonny Liew” reads as though it is teenaged parody, akin to the worst of Mad Magazine.

I also wonder whether readers who don’t share my knowledge of comics so immediately recognize the forebears of the styles in the book, which gather the context of time and history they mean to entail. There are endnotes which define some of the comics creators whose styles are referenced, but others are left out. I took a Frank Miller Dark Knight reference late in the book to encompass meaning in both the context of the sociopolitical landscape in which it was created (80s leftist Western Culture feeling overwhelmed by Reagan and Thatcher and the Cold War) and the context of the comics and manga industry which had been referenced earlier in the book (American Pre- and Post Code comics, British and Japanese post-war, e.g.), reading it’s tone as both reflective of the time and the mood of the “author”. The endnotes don’t mention Miller at all.

Speaking of the mood of the title character, my favorite aspect of the book is the consistency of definition of his personality. I was completely engaged with the story of this man, and how he navigated his world, personal and political. He is so fully defined that late in the book, I found myself thinking of him as a real person. The conceit of this being a biography became realized and I was invested in his story to the point that I wondered what happened to him after the end.

This book is certainly the work of an artist who has matured in his storytelling to a point of being able to deliver an engaging, intelligent, cohesive narrative told across a man’s life and bring it all together through disparate styles into a compelling narrative of both man and country.

Girl in Dior by Annie Goetzinger

This 100-page story is historical fiction that covers the 1940s and 1950s. Quoting the brief note at the end of the story, it features “Clara Nohant…a fictional character. Her tale is intertwined with that of Monsieur Christian Dior…”

It is beautifully illustrated in fine line and watercolor. It is rendered in a realist style, with muted colors that pair well with the lush ink line. The layouts are quite traditional, and it is easy to quickly fade into the story flow while reading. The lettering is solid, and the script, translated by Joe Johnson, mostly avoids odd phrasing. The story flows quickly due to Ms Goetzinger’s skilled staging and is presented in a straightforward manner with an emphasis on situational clarity in the transitions, using art and script to bring the reader along.

As a novice to the source information covered here, it reads easily, and I was able to define any unknown terms through context without getting lost. I presume that it may feel a bit slight for anyone who’s knowledge of the source material is great. There is plenty of supplemental material in the version I read* and the acknowledgments indicate significant research done.

The story wisely used a woman’s perspective to investigate a historical male figure. It seems the respect he showed his cohort of expert women was supported by the respect the story gave them, including its protagonist, Clara.

Overall, the pictures are sumptuous and the story is smooth. I expect that anyone with interest in the topic or who appreciates its look would be engaged.

*Girl in Dior by Annie Goetzinger, 2015, NBM edition. Translation by Joe Johnson, lettering by Ortho. Originally published as Jeune Fille en Dior, by Darguad, 2013.

A Quick Thought on Entertaining Comics

I just read these old writings (out of order, naturally):

Chris Mautner on E.C.

Gary Groth in Response to Chris Mautner

I enjoyed reading both, but there was a glaring omission in that neither talked about the worst thing about the Feldstein E.C. stories—more than the Kurtzman, but not exclusively so—the captions.  These have too frequently broken what I feel is a critical rule that captions need follow, specifically, that the words and pictures work together to provide something they can't separately.  Groth puts it better than I am able: "[...]burdened by formula and cliche, the writing prolix, overwrought, and fatuously earnest."

The worst thing about the captions is that they were so frequently unnecessary.

As a reader, this caption is a complete waste of my time. In fact, the caption wastes my time because it keeps me from spending time parsing the artwork as storytelling because it stomps all over its imagery. This caption takes a wonderful landscape and prevents me from relishing in its details by spitting a few at me. A great writer could spend 1000 words painting this scene for me in the same detail that Krigstein creates with a few dozen pen lines supported by wonderful flat colors.

Many of Krigstein’s stories do not suffer this same indignity, as Kurtzman-as-editor-or-writer had a masterful eye for cartooning and using the whole of the page to tell the story, not relying on dry expository captions to describe what was already so wonderfully rendered.