It's the wink that kills it.

Part of my dissertation involves reading comics and graphic novels and thinking about how they create an intentional reading experience that's aware of, but parallel to, journalism and public awareness.  We like to call this "The part of my dissertation that I actually work on - the reading of comics part" - it should not be confused with the other, more nefarious part, "Sitting down and transferring scattered notes on loose leaf to typed, well-planned document." 

Since I have the attention span of a coked-up toddler at a carnival, I tend to jump around between topics - some days, there's really no coherent thought to be constructed about The Photographer, so I have to jump back to I Live Here or over to Waltz with Bashir or the ever-fertile soil of Maus (ah, Maus. What can't you do?).  I stare at frames, I scan pages, I make exhaustive notes in my tiny, serial-killer-esque handwriting in a well-packed spiral notebook that I carry around like a giant creeper.  Usually, I can make something happen in that way - I can write something down that at least sounds legitimate (though, I've come to learn that everything sounds legitimate - and downright brilliant - at 3am.  Corollary: rereading late-night notes can cure the 11am doldrums in a right hurry.  Just, you know, FYI.)

But, some days, nothing works.  No amount of pacing.  No amount of obsessing.  No amount of starting at photographs and willing them to do something for me.  Nothing.  So, I turn back to this page:

From 9-11: Artists Respond v 2.

And, hooboy, we are OFF.  There's just something so, so wrong about this to me.  So very, very wrong.  I don't know if it's the sentiment or the colors or the... wait, no.  I know exactly what it is.  It's the wink.  The freaking wink, sound effect and all.  The wink drives me insane.  Is it an audible wink for the benefit of the in-text characters?  Do these Search and Rescue dogs need to hear Krypto freaking wink to know that he's there for them?  Does it make a little chime sound, like you'd expect the "Ping!" of someone's too-white teeth to make in a bad parody film?  Maybe the S&R dogs need to hear him wink because they can't see it, what with all of the grit and ash and important work that they're doing - so they need the aural reminder that Krypto is here for them (and is kind of a jerk, honestly). 

Or is the wink there for reader benefit, making it clear what Krypto is doing and with what intent.  It's fairly obvious that he's doing something - he has one eye closed and a smug little look on his face - but maybe there's some room for reader distraction in there.  Without it, a reader might assume that poor Krypto has gotten something in his eye, or is cringing at the scene or... hell, I have no idea.  Something.  So, sure, perhaps we need the baby blue clue, complete with embellishment, to really get what he's going for here... except... no.  I haven't a bastard clue why he needs to wink right now.  But go with it.

At this point in my thought process, I start to feel like a bit of a jerk - which isn't unusual, given that I am a bit of a jerk.  I'm getting used to feeling like one.  I've given myself the distance - distance of time, distance of reader intent, distance of jerkitude - to critique what was probably never intended for this.  But it's this kind of critique that runs at the base of my dissertation - hell, that runs at the base of my interest in graphic novels and visual rhetoric in general.  To look at pages like this one and problematize them - try to destabalize a passive reading, try to figure out what this was produced for, who it was produced for and how it delivered (or failed to deliver) on those expectations - is interesting.  It's what I do.  See?  Professional jerk.  It's a thing. 

So I find myself staring at this page and flipping back and forth.  On one hand, it drives me insane (oh GOD, the WINK).  On the other hand, though... One of the main things that I'm looking for in post-9/11 graphic narratives is the near-immediate development of agreed upon symbols to act as a visual shorthand, a temporal marker and an emotional stand-in.  This comic?  Still uses those.  But in a wonky, wonky way.  The gridwork used in the background tells the reader exactly where and when this comic takes place - there isn't the pressure of exposition when you have these visual markers (indeed, there isn't exposition - there aren't even people in this comic.  Well, okay, that's not true - there are hands shown, hands holding ridiculously heavy chains that once restrained the S&R dogs... which is a whole 'nother thing).

It's here that I begin to spin out of control, waffling between finding this comic fascinating and finding it really, really annoying (and, uh, reaching my happy medium via watching Buffy clips on YouTube).  And it makes me start to wonder about the role of comics in social/political awareness - how you can force different genres, different worlds together and make them play along.. but not always to a good result.  If we as the readers are living in a world where Krypto can fly in and drop of a giant freaking water dish (and I'll resist the temptation to point out that he's just plunked several hundred pounds of dish and water on top of the rubble that they're sorting through... oh wait... no I won't), why don't we live in a world where Krypto stays and helps the very non-super-powered German Shepherds who are doing the actual work?  What's that clash asking the reader to do, narrative wise?  We have a real-world location, an event very real to every reader - and we have it interrupted with smarmy sentiment.  But, maybe there's something larger at work here - maybe this page is a comment on the use of comics in general.  Sure, the comic hero can't come in and do the real-world work - but that hero can add a bit of reprieve, a refresher (in the shape of a comically oversized water dish), a bit of a mental breather before real work resumes.  Escapism - the permission for escapism without the pressure of wanting more, needing more from these make-believe heroes.   

This?  An extreme example.  Not one that I'll be including in my dissertation (should I ever get around to writing it).  But there are some that blur the line a bit more, that ask readers to balance a lot of levels of narration in an already destabilized landscape.  And those?  I delight in mocking critiquing scholarly, because I am a scholar.  A scholarly scholar. 

Know what else I do when I can't form a coherent thought worth the ink to write it down?  Write blog posts making fun of Krypto the Superdog and his freaking WINKING.