AntennaeIssue 16– Spring 2011 ISSN 1756-9575

The Illustrated Animal Lisa Brown and Coleen Mondor– Animals in Space / Craig This – Ecofeminist Themes in The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch / Christine Marran – The Wolf-man Speaks / Marion Copeland – Pride of Baghdad / Sushmita Chatterjee – The Political Animal and the Politics of 9/11/ Andy Yang – Animal Stories, Natural Histories & Creaturely Wonders in Narrative Mini-Zines / Marion Copeland – Animal Centric Graphic Novels: An Annotated Bibliography

Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Editor in Chief Giovanni Aloi

Academic Board Steve Baker Ron Broglio Matthew Brower Eric Brown Donna Haraway Linda Kalof Rosemarie McGoldrick Rachel Poliquin Annie Potts Ken Rinaldo Jessica Ullrich Carol Gigliotti Susan McHugh

Advisory Board Bergit Arends Rod Bennison Claude d’Anthenaise Lisa Brown Rikke Hansen Petra Lange-Berndt Chris Hunter Karen Knorr Susan Nance Andrea Roe David Rothenberg Nigel Rothfels Angela Singer Mark Wilson & Bryndís Snaebjornsdottir Helen Bullard

Global Contributors Sonja Britz Tim Chamberlain Lucy Davies Amy Fletcher Carolina Parra Zoe Peled Julien Salaud Paul Thomas Sabrina Tonutti Johanna Willenfelt Dina Popova Christine Marran Concepción Cortes

Copy Editor Lisa Brown

Junior Copy Editor Maia Wentrup

Front Cover Image: Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon, Pride of Baghdad, DC2 Comics, 2006, front cover, 2006 © Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon

EDITORIAL ANTENNAE ISSUE 16

ne of the least discussed forms of animal representation is that presented in the Graphic Novel. This issue of Antennae, guest edited by Lisa Brown, aims at setting the record straight providing O the most substantial look at this uncharted field thus far. Lisa has written about animals in popular culture for a number of publications, and most notably regularly publishes animal news through her blog, Animal Inventory (www.animalinventory.net). She was a co-producer of the web show Animal Inventory TV that presented stories of the human-animal bond. She is on the Advisory Board for Antennae, and is on the Board of Directors of the Nature in Legend and Story Society (Nilas). Her book review of the graphic novel Laika was published in Society & Animals: The Journal of Human-Animal Studies in 2008. Lisa’s perspective on animals was profiled in a 2007 Boston Globe article entitled, ‘Monkey in the Middle’. She has lectured at a number of venues, including Tufts University, Bentley College, and the annual conference of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (2007). In 2007, Lisa received her Master’s in Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University. Her degree focused on animals in society, including ethical, legal, cultural and political dimensions of human-animal relationships. Lisa’s long-lasting interest in comics and the representation of animals in visual culture has been pivotal to the making of this issue which she will introduce over the rest of this editorial.

LISA BROWN – An Introduction to The Il lustrated Animal

Until recently, comics and graphic novels [1] had the author thinks about animals. The author’s a reputation as a vehicle solely for children’s latent beliefs, opinions and assumptions are entertainment, which caused a general neglect exposed in his or her comics, just like with any art of academic interest in the medium. Not form. This provides fantastic insight into the surprisingly, the field of animal-studies has underlying beliefs of the author’s culture, as well. suffered a similar fate for similar reasons; until Murray Edelman, the noted political recently, cultural interest in animals (as opposed scientist, wrote about how art and pop culture to biological interest) was viewed as a childish provide insight into everyday life, in his book From indulgence. Therefore, examining the role of Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape animals in comic books joins together two Political Conceptions (1995). Edelman says that undervalued topics that are ripe for further study. "part of the meaning of artistic talent is the ability Cultural beliefs about animals are revealed in to sense feelings, ideas, and beliefs that are comics, and these beliefs both reflect and widespread in society in some latent form, influence the value and significance that are perhaps as deep structures or perhaps as applied to animals, the environment, the natural unconscious feelings, and to objectify them in a world, and even other humans. compelling way (p 52)." Essentially, everything With rare exceptions real animals do that people see and hear is constructed and not use language, so the talking animals that influenced by imagery, so art and ideas are an abundantly populate the comic world are ever-entwining, mutually informing collaboration. necessarily the construction of human authors. In addition to personal interpretations of art, Studying the dialog and imagery of animals in cultures have a collective understanding of comics might not exactly reveal what a real images as well. This is what makes art an integral animal thinks, but it does reveal a lot about what part of political behavior, attitudes, virtues, vices, 3

Joann Sfar The Rabbi's Cat, Pantheon Books, 2005, Page 7, © Dargaud and Joann Sfar

problems, solutions, hopes and fears. different types of people – an athlete is drawn Edelman says, “Works of art generate with a muscular body and confident posture; a ideas about leadership, bravery, cowardice, “wimp” is depicted wearing a bowtie and glasses altruism, dangers, authority, and fantasies... (p. and an insecure facial expression; a thief is 2)” Will Eisner, one of the most famous comic rendered wearing dark clothes, a hat and artists of the 20th century, reflects on the graphic sunglasses, with his shoulders hunched presentation of similar characteristics in what he secretively. Everything from clothing to calls “standards of reference.” Both authors are landscape to mundane objects have the referring to stereotypic imagery -- a coded potential to communicate an entire story, pictorial that enables an artist to quickly providing that the artist is familiar with his communicate certain emotions, feelings readership's standards of reference, and attributes, traits or personality types to his assuming he can use this knowledge skillfully. audience. Stereotyping is traditionally known as a Like all other stereotypes, images of way to establish and reiterate prejudiced animals are culturally coded and take on certain attitudes, but it is actually a tool that can be used prescribed characteristics – especially in comics: constructively, as well. In his book Graphic the proud lion, the mischievous cat, the sly fox, Storytelling, Eisner demonstrates how to use the wise owl, the dumb bear, the untrustworthy stereotypes to succinctly invoke certain snake. By using subtle animal imagery in professions, personalities and traits, by drawing drawings of humans, comic artists can infuse 4

Will Eisner Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, Poorhouse Press, Page 20, 1996 © Will Eisne

their characters with deeper meaning without of its stereotypical role as “the ever having their characters say a word. This is a represented”, the objectified kind of reverse anthropomorphism, in which other, fixed and distanced by people take on the characteristics of animals. the controlling look of the These characteristics are rarely based on real empowered human, and animal behaviour, so studying this reversal in instead exploiting the flexibility of comics is a useful way to discover how a the narrative space to turn that particular culture views animals. look back upon the humans, Outside of the human-animal studies rendering them other, community, it is a common belief that dismantling their secure sense of representations of animals tell the audience very a superior identity (Baker, 158). little about animals, and that the animals are only used to clarify human relations, human With several notable exceptions, conflict and human issues (Baker, 2001). In other contemporary theory written about comics words, why would someone depict an animal, largely ignores a human-animal studies unless to say something about humans? perspective on the serious question of the animal However, animals in art have a great deal to tell in the theoretical and artistic dialog. When us. Steve Baker, author of Picturing the Beast: theorists do speak specifically about the role of Animals, Identity and Representation, explains animals in modern comics, they almost always that in part, an animal representation potentially, discuss Maus, by Art Spiegelman. While Maus is a seminal work that changed the landscape of [s]hows the animal slipping out comics, it is only one limited example of how 5

animals are depicted in the medium. There are grievances, and provide humans an arena to many other comics that have a lot to say about hear what they might say. animals. Some of the many comics and graphic Notes novels that have definitive perspectives on animals are discussed in this issue of Antennae, [1] There is an unresolved debate within the comic academic community about whether the terms comics and graphic novels mean the same thing, or which may be the only volume of it’s kind – a refer to different uses of the art form. However, for the purposes of clarity, collection of essays and interviews that discuss the terms comics and graphic novels are used here interchangeably. the role of animals in contemporary comics and graphic novels. The first piece, an interview with Nick Abadzis (Laika) and James Vining (First in References Space), examines the way that the artists chose to tell two distinctive nonfiction stories about Baker, S. (2001). Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation. animals sent into space during the Urbana: University of Illinois Press. American/Soviet space race. Chris This’ ‘Ecofeminist Themes in The Facts in the Case of Berger, J. (1992) About Looking. New York: Vintage Books. the Departure of Miss Finch’ takes a close look at Edelman, M. J. (1995). From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape the role of ecofeminism in Neil Gaiman’s Miss Political Conceptions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Finch, a character who seems to have very rigorous opinions about animals and nature. Eisner, W. (1996). Graphic Storytelling. Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse Press. Christine Marran delves into the work of two McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1st important Japanese manga artists in her article HarperPerennial ed.) New York: HarperPerennial. ‘The Wolf-Man Speaks: Humans, Animals, and Hybrids in the Graphic Novels of Tezuka Osamu and Ishinomori Shotarô’ and examines how Osamu and Shotaro tackle anthropocentrism through the lens of cross-species animaloid/humanoids. Marion Copeland discusses the award-winning graphic novel Pride of Baghdad with author Brian K. Vaughan and artist Niko Henrichon to get to the heart of how they created this historical/fictional/nonfictional work. In ‘Art Spiegelman’s Political Animal and the Politics of 9/11’ Sushmita Chatterjee looks at the work of Art Speigelman with a new perspective and examines his use of animality and the other in his book In the Shadow of No Towers, within the context of Maus. In his personal reflection essay

‘Animal Stories, Natural Histories, and Creaturely Wonders of Narrative Mini-Zines, Andrew Yang shares how animal-focused zines ‘can be viewed as a new form of natural history. Finally, in the issue’s last article, Marion Copeland compiles a compelling and thorough bibliography of comics and graphic novels that focus on animals in her article ‘Animal-Centric Graphic Novels: An Annotated Bibliography’. Ultimately, comics and graphic novels are a virtually untapped source of insight into cultural paradigms about animals. In particular, comics can address animals in a way that is unique by providing an alternate perspective on how we humans believe animals think and behave, and also how we treat them as a result. By providing other animals an outlet for their voices, artists simultaneously allow them a forum to air their

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CONTENTS ANTENNAE ISSUE 16

8 Animals in Space Laika and First in Space are two distinctive graphic novels that cover some very similar content – they are both nonfiction stories about the use of animals in space exploration. Each book is authored by a writer/artist who tackles the subject matter with a specific interest in animal issues. We thought an interview with both authors would provide a unique perspective on the issues surrounding the use of animals in space programs, and the challenges the authors faced in documenting each animal’s journey. With an introduction by Coleen Mondor. Interview questions by Lisa Brown

29 Ecofeminist Themes in The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch Craig This discusses the main character in The Facts in the Departure of Miss Finch (Dark Horse, 2007) by Neil Gaiman. The essay focuses on the idea that "Ecofeminists believe that women interact with the environment in a spiritual, nurturing and intuitive manner. As a result of women's close association with the environment, their domination and oppression has occurred in conjunction with the domination and degradation of the environment" (Brownyn James, Is Ecofeminism Relevant, 1996). Text by Craig This

35 The Wolf-man speaks Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989), whose graphic novels (manga) abound with human, animal, and species-crossing characters battling in epics of grand scale, is relatively well- known in the Western world. Tezuka’s rival artist throughout his career, Ishinomori Shotarô (1938-1998) (who as a high school student assisted Tezuka in his Astroboy), however, is far less known, though he similarly involved humans, beasts, and species-hybrids in intergalactic, transhistorical dramas.1 Text by Christine Marran

46 Pride of Baghdad In the spring of 2003, a pride of lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during an American bombing raid. Lost and confused, hungry but finally free, the four lions roamed the decimated streets of Baghdad in a desperate struggle for their lives. Writers Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon discuss how they recreated this story as a graphic novel. Questions and text by Marion Copeland

55 The Political Animal and the Politics of 9/11 In this essay Sushmita Chatterjee examines Art Spiegelman’s animal-human cartoons drawn in response to 9/11. She begins by briefly introducing Spiegelman’s contribution to the world of cartooning and his approach to cartoons as a medium of experimentation with genre-defying potential. Text by Sushmita Chatterjee

73 Animal Stories, Natural Histories & Creaturely Wonders in Narrative Mini-Zines The Small Science Collective, a collaboration of scientists, artists, students, and anyone else interested in science, is responsible for the production of the “infectious” zines that employ the language of comics for the purpose of spreading scientific knowledge. Text by Andy Yang

82 Animal Centric Graphic Novels: An Annotated Bibliography Since, like comic-strips, graphic novels so frequently include animals, simply listing those graphic novels in which animals appear would be of little or no value or use. Innumerable lists of graphic novels already exist, including some that do list animal characters. But none focus on graphic novels that might best be called animal-centric, graphic novels focused on the lives of realistically-drawn and motivated nonhuman animal protagonists and./or have major themes that rise from the lives and challenges faced by these nonhumans in the actual worlds/habitats (domestic or wild) in which these animals live. Although those worlds are often controlled by and for the welfare of human animals, the intent of the graphic artist and writer in such novels is to provide insight into the lives and concerns of individuals who are other-than-human animals and present themes that provoke empathy and concern in human audiences for other-than-human beings, their well-being, rights, and survival. Text by Marion Copeland

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ANIMALS IN SPACE

Laika and First in Space are two distinctive graphic novels that cover some very similar content – they are both

nonfiction stories about the use of animals in space exploration. Each book is authored by a writer/artist who tackles the subject matter with a specific interest in animal issues. We thought an interview with both authors would provide a unique perspective on the issues surrounding the use of animals in space programs, and the challenges the authors faced in documenting each animal’s journey. With an introduction by Coleen Mondor. Interview questions by Lisa Brown

t struck me as oddly coincidental that in the learned about their need for community. The span of a few months two publishers would book is most revealing when it focuses on the release graphic novels about animals in humans as they struggle to weigh the dangers for I space. Laika by Nick Abadzis tells the story of the chimps (one of whom dies in the book) the first dog to reach orbit, onboard the Soviet against the need to be successful as “the world is spacecraft Sputnik II on November 7, 1957. In watching us…we have to do this right the first First in Space, James Vining writes about Ham, time.” That pressure to succeed propelled the the chimpanzee who was the first hominid in program relentlessly forward until Ham was space in 1961, sent by the Americans. (The US launched on January 31, 1961. He survived the referred to him as “the first free creature in outer flight and in a particularly poignant exchange space.”) Both novelists combine history and afterwards, was assured by the airman who fiction to show not only what happened to these served as his handler that “You’re a hero now, animals and why, but to also explore how the buddy! You’ve done more in your life than most people who worked with them felt about the folks ever will. And you’ll get a big welcome when launches. I can’t overstate the power the artwork we get back to New Mexico! You wait and see… has on the stories here; in both cases the animals life’s going to be a lot different from here on out.” are drawn so expressively that readers can not But that’s not the way things worked out for Ham, help but consider their feelings about the tasks just as there most certainly was not a reward for and projects they were part of. This of course Laika’s contribution to her country either. makes the stories that much harder to read; and In his epilogue to First in Space, Vining the endings a lot tougher to bear. These are not shows that Ham was not allowed to retire with happily ever after books. ease after his flight and instead was kept alone In First in Space, Vining uses black and and on display at the National Zoo in Washington white drawings to accompany his look at the DC for seventeen years. Only after animal American primate space program. Readers activists pressured the zoo to relocate him was he follow the adventures of Ham (officially called sent to the North Carolina Zoo where he died in “Chop Chop Chang” or “Subject 65”) as he learns 1983 of natural causes, after finally being to perform certain tasks in the space capsule allowed to live with some fellow chimps. The and tested for his ability to withstand such things saga of the other space chimps does not end as high G-forces and isolation. The chimps were there however, as Vining points to a group called kept in individual kennels, and sometimes cages, Save the Chimps in the final pages of his book. and Vining shows some of the air force enlisted As it turns out, the USAF, who ran the chimp men who worked with them questioning if the program, decided in 1997 to discontinue it and training “might make them go a little crazy.” He sell the chimps as authorized by Congress. With draws some dream sequences that show the primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall as one of its chimps exhibiting violent or confused behavior, board members, Save the Chimps formed and which follows with what modern researchers have submitted a bid to have the chimps retired to a 8

Nick Abadzis Laika, Cover image, First Second, 2007 © the author

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James Vining 10 First in Space, Cover image, Oni Press, 2007 © the author

sanctuary. Their bid was rejected and the chimps design a way for Laika to return to earth; a were awarded to a medical research lab in New political gesture thus dooms her to death. Mexico. Save the Chimps filed a lawsuit against To provide an added dimension to their the USAF citing the fact that this particular lab relationship, Abadzis has Dubrovsky imagine the was under investigation for violations of the dogs are talking to her. At one point she pets Animal Welfare Act. After a year-long battle the Albina and Kozyavka, who have just returned chimps were awarded to Save the Chimps and from a successful suborbital launch. As she are now living in a sanctuary in South Florida. absently asks them what it is like in space, Albina (And ironically, the med lab went bankrupt and “responds” asking Dubrovsky to “let me out” and Save the Chimps ended up with all the other 266 “let me go.” These interactions are all the more chimpanzees there as well.) Reading about powerful due to the illustrations which show the Ham’s sad years in the National Zoo was hard dogs looking at her with the trust she has enough, without finding out about what engendered and show the handler clearly happened to the chimps who followed him in the wavering in her resolve. Dubrovsky reminds the program. dog (and herself) of duty and repeats to all of In Laika, his very detailed graphic novel of them that she will take care of them. This of the first living creature to orbit the earth, Nick course turns out to be the greatest lie of all; the Abadzis has written a touching story that is dogs would have done better to never trust their devastating in both its historical accuracy and handlers and instead do everything they could to emotional punch. He starts in a surprising way, escape. No one was looking out for their best with “Kudryavka,” who was found as a stray and interests, and ultimately, no one ever truly would. became part of the Russian space program. I knew what was going to happen in Abadzis reinvents those unknown early years in Laika, but Abadzis still makes it impossible to not the dog’s life and the effect is that long before feel deeply for this little dog and the people who the renamed Laika is placed in her capsule, care about her. Laika died in Sputnik II, just as readers care deeply about this dog. Because of everyone involved in the project knew would this early section, comparisons to such animal happen. The surprise is that she died so quickly classics as Shiloh, The Incredible Journey and and suffered so much. The Soviets kept the truth dare I say it, Old Yeller, are spot on. But Abadzis’s about her death a secret for decades but in book is about far more than a loveable dog; it is 2002 revealed that she did not survive past seven about why this dog was sent into space and what hours in the flight. In that time the biometric that mission meant to so many different people. readings revealed that she suffered a great deal Abadzis has a lot of space to work with in from heat and other trauma. It was a hard end to Laika and he uses it to flesh out the personalities a life that had been spent doing what others of all those who took part in the dog’s life. Most wanted and particularly bitter as it only significantly he explores the motivations of the happened to further illusory political goals and Chief Designer, Sergei Korolev, a man who spent not science. Her story is an amazing one, on time imprisoned in a Siberian gulag under Stalin many levels, and the treatment it has received in and had a great deal to prove on the Sputnik this book is absolutely stellar. project. Korolev is just the man who makes the Both Laika and First in Space should be decisions, however. It is Yelena Dubrovsky, the required reading for anyone interested in the technician who dealt directly with all the space history of the space program. I’m still thinking dogs and Oleg Georgivitch Gazenko, one of the about these animals long after finishing the leading scientists in the program who later books. Their stories stay with you and both expressed regret for Laika’s fatal trip who are novelists have appropriately received really the focus of the story. (While Korolev and recognition for the impressive work they have Gazenko were real, Dubrovsky was not.) Each of done here to share Ham and Laika’s stories with them comes to bond with the newly named readers everywhere. “Laika” and feel varying degrees of compassion towards her and the other space dogs. At first everyone in the program falls back on a Lisa Brown: Nick, how did you first learn dedication to country and communism as about the story of Laika, the first dog in excuses for the difficult decisions involving the space? animals. It is when the Sputnik II launch is fast- tracked however, to coincide with the 40th Abadzis: I think I first heard the story of Laika anniversary of the USSR, that several face crises of when I was a child. It always struck me as odd conscience. The new timeline leaves no room to and sad, that she’d been sent up and they 11

couldn’t get her down again. Why? I always contact with the head librarian of the Russian wanted to know the answer to that question. collection there and she was very kind in Years later, I discovered that Laika was the only translating a few morsels of information from living being sent up by any agency on Earth – of obscure old Russian technical books and hundreds, from all her fellow Russian dogs, from memoirs. I studied old newspapers and press apes, insects to human beings – without the clippings from the period I was writing about; I express intention of getting them down alive read voraciously and obtained many books on again. She’s unique in that aspect. the Internet and, indeed, much information from In 2002, new information about her archival material that’s freely available online. death, about what really happened, came to At the Smithsonian Institute in Washington light when a top Russian scientist admitted that it DC, I unearthed some old videotaped interviews had all been rather more of an exercise in with several Russian scientists who worked on the propaganda than a scientific mission. That Cosmodog program – they have a Video History piqued my interest in the subject again and I had Archive there. These tapes were valuable as the idea of doing, maybe, a short strip. As I snapshots of some of the personalities involved in slowly began to research the idea, it snowballed! the early days of the Soviet space program. Not only that, there was footage of the labs and Jim, how did you first learn about Ham, equipment the scientists used so it was very the first chimp in space? useful from the standpoint of that kind of authentic visual material. Vining: I initially started out by thinking I’d do a I got in contact with several space completely fictionalized story about a space journalists and historians and probably became monkey. I had made a doodle of a chimp in an something of an annoyance to them – they were astronaut suit and titled it “First in Space.” That’s gracious indeed in answering my many where it started. I started writing, felt like I needed questions. It was important to me to get the facts some research to help guide me, and stumbled right and get the sequence of events straight as on Ham’s story, which as it turned out was much much as possible. I wanted to make the book more interesting than the fiction I was trying to accurate but more than that, I wanted to present create. a viable world, a sense of how things might really have unfolded. You both clearly used extensive resources To that end, I also visited Moscow. A kind to be as accurate as you could in the lady at the Museum of Cosmonautics managed telling of these stories. What resources to get me an invitation to see around Korolev’s did you use, and what did you find the house – he was the Chief Engineer of the Soviet most helpful? space program. It’s a private museum now, preserved as he left it, so that was very helpful in Vining: The National Air and Space museum getting a sense of his personality. He was a had a really nice collection of some articles from fascinating individual whose sheer force of will the time, which made it easier for me to track was largely responsible for making the Soviet down more info. George House at the Space space program happen with relatively few Hall of Fame museum in New Mexico gave me a resources. transcript of an interview he conducted with Ed Then I collated all the information I had Dittmer [one of the chimp handlers, who was also into a realistic timeline – a training program for in charge of the program], which helped me the dogs, how it came about, what the flesh out his character. I also found some video command structures of the various institutions clips that I tracked down to a documentary that were like that Korolev forced together to create was done by David Cassidy called One Small the nascent Russian space effort. Step. I guess it was his thesis project. It was invaluable for some of the visual research- Since these are largely stories about showing some of the training implements and animals, you each must have struggled living conditions at Halloman [Aerospace with what perspective to use and how to Medical Center]. structure the narrative. How did you find an answer to this challenge? Abadzis: I availed myself of many publicly available records. At the time I created the first Vining: It wasn’t much of a struggle really. I draft of the book, I lived in London so I went to knew it had to be mostly from Ham’s point of the British Library and dug around; I was put in view. Who doesn’t love chimpanzees? Honestly I 12

James Vining 13 First in Space, Oni Press, 2007, p.28 © the author

Nick Abadzis Laika, First Second, 2007, p.132 © the author

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should have spent a little more time with the making them relatable and giving their human angle, but I found it easier to experiences that human context. I also had concentrate on Ham. He’s so relatable. several chimps that had to look different, but I didn’t want to make them too much like Abadzis: You always run the risk of animation/cartoon archetypes –a big one, a anthropomorphizing an animal character. I was skinny one, a fat one, a girl (with a bow or very careful about that: characters in the book something), etc. There are only a couple of do this, but whenever any of the characters who species of chimps, but as I recall the space are dogs are seen on their own, I made sure that program only used one because of their size and they behaved like dogs, not people. As a culture, adaptability. Fortunately, chimps are something we do tend to project our emotions upon like 90% human anyway, so I didn’t have to worry animals and it would’ve been very easy to Disnify too much about giving them human this story and make it very cute and engage characteristics. I tried to use the handlers much sympathy from the reader that way. I think that as Nick did to comment on how I might have felt would’ve been a cop-out and it would’ve meant in that situation, seeing these animals I cared shying away from the central tenet of the story, about being trained for this potentially fatal which is that this little dog got caught up in this mission. massive turning point in human history. I worked very hard to show the events from a variety of You both used dream sequences to allow different standpoints, both human and canine. the reader to get inside the head of To a certain extent, creating the human Laika. What did this allow you to do that characters, some of whom were based on real you could not accomplish in other parts people from history, was easier than creating the of the story? characters of the various dogs who appear in the book. I guess I drew on all the dogs I’ve ever Vining: I wanted it to be Ham’s story from his known but I as I mentioned previously, I was point of view, so I thought the dream sequences determined not to anthropomorphize her too would help emphasize that angle as well as much. Cartoonists have a tendency to make playing around with what he might have been cute little anthropomorphic characters based on feeling at the time in this strange situation. I also animals – we all do it, I do it – which can endow felt like they were a nice visual break from all of them with the human qualities we might wish the clinical, historical stuff going on. they had. But real animals aren’t like that, they don’t speak, and so we have to remember to Abadzis: It allows you a viewpoint that might not speak for them and in a responsible way. otherwise be allowable. It allows you to Perhaps, speaking from a cultural perspective, understand how things might have been for the we need to anthropomorphize them less, or dog and for the humans who were closely create more stories and representations that try connected with the dog. It can’t have been easy to respect them as their own sorts of creature, for them and I wanted to show that. I nearly rather than indulge this tendency to humanize always have a dream sequence in any story I tell them. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that, just – we spend a third of our lives asleep; I’m that we should try other approaches too. It would interested in that part of human experience! help with the way we think about animals as part Those sequences allowed me to connect the of human culture. canine characters with their human counterparts All that said, I did imagine what I might’ve more easily, too. felt like if she happened to have been my dog, which is where a lot of Yelena’s love for her came Did you write and draw with the intention from. You rely on instinct with that sort of of deepening sympathy for animals who approach, and hope that your way of are utilized in science, or was that a communicating that sort of emotion works on the theme that developed in the creation of printed page. Apparently, mine does. Creating the story? Yelena allowed me to have a more human response to the fate of Laika at the center of the Abadzis: I tried to approach the story as a story – I felt that was important. whole with a sense of compassion. Of course, that theme you mention was one I was very Vining:xIxhadxsimilarxproblemsxanthropomorphi much aware of, but I didn’t want to present it as -zing the chimps. You want to be true to the a point of view that would then unbalance the experiences of the animals while whole narrative. I felt it was important to 15

Nick Abadzis Laika, First Second, 2007, p.51 © the author

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James Vining First in Space, Oni Press, 2007, p.39 © the author 17

understand the historical context in which these with the focus of comics, how near or how far people operated, to try and understand that they you get to your subject but you have to be lived in a deeply oppressive society and that to mindful of what you might sacrifice if you lose all speak out of turn or publicly disagree with their your nuanced material, your precarious balance superiors meant risking disappearing in the between words and imagery. I like to keep things middle of the night and being shipped off to a simple – simple and direct with a strong gulag. Essentially, I wanted to present as emotional subtext. unbiased an account as I could and allow the I think a lot of people overwrite comics – themes of the story to speak for themselves. usually people who think that making a graphic Inevitably, the deeper themes of the story are novel is just putting somebody who can write going to surface, because I as an author and words together with someone who can draw human being am interested in them. But to stand pictures. Comics aren’t illustrated texts – they in judgment of the people who were involved in flow, they have pacing, currents and hidden that space program wasn’t something I wanted depths. to do. After all, you can't choose where you're born or in what political, religious or cultural Vining: I absolutely agree with Nick. In school I system you're brought up in. You make your own was told that if you can draw it, you should draw decisions as you get older, but you can't help but it. I don’t read comics for large blocks of prose be formed by the environment and system describing what’s going on. I want to see visual around you. The real challenge for anybody, for storytelling. That’s what makes comics unique. any of the characters in this book, was to see Plus, my confidence in my writing skill tends to beyond that conditioning. In the book, as in real push me towards finding ways to avoid coming history, some of those people did, some didn’t. up with the precise words I need to tell the story. Drawing is easier and much more fun. Vining: I really want people to make their own decision about that issue [of animals in science]. What role do animals play in your Obviously I have my own feelings, and I’m sure it personal life, and how did that influence comes through. But the thing to remember is how you told this story? that the men and women who trained these animals truly cared about them. Ed Dittmer used Vining: I’ve almost always had dogs growing up. to take chimps home with him to play with his My wife and I just got our first dog in July. I feel kids. They lived and worked closely together, so like there’s a lot more going on in an animal’s naturally they formed strong bonds. That’s what I head than we stupid humans can figure out. I was really interested in showing. think any pet owner knows how that is. I figured Ham would have a similar inner life. How did you decide what should be communicated with words, and what was Abadzis: At this point in my life, I have no better expressed in images? animals around me at all. My family and I recently moved to the USA from the UK, so before Abadzis: Ha! I honestly don’t have a we left even the fish tank we kept had to go No straightforward, easy answer for that one. It’s the pets allowed in our New York apartment. When I fusion of the two that makes it work and it can be was growing up though, as a family we owned a very subtle, nuanced balance. I’m forever various species of mammals, reptiles and fish. It messing around with that balance as I create a was a zoo. The closest to a real world model for draft for any graphic novel or comic strip that I “my” Laika was my brother’s dog Zippy, who is do. Sometimes, it’s dictated by practicalities – sadly dead now. He was a very well-loved family you just don’t want to put too much text on a mutt. This might surprise some people, who might page because it crowds the eye, makes it assume on the basis of reading this book that I’m difficult to read. It’s primarily a visual medium, an outright dog lover (I am, but I’m pretty keen and I’m a believer in paring everything back so on animals generally) but I owned a cat as a both the image and the words are reduced to child who was very dear to me. He was a pretty an expressive minimum. That way, there’s more crazy animal, a common moggie [UK slang for a room for the reader to engage their own mixed-breed cat], a brilliant idiot of an animal imagination, to work in the gaps, in the guttering who behaved more like a loyal dog – I still miss between panels, in the turning of the page, to him. I loved that cat. create the illusion of time passing. You can play When professors or colleagues ask me for 18

James Vining 19 First in Space, Oni Press, 2007, p.51 © the author

Nick Abadzis 20 Laika, First Second, 2007, p.52 © the author

recommendations on graphic novels that give a better sense of closure to the story. focus on animal issues, I often suggest Without the flashback the ending felt a bit abrupt that they and their students read Laika and out of tune with the rest of the story, which is and First in Space together. more about the relationship between Ham and Your graphic novels came out at about his handlers. the same time, so you hadn’t read each other’s books before you wrote your own. Laika was published by ‘First Second When you each read the other person’s Books’. I’ve noticed that they seem to graphic novel, what did you admire have a particular affinity for publishing about the unique way he told such a graphic novels and comics about similar story? Did it help you see your own animals. What was your experience with graphic novel with new eyes? ‘First Second’ like, and do you remember having any outright discussions with them Vining: Of course. Nick’s amazing - a great about the animal-centric nature of your writer who has such a light touch with his art. He book? makes it all seem effortless. It made me feel pretty inadequate when I compared the two Abadzis: Not really. Apart from some notes after books! But it was nice a nice bit of serendipity the first draft I submitted, First Second pretty that they came out so close together. much left me alone. They know I’m both an experienced storyteller and editor in my own right Abadzis: First In Space was actually published – I have very particular views about what the role by Oni Press shortly before Laika, I think. The first I of an editor is and how they should support an knew about it was after I’d finished my book when author. I require any editor who works with me to Jim Vining contacted me and told me that we adhere to those rules. I engaged the support of had certain interests in common! He sent me a several friends who all work in publishing, all of copy of his book, which I was delighted to whom have editorial experience of some kind. receive. I think his book and mine make great They gave me notes on the first draft of the book, companion pieces, although we do have very which were invaluable. There’s not a book in the different approaches. In some ways, Jim had a world that can’t be improved by the input of lot more information immediately available to some trusted advisors. him as the US space program is very open about The fact that there are quite a few First its achievements and history whereas the Soviet Second graphic novels concerning animals is Union was very secretive and even now it’s probably an underlying theme, an interest rather difficult to get ahold of records. I like Jim’s than a conscious policy on their part. As far as storytelling and art style – it has that open- Laika is concerned, although the book is hearted aspect to it necessary for telling what is, ostensibly about the dog, it’s also a love story – a mostly, an optimistic tale. I didn’t really have that love triangle between a man, a woman and a luxury as my central character dies at the end of dog. The death of the dog is at the centre of it the book. I think my approach was that of a all, the inexorable historical center of gravity that detective, piecing together a patchwork, which the characters are all heading towards. Perhaps influenced the structure of the book in that I was First Second have an interest in historical fiction as sometimes forced to find narrative solutions for a genre to explore in graphic novels; certainly storytelling problems when there was no Laika falls into that category. information available. Jim’s approach might’ve been more straightforward than mine in that all Jim, what was your experience with ‘Oni factual info was readily to hand. Other than that, Press’ like, and did you have discussions I think we were both of a mind to tell a story with them about the animal-centric about vital turning points in history, and “firsts” who nature of your book? haven’t really been celebrated as much as they should’ve because they were animals. Although, Oni is a great publisher to work with - since 2007 and the 50th anniversary of Sputnik II, tremendously supportive and enthusiastic. They the Russians have erected a dedicated statue to cover a very wide range of genres. That’s why Laika in Moscow. ‘Bout time. they were one of the first I pitched it to. I saw that they liked cartoony stuff and did historical fiction Vining: Actually, I had initially ended the book stories. with Ham alone in his zoo cage in DC. My editor recommended the little flashback at the end to Have you heard from anyone who was 21

22 James Vining First in Space, Oni Press, 2007, p.63 © the author

Nick Abadzis Laika, First Second, 2007, p.155 © the author 23

intimately involved in your stories in real we [Americans] did everything comparatively in life and what was their response to how the open, so I’m not sure how much actually got you portrayed them or the story in out back then about what was going on. Ham general? was very much a public figure. That had a lot to do with how things were perceived on either side Abadzis: I did meet a guy at a lecture I did at at the time. I think part of the issue also has a lot the National Air and Space Museum who’d to do with time. If Ham had been allowed to die, worked with Gazenko, the physician in charge of there would have been an uproar for sure. Fast- the cosmodogs. He said I’d caught his former forward twenty years, and Ham is forgotten for colleague very well indeed. Other than that, I’ve the most part. He wasn’t on TV and in Life and had no official response from anyone in the National Geographic as he was prior to his former Soviet Union whatsoever. I did receive launch. several congratulations on the publication of the Maybe the odd local news story on the book from several space historians and journalists odd anniversary of his flight and on his passing. though, who complimented me on my attention Who got it worse? Who’s worse off -- the soldier to detail. who dies in a war or the one that comes back and can’t find a job and dies poor and alone Vining: I heard from Carol Gums. She is Ed after years of being alone -- having been through Dittmer’s daughter. She sent me an email and a something no one other than a soldier can photo of Ham. She seemed to appreciate the understand? I think Ham was aware of what way I depicted her father - which was a huge happened to him -- or at least that it was relief to me! I think she just wanted to say hi and something “extraordinary” -- and it’s likely the thanks for getting her father’s name out there. other chimps he came into contact with could She was super nice. There is extreme tell that as well. He apparently didn’t socialize contradiction in the way the stories of Laika and very well while he was in captivity in his later Ham end. Laika dies in space, and the Russian years. public – indeed the world – was outraged that there was never a plan for her to return. Ham Jim, what was it like to have to abandon returns safely to Earth, but lives his last days Ham to a zoo at the end your book, after abandoned and forgotten by the American having travelled this story with him for so public in a zoo. There are many ways to look at long? Did you ever wish you could re-write how and why humans responded to the fates of his story and give him a more fitting these two animals in such categorically different ending? ways – Do you have any thoughts on why the aftermath of these stories was so different? Vining: Of course. To be fair, he spent his last two years in a very nice sanctuary in North Abadzis: Tragedy gets attention…? The banality Carolina. I didn’t include that bit because I of Ham’s final days, to be forgotten and moved thought the 17 years spent in a habitat in a zoo around like he was a possession, an object, is was a better representation of his later life. There very sad too – but it went unpublicized. Laika are several organizations out there that are still died for what was, essentially a publicity stunt. working to place chimps that were used in testing Ham was discarded – arguably, at least he was -- including the Air Force chimps and their cared for in a rudimentary sense. But he became offspring -- into these sanctuaries, fortunately. a curio in a zoo. I wonder what the thinking was – he’d made this remarkable journey but then his In the last pages of First in Space, you career as an experimental animal came to an promote an organization called ‘Save the end, so he was sold or donated on. I think the Chimps’ that provides a sanctuary for two endings actually have a lot in common, it’s chimps used in space and biomedical just that in one case, the animal was absolutely research. What was the general response stage center so her fate couldn’t be ignored. you got for putting this in the book, and Where Ham was concerned, it was reported that did you know at the outset that you he was down safe so everyone could breathe a wanted to include this? sigh of relief and turned their backs. After that, he was just another chimp in a zoo, apart from a Vining: I haven’t received any specific plaque that said otherwise. comments, but I hope it brought them a little extra money and some attention. I was very Vining: The Soviets did everything in secret, while glad they agreed to let me include them on this 24

James Vining First in Space, Oni Press, 2007, p.69 © the author 25

Nick Abadzis Laika, First Second, 2007, p.185 © the author

26

project. I hadn’t planned on it initially, but I experimentation, then we just look the other way thought it might be nice -- especially since one most of the time (and I’ve been as guilty of that of my resources was “One Small Step,” which in my time as anybody). All of this stuff needs to deals with the aftermath of the chimp program in be opened up and looked at, put on the table painful detail. and debated. That’s part of a much broader human problem though, which is to do with the Vining: I haven’t received any specific way that we communicate, both with each other comments, but I hope it brought them a little and with our environment. extra money and some attention. I was very But getting back to Laika, I think the real glad they agreed to let me include them on this dog's story was probably a bit less colorful than project. I hadn’t planned on it initially, but I the way I portrayed it but certainly as banal. thought it might be nice -- especially since one Banal in the sense that fate conspired to put her of my resources was “One Small Step,” which where she ended up, and nothing extraordinary deals with the aftermath of the chimp program in intervened. I saw stray dogs all over the place painful detail. when I was in Moscow, so not much has changed. I guess, through the characters, I was And Nick, what was it like to have to kill trying to put a sense of both the randomness of off Laika at the end your book? Did you life and its coincidences across. ever wish you could re-write her story and As far as my work goes, I just have to give her the kind of life she deserved? hope that the graphic novel I created allows people to meditate and reflect upon some of Abadzis: That was part of the impulse for the questions thrown up by this particular episode creating the book in the first place – some basic in history. Ultimately, it’s up to individuals to arrive desire to put things right, somehow. To give her at their own opinion of what impact such an escape hatch, a parachute, a way out. Of representations have; it’s my job to tell stories as course, if I was going to remain true to history, I powerfully and honestly as I possibly can. And to couldn’t possibly do that so in some ways, it was keep doing that, which I will. quite a harrowing experience researching and telling the story of her mission. They didn’t really Finally, can you each tell me what you get much scientific data out of it. Laika was are currently working on? More deemed disposable – not perhaps by the specifically, any projects that have a people who immediately cared for her, but focus on animals? certainly by Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier who was in the business of winning the Cold War Vining: I’m slowly working on a graphic novel against the western bloc. He wasn’t going to about Von Braun, the German rocket scientist. I have many qualms about sacrificing the life of a hadn’t planned on pursuing another space- little dog. For all I know, he owned a dog of his themed historical novel, but after stumbling on own, but he didn’t extend the same values to the odd bits of info about Von Braun I couldn’t Laika. She was expendable. I have to watch my resist. I was curious about how a man as brilliant own cynicism here, because it’s easy to spin off as Von Braun could get himself tangled up with into how cheap life is from a human perspective. the Nazis in pursuit of his dream of achieving Not much has changed: as a culture, we space travel. It seemed like a good cautionary Westerners purport to love animals – and we do, tale about how a person- a scientist in particular- but in a very normalized, particular and can loose their humanity in pursuit of a dream by deliberate niche. We don’t respect them much, aligning themselves with evil forces. Which is but then we have a problem respecting worse? Deliberately aligning oneself with evil or ourselves and other human beings a lot of the accepting evil as a means to an end? Or maybe time. If animals are pets, it’s fine, we know how not even recognizing the relevance or difference we’re supposed to respond to them. If they’re between “good” and “evil” in service to one’s wild, we don’t seem to care as much, except in dreams and one’s government? No animals a distanced, somewhat rarified manner, as if though! they’re there for our entertainment on some amusement park ride. I don’t think we really Abadzis: I’m always working on more than one comprehend on a deep cultural level what the project but this year I seem to be working on word “extinction” means and how many animal, about five at any one time! None of them involve insect and plant species are on the verge of that. animals, however, although the one I’m drawing If they’re animals bred for scientific 27

at the moment does have a talking cigar in it. Anthropomorphism is one of the cartoonist’s most flexible tools, you see! I’m also working on a graphic novel about the human urge to migrate, about immigration and family, and another project about the film composer Bernard Herrmann. I’m sure I’ll get around to doing another story involving animals at some point though – I’ve got an idea about doing something about tigers or fish, so we’ll see how that goes…

Nick Abadzis was born in Sweden to Greek and English parents and was brought up in Switzerland and England. He is a writer and artist who likes comics (which means these days he seems to be known as a “graphic novelist”). His work for both adults and children has been published in many countries across the world. He also works as an editorial consultant and has helped set up several best- selling and innovative children’s magazines, including most recently, The DFC for David Fickling Books, the first British children’s comic to feature original characters in nearly a quarter of a century. His storytelling contribution, Cora’s Breakfast, was featured in The Guardian. His work has also appeared in The Times, The Independent on Sunday, TimeOut, Radio Times and various other BBC publications and websites. Other clients have included Eaglemoss Publications, HarperCollins, Harcourt Education, Scholastic, Orchard Books, DC Comics, Marvel Comics and 2000AD. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.

After graduating from art school in 2000, James Vining spent four and a half years as a boatswain's mate in the US Coast Guard. After his release from active duty, he spent the spring and summer of 2005 working on First in Space, his first self written published work. He currently lives in Indianapolis where he is continuing his education and researching his next project.

Both authors were interviewed exclusively for Antennae by Lisa Brown in Autumn 2010
Antennae The introduction by Coleen Mondor was originally published on ‘Book Sluts’ and is here reprinted with permission of the publishers. 28

ECOFEMINIST TH EMES IN THE

FACTS IN THE C ASE OF THE

DEPARTURE OF MISS FINCH

Craig This discusses the main character in The Facts in the Departure of Miss Finch (Dark Horse, 2007) by Neil Gaiman. The essay focuses around on the idea that "Ecofeminists believe that women interact with the environment in a spiritual, nurturing and intuitive manner. As a result of women's close association with the environment, their domination and oppression has occurred in conjunction with the domination and degradation of the environment" (Brownyn James, Is Ecofeminism Relevant, 1996). Text by Craig This

nvironmentalist female comic book named. The term, ecological feminism, is characters are few and far between. credited to Francoise d’Eubonne, who, in 1974, Those that do exist tend to be a mixed used the term to describe women’s attempts “to bag. The 1940s Fiction House Comics’ bring about an ecological revolution” (quoted in ESheena, the Queen of the Jungle, a female Mesina 1122). However, because from its start, version of Tarzan, who despite being protective ecofeminism did not have a “hard-letter scope of the jungle and the animals within, tended to and definition,” over time a variety of issues— be more popular for her eroticism than her sociological, political, racial, have been environmentalism (Wright 73-75). Conversely, attached to it” (Mesina 1120). Consequently, botanist Pamela Isely, a.k.a Poison Ivy, the ecofeminism has evolved to become an villainess from DC Comics, champions “the “umbrella term which captures a variety of world’s diminishing fauna” through her actions as multicultural perspectives within social systems of an ecoterrorist (Beatty 272). Neither one of these domination between those humans in characters presents the environmentalist subdominant or subordinate positions, particularly movement in a positive light. Miss Finch, the title women, and the domination of human nature” character in The Facts in the Case of the (Warren 1). This diversity and plurality of issues has Departure of Miss Finch, however, exhibits become both a source of strength and weakness attitudes and actions of an ecofeminist, for the movement. While the relationship of particularly vegetarianism, animal rights, and the women to nature and the rights of animals are relationship of women with nature, that aid in the generally agreed upon, vegetarianism is understanding of this movement and its controversial. Miss Finch portrays the tension of relationship to society. these issues throughout The Facts in the Case of “Ecological feminism,” or ecofeminism, the Departure of Miss Finch. does not solely focus on the issues of Briefly, The Facts in the Case of the vegetarianism, animal rights, and the relationship Departure of Miss Finch tells the tale of four of women with nature. Rather, ecofeminism friends—Jonathan, Jane, an unnamed narrator, seeks “to link feminism, the study of women, and and Miss Finch – who visit an underground circus women’s values, with the exploration of one dark and stormy night. Miss Finch initially environmental issues” (Mesina 1121). protests attending a circus because she does not Ecofeminism is a relatively new social and like to see animals harmed, but consents when political movement, at least, in terms of being she is told that there are no animals. The circus, 29

Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli, Todd Klein Miss Finch, Cover image, Dark Horse, 2008, © the authors 30

entitled the Theatre of Night’s Dreaming, consists Jonathan? of ten rooms filled with odd and eccentric (Gaiman 10) entertainments, or as the ringmaster announces: Miss Finch’s concern for the animals in this We shall travel from room to room— passage supports the ecofeminist prohibition and in each of these subterranean against “the killing and conquering of animals ... caverns, another nightmare, another along with the consistent devaluation of animals delight, another display of wonder … [and ecofeminism views] animals as awaits you! individuals with their own rights, desires, and Please-for your own safety—I independent existences” (Sturgeon 155). In must reiterate this—do not leave the conferring rights upon animals, ecofeminists draw spectating area on pain of doom, their inspiration from 18th century philosopher bodily injury, and the loss of your Jeremy Bentham who wrote in The Principles of immortal soul (Gaiman 17) [1] Morals and Legislation:

Along with some forty other people at the circus, The day may come when the rest of the the four friends experience the “nightmares” and animal creation may acquire those “displays of wonders,” such as a blindfolded rights which never could have been Catholic Cardinal who throws knives at a scantily withholden from them but by the hand clad woman; a dune buggy driven by a vampire of tyranny . . . a full-grown horse or dog woman at full throttle; and a guillotine which is beyond comparison a more rational, slices off the hands of spectators. As the quartet as well as a more conversable animal, passes through the exhibits, Miss Finch “is pulled than an infant of a day, or a week, or from the crowd despite her feeble protests” and even a month old. But suppose they her friends do not find her until the ninth room, were otherwise, what would it avail? The where she appears as part of an exhibit (Wagner question is not, Can they reason? Nor, 384). Can they talk? But, Can they suffer Miss Finch appears to be “a very dour, (quoted in Warren 78)? very prim person” (Wagner 384). She is dressed all in black—a black dress covered with a black Animal welfarist Peter Singer concludes: trench coat. She is wearing black boots and a black beret over her long black hair, which is Surely Bentham was right. If a being pulled back into a ponytail. She also wears black suffers, there can be no moral rimmed eyeglasses. When she speaks, the justification for refusing to take that ecofeminist themes of vegetarianism and animal suffering into consideration, and, rights immediately emerge (Wagner 384): indeed, to count it equally with the like suffering (if rough comparisons can be Jane: So we’re going to a circus, made) of any other being (Singer 52). and then we’re going to eat sushi. Miss Finch disapproves of circuses Miss Finch: I do not approve of because they devalue animals and cause circuses. animals to suffer by holding them against their will and forcing them to perform for human beings. Jane: There aren’t any animals in this Miss Finch, along with other ecofeminists, believe circus. animals have the same rights as humans—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In Miss Finch: Good. conferring rights upon animals, ecofeminists do not so much raise animals to the status of Narrator thought box: I was humans as they lower humans to the level of beginning to understand why Jane animals, or rather to the level of nature. “In short, and Jonathan had wanted me along a land ethic changes the role of Homo Sapiens . . . Jane told Miss Finch that I was a from conqueror of the land-community to plain writer, and told me that Miss Finch was member and citizen of it” (Leopold 204). Or, as a biologist. ecofeminist Val Plumwood argued “humans should recognize themselves as prey as well as Miss Finch: A biogeologist actually. predator” (quoted in Sturgeon 154). Were you serious about eating sushi, 31

The belief that animals are equal to option of a vegetarian cuisine. The humans and should not suffer or be killed economy of their food practices, inevitably leads to the question of vegetarianism. however, and their tradition of Yet, despite this inevitability, vegetarianism, “thanking” the deer for giving its life are particularly moral vegetarianism, has been reflective of a serious, focused, controversial within ecofeminism. compassionate attitude toward the “gift” of a meal (Curtin 75). Moral vegetarianism is the position that we should eat a vegetarian diet Seeing the cultural context in which groups like because it is morally the right thing to the Ihalmuit find themselves causes some do, rather than for health, economic, or ecofeminists to argue that moral vegetarianism environmental reasons. The issue of need not be practiced everywhere by everyone. moral vegetarianism is controversial, These ecofeminists believe the call to end all even among ecofeminists. Some oppression trumps vegetarianism and thus ecofeminists believe that moral believe the “commitment to pluralism should vegetarianism is a necessary condition prevail over arguments for vegetarianism” of any ecofeminist practice and (Adams 195). In response, the moral vegetarian philosophy. Others are not so sure or ecofeminists raise questions of commitment to disagree (Warren 125). and contradiction within the movement. However, this plurality of voices, argues “Should feminists be vegetarians?” asks Carol J. ecofeminist Janet Biehl, should be celebrated. Adams (Adams 195). Read two different She agrees that ecofeminism is self- ecofeminists and one will get two different contradictory, but the self-contradiction should responses. Claudia Card responds, “Must we all, be a healthy sign of diversity (Biehl 3). then, be vegetarians, pacifist, drug-free, Miss Finch adds to this diversity and opposed to competition, anti-hierarchical, in contradiction when she announces that her favor of circles, committed to promiscuity with objection is not to eating meat, but her objection women, and free of the parochialism of erotic to sushi is that she prefers to eat her food arousal” (Card 139)? While Joan Cocks argues cooked. She then proceeds to lecture the three that “[t]he political strategies are non-violent, the others about the “worms and parasites that lurk in appropriate cuisine, vegetarian” (Cocks 223). the flesh of fish, which are only killed by cooking” The controversy over vegetarianism (Gaiman 12). After all, as a biologist, she is results from the ecofeminist desire to be pluralistic aware of the perils of eating uncooked food. and accepting of all peoples and all cultures. As While Miss Finch’s companions are put such, vegetarianism quickly gets entangled in off by her ecofeminism, they admire her as a other issues, such as cultural differences, biologist. In the fifth room of the circus, the four individualism, social privilege, and the ethics of friends stop for refreshments and while they enjoy care (Sturgeon 153). Deane Curtin sums up the those refreshments, Miss Finch regales them with argument of individualism and ethics of care tales of her studies of komodo dragons. succinctly: Miss Finch: I’ve been in Komodo Though I am committed to moral studying the dragons. Do you know vegetarianism, I cannot say that I would why they grew so big? never kill an animal for food. Would I not kill an animal to provide for my son if Narrator: Er . . . he were starving? Would I not generally prefer the death of a bear to a loved Miss Finch: They adapted to prey one (Curtin 75)? upon the pygmy elephants.

Cultural differences and cultural contexts, in Narrator: There were pygmy which groups of people find themselves also elephants? complicates the argument for moral vegetarianism: Miss Finch: Oh, yes. It’s basic island biogeology. Animals will naturally tend The Ihalmuit [1], for example, whose toward either gigantism or pygmyism. frigid domain makes the growing of There are equations you see … food impossible, do not have the Narrator thought box: This was much 32

more fun than being lectured on sushi conclusion, Miss Finch gets to do just that. flakes. As Miss Finch talked her face While continuing to enjoy refreshments, became more animated and I found Jane asks, “What do you think of prehistoric myself warming to her as she explained animals being alive today in secret, unknown to why and how some animals grew while science?” Miss Finch acknowledges there is no others shrank. “lost world,” but remarks that “I wish with all my (Gaiman 27) heart that there were some [smilodons—saber tooths] left today!” (Gaiman 28-29). The Miss Finch, at this point, does appear to take on conversation ends and the four friends then the double identity of a traditional comic book continue through the circus into the sixth room superhero. Miss Finch’s ecofeminism is the where a man put several ferrets into his bathing private, nerdy, geeky persona that people can’t trunks. Miss Finch objects, “ I thought you said stand to be around—akin to Peter Parker, Clark there were no animals. How do you think those Kent, or Diana Prince—while Miss Finch, the poor ferrets felt about being stuffed into that biogeologist and explorer of animals and foreign young man’s nether regions?” (Gaiman 30). lands, is the heroic superhero – akin to Again, the animal rights issue is raised, but the Spiderman, Superman, or Wonder Woman. group proceeds into the seventh room, where Comic book superheroes keep the two identities they are exposed to a bare-breasted nun and a separate so that family and friends are never bare-bottomed hunchback. As the group endangered by villains and to prevent the proceeds into the eighth room, a mysterious continual requests to use their superpowers over hand reaches out, grabs Miss Finch, and pulls her and over again. Miss Finch does not have into the darkness. Stunned, the remaining friends superpowers to protect, but she does have two move on to the ninth room where they come personas—the woman who loves nature and face-to-face with Miss Finch, as part of an exhibit, animals and desires to protect them, and the now within nature: woman who reasons and uses her mind to study animals. To her, they are one in the same Narrator: Slowly, the mist cleared person, but her friends see them as separate. and we saw Miss Finch. I wondered to Ecofeminists agree that the world also sees these this day where they got the costume. two persons as separate: What little there was of it fitted her perfectly. She stared at us without . . . the way in which women and nature emotion. Then the great cats padded have been conceptualized historically into the clearing. in the Western intellectual tradition has resulted in devaluing whatever is Jonathan: My God, my God, look associated with women, emotion, they’re . . . . animals, nature, and the body, while simultaneously elevating those things Narrator: Yes, just as she described associated with men, reason, humans, them the smilodons. culture, and the mind. One task of (Gaiman 38-39) feminism has been to expose these dualisms and the ways in which Miss Finch now appears in nature, stripped of her feminizing nature and naturalizing clothes and eyeglasses, wearing only a loincloth women has served as justification for and holding a spear. Her black hair, once in a the domination of women, animals, ponytail, is down. At this point, Miss Finch and the earth (Gaard 5). resembles the main character in Marian Engel’s Bear. In Bear, a woman leaves a city in Canada It is this dualism, this separation of woman as to go live on an island with a bear, and in doing nature lover and woman as heroic person, that so, “perhaps achieved that great romantic idea, ecofeminism seeks to combine into one person, to be in harmony with nature” (Thompson 32). one character. The goal of ecofeminism, then, is Miss Finch, like that character, has become one “to reject the nature/culture dualism of with nature. However, Miss Finch is given the patriarchal thought and locate animals and opportunity to show that “ecofeminists believe humans within nature” (Gaard 6). To that we cannot end the exploitation without ecofeminists, “values and actions are ending human oppression and vice versa” inseparable: one cannot care without acting” (Birkeland 19). (Birkeland 19). And, as the story draws to a 33

[1] Ihalmuit are an Inuit people who live in the Barren Lands region of the Narrator: The stocky woman raised her Northwest territories in Canada. The desolation of the region leads the umbrella and waved it one of the great Ihalmuit to hunt and eat caribou (deer). more: John Hopkins, 2001. cats.

Woman: Keep back, you ugly brute! References [The smilodon growls at the woman] Adams, Carol J. “The Feminist Traffic in Animals” in Ed. Greta Gaard. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Narrator: She [old stocky woman] went Press, 1993.

pale, but she made no move to run. Beatty, Scott; Greenberger, Robert; Jiminez, Phil; and Wallace, Dan. The Then it [smilodon] sprang . . . batting her DC Comics Encyclopedia. DK: New York, 2008. to the ground with one huge velvet paw! Biehl, Janet. Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics. Boston: South End Press, 1991. It stood over her triumphantly and roared Birkeland, Janis. “”Ecofeminism: Linking Theory and Practice” in Ed. Greta so deeply that I could feel it in the pit of Gaard. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. my stomach. The stocky woman seemed to have passed out, which was, I Card, Claudia. “Pluralist Lesbian Separatism” in Lesbian Philosophies and Cultures. Ed Jeffner Allen. Albany: State University of New York Press, felt a mercy. With luck she would not 1990. know when the blade-like fangs tore at her old flesh like twin daggers . . . then Cocks, Joan. The Oppositional Imagination. London: Routledge, 1989. Curtin, Deane. “Toward an Ecological Ethic of Care” in Ecological Feminist Miss Finch walked forward took the great Philosophies. Ed. Karen J. Warren. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, cat by the neck and pulled it back. 1996.

(Gaiman 41-42) Gaard, Greta. “Living Interconnections with Animals and Nature” in Ed. Greta Gaard. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. The stocky woman learns, as Plumwood wrote, that human beings are the prey, as well as the Gaiman, Neil; Zulli, Michael; and Klein, Todd. The Facts in the Case of the predator. However, Miss Finch, in her role as Departure of Miss Finch. Milwaukee: Dark Horse, 2008. ecofeminist, understands that the rights of the Leopold, Aldo. “The Land Ethic” in A Sand County Almanac and Sketches human are the same as the smilodon—the Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. smilodon cannot kill the human and so Miss Finch Mesina, Rita Marie L. “A Take on Ecofeminism: Putting an Emphasis on pulls it away. Miss Finch acts on the feminine the Relationship between Women and the Environment.” The Ateno Law Journal. 53, 2009: 1120-1146. ethical system of responsibility and care, which ecofeminists hope to use to their advantage in Singer, Peter. “Animal Liberation” in People, Penguins, and Plastic Trees: Basic Issues in Environmental Ethics. Ed. Christine Pierce and Donald their movement. VanDeVeer. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1995. The story ends with the three remaining friends leaving the circus without Miss Finch. Sturgeon, Noel. “Considering Animals: Kheel’s Nature Ethics and Animal Debates in Ecofeminism.” Ethics & The Environment. 14(2), 2009: 153-162. Someone asks if they should wait for her, but the others shake their heads no. As they drive away Thompson, Kent. Rev. of Bear by Marian Engel. Axiom. 2.5, 1976: 32-33. in the car, the narrator character hears “a tiger Wagner, Hank; Golden, Christopher; and Bissette, Stephen R. Prince of somewhere close by, for there was a low roar Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman. New York: St. Martin’s, 2008. that made the whole world shake” (Gaiman 49- Warren, Karen J. Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It 51). Is and Why It Matters. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2000. This final roar reminds the narrator of the Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth ecofeminist belief that humans are within nature Culture in America. Balti and a part of nature. The interaction with Miss Finch and her views of animal rights and her life within nature has impressed upon the narrator his place in the environment, for he does not just hear a tiger roar, but rather hears a tiger roar that Craig This was born in Ohio and still lives there. He earned a makes the whole world shake. He leaves with a Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Arts in History at Wright State better understanding of his place in nature. He University (Dayton, Ohio). He teaches popular culture at Sinclair Community College, which includes a course on Comic Books and leaves with a respect for animals in nature, which American Culture. In 2010, he partnered with a local literacy is what ecofeminists hope to achieve and it is organization, Project Read, to create the Project Read Comic Book these themes that are played out in The Facts in Literacy Project to promote literacy to pre-teens and teens through the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch. reading comic books.

34

THE WOL F-MAN SPEAKS

Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989), whose graphic novels (manga) abound with human, animal, and species-crossing

characters battling in epics of grand scale, is relatively well-known in the Western world. Tezuka’s rival artist

throughout his career, Ishinomori Shotarô (1938-1998) (who as a high school student assisted Tezuka in his Astroboy), however, is far less known, though he similarly involved humans, beasts, and species-hybrids in intergalactic, transhistorical dramas.1

Text by Christine Marran

ezuka Osamu and Ishinomori Shotarô might Yomota suggests that Tezuka’s characters can easily be considered the two most prolific only learn the truth about the world through a graphic novelists in Japanese manga nonhuman other, even while a human-centered history, so this essay tackles only one order is consistently asserted as inevitable. T primary aspect of Tezuka and Ishinomori’s Recently, another Japanese media works: the ways in which animaloid and cross- scholar Thomas Lamarre has written about the species bodies speak to the problem of human role of the playful animal other in Tezuka narcissism and enlightenment civilization. In both suggesting that his work, like wartime animation, authors’ works, characters who are liminal— offers scenarios of multi-speciesism in which the neither completely animaloid nor humanoid— interaction of species predominates, but tends to are the ciphers for a critique of the end in a failure of a multispeciesies, cooperative anthropocentric tendencies of human civilization. world: Yet they part ways when it comes to articulating the relation between humans and animals. [T]aken as a whole, My interest in the nonhuman in Tezuka was Japanese wartime animations piqued by the following statement by prolific take the trope of companion media scholar Yomota Inuhiko who remarked: species to its logical limit, which is especially evident in the Why is it that nonhumans always Momotaro animated films with its have to become the object of emphasis on Japanese animals exclusion in Tezuka’s works? Or, to put befriending of local animals of it differently, why is it that humans other environments. Simply put, cannot maintain even their basic Japanese wartime speciesism sense of humanity without being headed toward “multispeciesism,” continuously designated as such by which we might think of as a others? Why is it that the moment this specific form of multiculturalism act of designation ceases, humans related to the Japanese effort to always lapse into uncontrollable envision a multi-ethnic empire. . . anxiety and eventually chaos? . . . Tezuka continually tries to My nagging sense of discomfort with separate multispeciesism (the Tezuka derives from what this contrast ideal of multi-ethnic empire) from serves to highlight, the obsessiveness war, yet his manga tend to dwell with which Tezuka continues to reestablish human order even as he attempts to relativize it.[ii]

35

Tezuka Osamu Ode to Kirihito, Vertigo, 2006, © the author

on failure not success, and the categories of “human” or “animal.” It is not just multispecies kingdom is usually that multiple species cannot survive together, but destroyed. Likewise those non- that any kind of cross-species or nonhuman human creatures who strive for figure will face prejudice. The very title of a work cooperation across species tend that features a persistently persecuted half man- to die tragically.[iii] half dog character includes the term “sanka” meaning “lament,” “eulogy,” or “ode.” The Ode Lamarre sees in Tezuka’s work a struggle between to Kirihito (Kirihito sanka, serialized 1970-1971) a human-centric world in which human desires features dog-faced man, once a purely and values prevail and a multispeciesist ideal in humanoid young doctor, who, in his efforts to which different species, humans and animals cure a strange disease that deforms its victims so can build harmonious societies. that they look like dog-humanoids is never able Tezuka’s works not only lament the to overcome the discrimination he faces upon impossibility of a multispeciesist world but the becoming infected with the disease himself. impossibility of living beyond the simple Confronting such prejudice, Kirihito can only

36

Tezuka Osamu Ode to kirihito Vertigo, 2006, © the author 37

lament his in-between state of being neither fully physical difference will mean his exile to a man nor animal. His animal shell means that his perpetual liminal state. interior reason cannot be heard and he cries out Two volumes of Tezuka’s magnum opus, when enslaved into a freak show, “How cruel of Phoenix, feature another dog-faced man. At the them to use such learned men in their freak start of the volume “Sun, part 1,” a young man show! . . . I am a human being!” The doctor, who caught on the battlefield of the Chinese enemy sets out to prove the disease is not a virus passed in the 7th century has the skin carved from his among non-whites as the global medical rumor face by enemy soldiers who then place a has it goes to Inugamizawa or Dog-God Marsh in skinned wolf’s head on his own. The wolf’s head the mountains of Tokushima prefecture. (The later grows quickly to become permanently attached appearance of a dog-faced nun who was to his skin. The young man is not able to remove originally caucasian further confounds attempts the face pelt and must live as a half-human, to explain the disease as a virus of non-whites.) half-dog figure on the margins of human world. Kirihito eventually learns that other victims of the This multiply-named cross-species character, disease are people who work within mines who originally from the Korean Kingdom of Baekje have been similarly exposed to toxic water that is and member of the defeated clan Buyeo Pung, released with the mine during its excavation and is forced to flee to the island Yamato after his those who drink that water. The image of defeat on the continent. While “Inugami” (Dog- huddled dog-faced men from an African mine is God), is able to find a position in Japan through similarly a visual lamentation at the racism that his sympathetic rescue of a Yamato would racialize the disease. Tezuka’s graphic commander, he remains an outsider not merely novel treats Kirihito’s metamorphosis as a tragedy for his rejection of political and religious perpetrated by an anthropocentric society that is orthodoxy, but for his face. so overwhelmed by the visual evidence of Inugami has as his attendant an old difference, species-wise or racially. woman from Baekje with healing powers who The curious “twist” that Tezuka gives the insists that he accept the “tides of history” and story is the insistent, unsympathetic perspective of direct his people away from faith in native gods Kirihito toward animals. Even Kirihito’s capacity to (who appears as animal-human crossbreeds) exercise reason in order to prove that the toward Buddhism, as his lord dictates. She insists, Monmow disease is not a virus does little to too, that he give up his love of a female wolf improve his state in the world and this resentment Marimo for the human world, continually insisting increases his insistence on his distance from the that he is not an animal. Inugami refuses to animal world even as he violently craves meat. choose humanity and cries out his love for the The animal-man comes to hate his urges. His dog-spirit Marimo. In this forlorn cry, he cries out hope for a better situation, to return to his life as a not just for a wolf, but a community of shape- human doctor, emerges out of a lack of respect shifters—forest spirits capable of metamorphosis for inferior bodies. Yet while Ode to Kirihito either by adopting a fully animal form or of laments the barbarism of humanity, it champions transforming themselves into a hybridinal, pointy- the core of humanism—enlightenment reason— eared humanoid. The jealous old woman finally as the only way out of speciesist and racial demands, “You must choose . . . Between me or prejudice. And yet this rationalism cannot the female wolf!! And if you choose her, I will produce a solution for Kirihito who is only ever an have nothing to do with you from this day on!” outcast, and eventually leaves his homeland to The jealous maternal figure’s passion drives her to work. Adorno and Horkheimer articulate the enforce a rigid distinction between animals and fallibility of reason in their critique of humans. While Inugami accepts the shape- enlightenment thought: “The infinite patience, the shifters as his rational equal, he is not averse to tender, never-extinguished impulse of creaturely sacrificing animals to protect the human villagers life toward expression and light, which seems to under his watch. Lord Inugami puts oxen in the soften and pacify within itself the violence of front line in a battle against the enemy forces by creative evolution, does not, like the rational tying oxen to spiked logs to drive them toward philosophies of history, prescribe a certain praxis the enemies with swords and arrows. Inugami, as beneficial, not even that of nonresistance. The even as he ties up the oxen still believes that light of reason, which dawned in that impulse “sure, we humans should be able to stop this and is reflected in the recollecting thought of Buddhist invasion through rational discussion,” to human beings, falls, even on the happiest day, which Tsufu, leader of the Tengu goblins of Mt. on its irresolvable contradiction: the calamity Ibuki replies, “Lord Inugami . . . I must tell you that which reason alone cannot avert.”[iv] Kirihito’s there is no longer any hope of that 38

Ishimori Dai-Zenshu, Nan nan da! Nan nan da!, 2007, p.88 © the author

39

happening.”[v] with others or at least beginning to invent new The human in Tezuka alternately hangs ways, or re-imagining old ways, of being in upon reason or devolves into irrational insistence relationship with others. These becomings are on absolute species difference. Modernity has fueled by a desire for proximity and sharing, to brought reason but with it also barbarity toward engage with the other, to be “copresent” with the non-familiar others. Kirihito and Inugami’s other in a zone of closeness. Becoming-animal experiences in the world are marked by continual frees humans from dichotomous relationships in otherness that divests them of any power to be which the human dominates. It also inhibits the equal among humans. Curiously, Inugami, is not reduction of the world to dualisms, such as the only animal (not human) and deity (not human), “human” and the “animal,” “culture” and “nature” but also a foreigner in Yamato. His conversation and so on. The concept of becoming-animal is a with the princess suggests that he has an accent. readiness, a desire, a want, to be guided toward She coyly remarks, “In the language you use, I a different mode of being. sense something sophisticated, even elegant.” But Tezuka’s works suggest only the This bilingual Inugami rejects his lord’s insistence tragedy that the animal and the hybridinal being on Buddhism as the only true religion. He wants have no place, perhaps not unlike Kafka’s his people to be able to choose between native characters in a state of becoming, Samson and religion of animal and monster-gods and Red Peter. In order to escape prison, Inugami Buddhism, or both. Inugami, in other words, must completely return to the species-bound enacts hybrid crossings on a number of levels. behavior. He must run on all fours and He embodies species-crossing in his very skin, he “impersonate” a dog to escape the royal is bilingual, he lies with an ethnically other human grounds. Later when Inugami confronts a pack of of the opposite sex and rejects religious wolves in the forest he must stand on two legs to orthodoxy. In many ways he embodies the act “impersonate” a human to avoid the pack. He of the Deleuze and Guattarian “becoming- must switch back and forth in his species animal” in its most abstract sense. Deleuze and behavior as he does with language. His Guattari’s concept of “becoming-animal” for hybridinal body, his bilinguality, have no place in many of its readers has meant neither sustaining his world. a distinction between the human and animal nor The medium of the graphic novel is metamorphosing into an animal in identification particularly suited to address species-crossing with it. Becoming-animal suggests instead an and posthumanist ideas. Graphic novels, for their overcoming of models of identification and lack of a need to retain a mimetic aesthetic, can desire that are based in an assumption of shared visually generate a sense of corporeal possibility. modes of reason, language and subjectivity as a As Thomas Lamarre has shown, the human subject. It is offered as a conceptual way “plasmaticity,” as he calls it, of the animaloid in of thinking ourselves beyond the seemingly anime enables the animal character to oscillate impassable division between humans and between humanoid and animal being. A similar animals. Through becoming, the human joins claim for manga can be made. A semiotics of with the animal in a zone of proximity that comics should be based in an understanding of dissolves the identities and the boundaries set up this plasticity. And this plasticity can enable a between them. This process disturbs and disrupts visual and narrative rendering of “becoming- usual ontological categories. In becoming- animal.” Put differently, the plasticity of the animal, new ways of relating to one another medium proves a convenient medium for proliferate and these creations are created by putting in question anthropocentric aesthetics, the shared event of becoming itself. which, it could be argued, require a greater In “becoming-animal,” the human will be degree of mimicry and mimesis. Manga’s significantly altered by this exchange with the plasticity pushes toward a non-anthropocentric other animal and in the process will move out of aesthetics. a position of dominance. Becoming-animal is The irony in Tezuka’s works is that even not a fantasy of becoming anything in particular, while he creates highly plastic characters who but rather entering into an alliance with another become animal and a visual resemblance entity: “We fall into a false alternative if we say among the humans and nonhumans in terms of that you either imitate or you are. What is real is scale and line, that co-presence of human and the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not animal is continually interrupted by assertions of the supposedly fixed terms through which that absolute difference. Enlightenment reason which becomes passes.”[vi] Becoming-animal is becomes the source of anthropocentric pride. a way of living differently, identifying differently The doctor and his rational mind still remain at 40

the seat of truth. It is because humans act “like “blacks” from the “yellow” (who are “yapoo” animals” that they cause war and death on epic slaves). The memory and with it the history of scales. Kirihito may have been a hybrid figure, each yapoo is erased through surgical but the real tragedy is that his excellent brain is procedure. Science and technology are no trapped in an animal body. Tezuka’s critique of place of refuge as in Tezuka. Rather they are the humanity then is a perpetual lament for the tools of this speciesist, racist, and sexist society exuberant humanity that can never reach its true that requires the erasure of the memories its own potential except in the rare case of a reasonable use. The memory must be erased to create the man, who may even yet have uncontrollable subordinate body. Fascism requires this erasure urges “like a dog.” The animal is still the and the technology to do it. As Adorno and passionate and the irrational in a familiar myth of Horkheimer have suggested, “the perennial enlightenment thinking.[vii] dominion over nature, medical and nonmedical The work of Ishinomori Shotarô seems to technology, . . . would be made possible only by take greater advantage of the plasticity of oblivion.”[ix] The yapoo without his own history is manga and promises an overcoming of the bearer of the rejected corporeal who is also enlightenment reason. It should first be stated, the bearer for the labor and pleasure of the however, that in comparison to Tezuka Osamu, Empire. Ishinomori’s oeuvre exhibits a tremendous A more humorous approach to the diversity of visual style and narrative approach. serious problem of anthropocentrism that would Some are epic histories (the History of Japan make slaves of beasts is found in Ishinomori’s series), some social satire (the Beast Yapoo “Future Shock” when the protagonist’s future self series), or entertaining environmental and emerges from a closet to help the young man economic primers, or SF super hero stories (the find a girlfriend. His future self suggests a human- Masked Rider series) of insect-men. For such a fish. The student imagines a beautiful doe-eyed range and volume (Ishinomori holds the Guinness mermaid. What he gets instead is a talkative and Book of World Records for most comic book smart dolphin. When he is woefully disappointed, pages published), it can still be argued that one the future self remarks on how much smarter the mainstay of Ishinomori’s texts is a critique of dolphin is, how dolphins and humans are likely to enlightenment thinking that either produces become fast friends in the future. When the animal as inevitable tragic victim or the rational student resists the future self’s remarks on the human as rightly dominant. brilliance of dolphins, the future self attacks the Ishinomori’s Swiftian Beast Yapoo barbarity of humans: “Don’t you so haughtily (Kachikujin yapoo, 1983-4) is a complicated story claim that you don’t want an animal. Humans about a white matriarchal galaxy called Empire are animals! From her [the dolphin’s] point of of a Hundred Suns (EHS) based on a 1950s cult view humans are the most barbaric, violent and novel of the same name by Numa Shôzô. The ugly, low-grade . . . she actually didn’t want to EHS is an Empire run on human and hybridinal meet you and I put her up to it. Disgusting. One beast slave labor.[viii] The Empire raises “yellow can’t date a primitive!” The manga closes with men” in a “Yapoonarium” calling them “simian the student believing that a dog on the street sapiens” in order to deny their human status in looks at him with disgust.[x] In this case, to be an order to more easily make of them property and animal is in no sense a pejorative. slaves to women. The surgically animalized and In a number of manga, Ishinomori mechanized body is dedicated to serving his lampoons the evolutionary scale that places sadistic mistress, but he does not initially willingly man at the peak of evolution. In a two-page submit. He must be surgically altered, drawing, Ishinomori presents “Evolution” (Shinka). brainwashed, and trained to perform submission. The evolution of man from ape is turns to He is trained to masochistically wish for devolution when military weaponry is introduced. domination and to be able to read the desires of The next stage of man’s “development” then is to his mistress. It is precisely the addition of the slobbering monster. Advanced technology has “brain-washing” aspect of the narrative, the need taken man to monster. This single drawing is not for surgical intervention to produce such a unrelated to his Beast Yapoo series in which the hierarchy that enables a profound and explicit Aryan matriarchy uses its advanced technology critique of human dominion and narcissism. The to form a racist, speciesist, and highly sexually naming of the Japanese male body as “simian perverse society. sapien” links racism and speciesism. The Aryan As part of his rewriting of the “place” of women separate whites from “blacks” (who are the human and animal, in contradistinction to humanoid workers in this SF novel) and the Tezuka Osamu, Ishinomori rewrites, parodically 41

Ishimori Dai-Zenshu, Shiawase-kun, 2008, p.44-45 © the author

and otherwise, scale. In another drawing as part and miniaturizing the human or magnifying the of his many surreal short manga, a single page insect, bodies are exempt from predictable contains an enormous insect and tiny human gradations, in scale and value. with a poem that reads, “Youth / It was the Ishinomori’s wide array of graphic summer of a moment / It shone so brightly novels consistently pursue the notion of scalar because [I] had no dreams,” Jun, Traveler of adjustment. His humans are smaller than toads, Youth.[xi] In the place of no dreams—no future, his cicada bigger than boys. Not unlike Swift, and of this moment which has no history, the whom he parodies in Beast Yapoo, Ishinomori scale of animal to human, or insect to human combines the miniature and the gigantic. As changes. The cicada looms and the human Monique Allewaert has shown in her work on waxing poetically is reduced to a happy speck. William Bartram’s plant life, when a non- About one of his most popular series, Masked analogous scale is introduced, it becomes Rider (Kamen Raida-,), which features cross impossible to measure the natural world through species battling insect-humanoids Ishinomori the scale of the human body. Relation must be wrote, “I created Masked Rider to wave the flag considered outside of common measure. Wholly of revolution against the powerful civilization that outside of the analogical scene, the figure of the destroys the great Nature (dai shizen). . . ” This naturalized human is largely, “which demands a series became a television show, and Ishinomori thinking of relation outside of measure.”[xii] admitted to taking the easy route and allowing In addition to bringing the details of the the power of television civilization to take over the insect’s back and wings into crisp view while the story, but at least in its originary form, the insect human remains a tiny shadowy presence of pure need not remain mimetically identical to its pleasure and with almost no earthly significance, current scale. In skipping scales Ishinomori also developed narratives of human / 42

Ishimori Dai-Zenshu, Nan nan da! Nan nan da!, 2007, p.114 © the author

43

Ishimori Dai-Zenshu, Kimyo-na yujin-tachi, 2008, p.178 © the author

animal resemblance. In 1977 and 1978, The animal is drawn differently, with more Ishinomori published a series called Strange sophistication and mimetic sensibility while the Friends (Kimyô-na yûjin-tachi) featuring toads, human seems cartoonish in contrast. The mudskippers, foxes, seahorses, and humans who mimetically drawn animal body brings attention replicate certain corporeal features of these to the nonhumans as both to be included within animals. Each story brings together a human the frame of plant, animal, and human bios, but and animal in uncanny resemblance, and they as they are, in their plenitude. And the plasticity are drawn out of scale. The final chapter of of the humanoid means it can change. It can Strange Friends about a toad and toad-like man change to have more affinity to the animal, while begins with the SF drawings of its protagonist the animal must remain, can remain, (should busily drawing at his desk: “Scientific remain?) in its own state. This is not to say that development has accelerated and no one Ishinomori does not have highly plastic animal knows when it would stop. But, but lately the so- figures. He does in his voluminous oeuvre. The called ‘material civilization’ seems as if it may point is that in many of his manga in which the come to a halt. Or, is it just me who thinks that? I relations of human to animal are at stake, often feel like some kind of completely different Ishinomori draws the animal mimetically while kind of ‘civilization’ will exist. And, I will find an retaining the plasticity of the human figure. This entrance to it…that’s how it feels. That’s why I suggests an ethics in his drawing. The natural decided to publish this.”[xiii] The next frame is of a world is to be reproduced in its fine detail with frog drawn to scale on a graph and mimetic little perversion of the line. In the environmentalist drawing of bats. Under them is quoted a book on conclusions to his economic primers, he rejects human’s inferior perceptions as compared with the anthropomorphizing line in drawing and in animals. doing so he rejects anthropomorphizing the In the conclusions to these shorter animal suggesting the inherent charm of the manga, and his later Manga: An Introduction to thing itself in all its susceptibility. the Japanese Economy and Manga: An The animals and humans are drawn Introduction to the World Economy, the animal qualitatively differently and while this might figure is far less “plastic” than the human figure. 44

appear to be an insistence on the difference between animals and humans in comparison to

Tezuka’s relatively consistent style between humans and animals, the narratives reveal otherwise. Ishinomori’s manga show less humanist tendencies than Tezuka’s manga which ultimately insist that the affinities between the human and nonhuman are limited. The animal will ultimately be sacrificed for the human world.

Ishinomori’s broad oeuvre is more fluid in this sense and his stylistically flexible approach to the human and nonhuman in his work articulates a broader comfort with, or perhaps insistence on, the kind of creaturely inclusivity and affinity that Tezuka’s humanism does not allow.

Notes

[i] Ishinomori was assistant to Tezuka in 1953 and continued to work with Tezuka over the postwar period in Japan. Ishinomori received the Tezuka Osamu Culture Award and the 27th Japan Cartoonists Association Award in 1998, among other awards.

[ii] Yomota Inuhiko, Mechademia 3 (2008): 108-109.

[iii] Lamarre, “Specieism,” unpublished manuscript.

[iv] Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (Stanford, 2002), 186-187.

[v] Tezuka Osamu, Phoenix, 88

[vi] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 238.

[vii] The 21st century counterpart to Inugami in “Sun” wears a metallic dog-head in prison and is forced to listen--along with hundreds of others in the same prison--a recording in the wolf’s head that repeats on a loop: “The sins of our materialistic approach to understanding life in the twentieth century have finally caught up with us. The earth has been corrupted by an unchecked culture of materialism. Life is on the verge of destruction. (171) All prisoners must eat plankton. To be vegetarian and half-beast is a painful punishment in Phoenix.

[viii] For a more detailed discussion of this graphic novel see Marran, “Abject Male Subjectivity in the Postwar Manga Beast Yapoo,” Mechademia, vol. 4, 2009. [ix] Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 191.

[x] Ishinomori Shotarô, Future Shock, 228-230.

[xi] Ishinomori, Fantasy Jun, 1981-1984.

[xii] Monique Allewaert, “Plant Life, or, How Machines Verge on the Microcosmos,” unpublished manuscript.

[xiii] Ishinomori, Kimyô-na yujin-tachi, 168-170.

Christine Marran is Associate Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota She specializes in Japanese popular culture from the 1870s to the present; Japanese literature (particuarly early Meiji writing, especially newspapers and gesaku literature); gender, sexuality, and identity in print and film culture; ethics and the animal; and Japanese and Asian film. 45

PRIDE OF BAGDHAD

In the spring of 2003, a pride of lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during an American bombing raid. Lost and confused, hungry but finally free, the four lions roamed the decimated streets of Baghdad in a desperate struggle for their lives. Writer Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon discuss how they recreated this story as a graphic novel. Questions and text by Marion Copeland

\

ride of Baghdad tells the story of four illustration 3-year program at the Institut Supérieur lions who escaped from the Baghdad des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Luc in Liège, Belgium, zoo during the American bombing of where he learned all the basic techniques of P Iraq in 2003. This graphic novel, written comic book and illustration. Niko is [now] best by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Niko known for his work with writer Brian K. Vaughan in Henrichon, won the IGN award for best original creating the graphic novel Pride of Baghdad. graphic novel in 2006. Henrichon's first major work was a graphic novel American writer Brian K. Vaughan was titled Barnum!, written by Howard Chaykin and already well-known as a comic book and David Tischman. He also did work on Fables, New television writer when “his first graphic novel, Pride X-Men, Sandman, and Spiderman and he still of Baghdad, was released by DC Comics' Vertigo regularly provides covers for Marvel Comics and imprint on September 13, 2006. The story, a DC Comics on series like Fantastic Four and X- fictionalized account of the true story of four lions Men”. His work on Bill Willingham’s animal-centric that escaped from the Baghdad Zoo after an Fables primed him for depicting the lions in Pride American bombing [Operation Iraqi Freedom] in of Baghdad. 2003, won the IGN award for best original I will introduce this interview by explaining graphic novel in 2006” and has been called "’the that I have just finished writing the article “Animal- best novel so far’ about the war by the UK's Centric Graphic Novels: An Annotated Telegraph” Bibliography” for this issue of Antennae. Like Pride Vaughan has received and been of Baghdad, the graphic novels in the nominated for numerous awards, including an bibliography focus on the stories and lives of Eisner award for best series for Y: The Last Man nonhuman animals. These graphic novels (2008); and an Eisner for Best Writer for his work on foreground animal protagonists and offer insight Y: The Last Man, Runaways, Ex Machina and into animal consciousness and experience. My Marvel's Ultimate X-Men, and for Best New Series questions for Brian K. Vaughan and Niko for Ex Machina (2005); among many others. Henrichon arise out of an interest in how and why Vaughan was also a writer on the hit ABC artists and writers make animal-centric choices. television series Lost from 2006-2009. Niko Henrichon, a Canadian comic book The text and pictures in Pride of Baghdad artist who now lives in France with his wife, child, seem so much of a piece that it feels as and cat, reports on his website homepage that though your collaboration is seamless. “he graduated in 2001 from a comic book and How did you two work together?

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Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon Pride of Baghdad, DC Comics, 2006, front cover, 2006 © Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon

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Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon Pride of Baghdad, DC Comics, 2006, page 51, 2006 © Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon 48

Vaughan: It was one of the best, closest behavior did you do in order to develop collaborations of my career. I actually pitched their characters and thoughts so Pride to Vertigo before I'd found an artist. It was convincingly? my ever-diligent Y: The Last Man editor Will Dennis who recommended Niko Henrichon for the book. Vaughan: Thanks so much. I did a great deal I was really impressed by his work on the graphic of research, including talking with amazing novel Barnum, but it was Niko's lavishly illustrated people like Mariette Hopley, an I.F.A.W. "rescue sample drawings of realistic-yet-expressive veterinarian" who spent time in Iraq after the war animals that convinced us he was the only artist began. I also spent weeks reading about the for the job. His artwork said so much, I ended up region, studying the history of Iraq, learning cutting a huge amount of dialogue and trusting everything I could about lions, gathering tons of his pictures to tell our story. photo reference, etc. But really, artist Niko Henrichon did all of the heavy lifting in making Henrichon: I have often received this comment our pride feel so real. [about our collaboration] and I must say that I take it as a compliment. This is great news, the Henrichon: We bought tons of books about fact that many readers have thought that our lions. Brian and I had several books in common collaboration on this project was very close. For and sometimes, he indicated in his scripts the my part, I can only say that Brian's script was so pages of these books where the displayed evocative to me. Having to illustrate it was very pictures of lions were interesting for our graphic easy and the layouts were made by themselves. novel. This had an amusing scholar feeling that I think Brian has also this quality to adapt to the sounded like: "open your book Being a Lion at artist with whom he collaborated in order to page 39...” I also watched a few DVD’s of highlight its strengths. In fact, we worked together documentaries about lions, to see them in as most writers and artists work. He sent me the action. I also went to the Zoo, it just happened script and I realized a few layouts that I showed almost all the lions were sleeping or they were just back to Brian and Will Dennis, editor of Pride of very lazy. Baghdad. After that, we discussed over these layouts and I finally realized the final pages. How did you research and develop the look of the backgrounds and the setting? Did you decide together to focus on this particular story, and if so, what Henrichon: At the moment we worked on the influenced you to tell the story of the lions book, it was the beginning of the blogging out of all the stories in the history of the madness. Several soldiers who went to Iraq held war in Iraq? that kind of blog and many of them have put photos of their experience. These documents Henrichon: The pitch of the project has been helped me a lot to make the sets credible submitted as is. The initiative comes from Brian at because, of course, it wasn’t possible that I went 100%. I just had to get onboard. to Iraq myself.

Vaughan: From Carl Barks' Scrooge McDuck to I was particularly struck with how the Spiegelman's Maus, comic books have always coloring suggested that the animals and had a rich tradition of telling meaningful stories the setting became one during the with anthropomorphized animals. I was looking bombing, much as the coloring of the to push myself by experimenting with this device, turtle seems naturally a part of the and I was also hungry to write something that coloring of the Tigris. How did you use addressed my conflicted feelings about the still- color to illuminate the themes of the ongoing Iraq War. When I read reports of a pride story? of four lions escaping the Baghdad Zoo, I knew I had a starting point for the story I needed to tell. Henrichon: Colors are a wonderful thing in comics. I try to use them to give a little more than In Pride, you develop the overall theme what is normally there. Since there’s no of freedom and captivity before the soundtrack, special effects and things like that in bombing destroys the zoo and “frees” the comics, I try to use all the means available to lions. The story reveals how the lions view give a special feel to the images, to make the themselves before, during, and after the scenes unique. shelling. What kind of research on lion 49

Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon Pride of Baghdad, DC Comics, 2006, page 82, 2006 © Brian K. 50Vaughan and Niko Henrichon

Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon 51 Pride of Baghdad, DC Comics, 2006, page 98, 2006 © Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon

Brian, nonhuman animals make bombing or did you shape your pride to appearances in your other comics, but develop the story or themes you had are not typically the focus of your stories. decided on? What made you decide to focus on the lions and tell this story from the pride’s Vaughan: The actual pride of four lions served perspective? as our inspiration, but Niko and I obviously took a great deal of artistic liberty. Vaughan: With fiction, audiences can watch endless horrors inflicted on human beings, even Can you talk about the other messages children, but put a dog in danger, and watch or themes that are developed through people walk out in droves. Similarly, I think it's your artistic techniques (perspective, hard for even the most sympathetic person to pattern, rhythm)? truly feel for the civilian victims of foreign wars we see on TV, but strangely, many of us can Henrichon: I do not like to discuss in length somehow bridge that emotional gap when it about these aspects of the work. It seems to me comes to seeing innocent animals suffer. I that the images should speak for themselves. As I wanted to write about war from the perspective said in a previous question, I use everything at my of noncombatants, and because animals disposal to produce images that are as transcend race or creed or nationality, having meaningful as possible. One aspect that interests them be our sole protagonists hopefully allowed me very much is the work of lights and shadows. I us to tell a story that's universally relatable. always try to give every scene a dramatic lighting to make it a little theatrical. What depictions of lions or other animals in literature, art, film, comics and graphic Did Iraqi art or literature influence your novel traditions inspired and influenced work? your own depiction? Henrichon: Unfortunately, I can’t say I am very Vaughan: Honestly, none. You can’t help but familiar with the recent literature and the Iraqi draw comparisons to something like The Lion King arts. However, I know a little Babylonian when working on a story like this, but I was much mythology, including the famous Epic of more influenced by the real Iraqi civilians I spoke Gilgamesh. I watched the Babylonian classic art with than with any fictional animals. to make some decorations in the settings. I understand that Saddam Hussein himself was Henrichon: I remember George Orwell’s classic, very inspired by Nebuchadnezzar and it’s easily The Animal Farm, which I loved. It was a book understood when one observes the many that addressed some issues very seriously while buildings and palaces built under his reign. using talking animals. It is true that traditionally, the stories featuring talking animals are more How did you decide what kind of oriented toward an audience of children. This is characters and which species (horse, obviously not the case with Pride of Baghdad. So, bear, turtle, human) the lions would although I like some Disney films, I cannot say encounter in Baghdad? How do you see they were much of an inspiration for this project. each animal developing your themes? We wanted to get as far away as we could from this very well known visual universe. Vaughan: A lot of the selections were based in fact. Believe it or not, there really was a black Why did you select lions, complicated bear in the Republican Palace, most likely social predators, as your protagonists belonging to the late Uday Hussein. Another rather than the antelope or baboons who bear escaped the Baghdad Zoo and eventually were their neighbors in the zoo? mauled and partially ate three civilians. But other animals were selected simply because of what I Vaughan: I suppose the simple answer is that I thought they might be able to say about the chose the lions because of how their story region and the conflict. As for how each animal ended. might advance the theme, readers’ interpretations are always more interesting to me Were the lions in your story modeled on than my original intent. the individual lions that were actually in the Baghdad zoo at the time of the What do you hope readers carry away 52

Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon 53 Pride of Baghdad, DC Comics, 2006, page 121, 2006 © Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon

with them after sharing the story of the pride of Baghdad?

Vaughan: That’s a difficult question, since I really only ever write stories for myself. That said, I’ve been heartened by the emotional responses I’ve gotten from a very diverse group of readers, including both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

Henrichon: The book raises some questions about the value of freedom and the imposition by force of it. I think we should still have debates on these topics. The West has this tendency to believe that good values are only in his camp. We sometimes forget that just 70 years ago, the West experienced the barbarism in his most extreme manifestation.

Brian, in addition to writing comics and graphic novels, you frequently write for other venues (film, television). Do you have a particular perspective on animals that you hope to communicate across mediums?

Vaughan: Well, I absolutely love animals, but as a storyteller, I’m much more interested in what they have to say about us than what we have to say about them.

Niko, do you have any plans to return to the animal-centric verisimilitude of Pride in the future?

Henrichon: I am currently working on a project that depicts many animals but they are not the main characters. I'm afraid I can’t say more about it yet but it should be announced soon.

Brian, have you done any animal-centric work since finishing Pride or do you have plans to in the future?

Vaughan: I’m actually working on a very animal-centric feature film as we speak, which I hope you’ll be hearing more about later this year.

Both authors were interviewed exclusively for Antennae by Marion Copeland in Autumn 2010
Antennae

54

TH E POLITICAL

A NIMAL AND THE

P OLITICS OF 9/11

In this essay Sushmita Chatterjee examines Art Spiegelman’s animal-human cartoons drawn in response to 9/11. She begins by briefly introducing Spiegelman’s contribution to the world of cartooning and his approach to cartoons as a medium of experimentation with genre-defying potential. Text by Sushmita Chatterjee

ur political subjectivity is usually rather than either-or carry us forward from the constructed through binary schemas cycle of violence? Perhaps, starting with a (man/animal, man/woman, West/Islam, fundamental, elemental binary, that of O civilized/uncivilized etc.). These binary man/animal, will help us comprehend the politics schemas are a vital part of our social-political in binaries that keep us re-inscribed in the status- imagination, helping to consolidate who “we” quo of the present. are. In our contemporary landscape, altered The events of 9/11 were followed by a inextricably after 9/11, binary thinking gained political response that sought to consolidate increasing predominance. Samuel Huntington’s political and social identities. The collapse of the “clash of civilizations” doctrine, which represented twin towers was used to justify a politics that the state of the world in the post-ideological Cold reinforced national loyalties and emphasized a War period, gathered increasing resonance in civilizational difference between the East and the the post 9/11 world, exemplified by official West. Hegemonic politics offered by official pronouncements of “us” and the “terrorists.”[1] government spokespersons and the media not The binary of “us” and “them” not only contains only consolidated macro boundaries but also “us,” but contains the “other” within parameters micro individual centered identities. US official which patrol the borders of our politics and policies after 9/11 sought to barricade the exacerbate violence towards the “other.” Any country from further attacks, a barricading not kind of transformative politics would have to only of the “homeland” but also its subjects. It contend with these binaries, especially in the responded to violence with violence. Surely, “it is contemporary world after 9/11 which begs us to time to allow an intellectual field to develop in move beyond the cycle of violence and death. which histories might be felt in their nuances and The binary thinking that Bush espouses in which complexity, and accountability understood in only two positions are possible—“Either you’re with separation from cries of revenge” (Butler 2004, us or you’re with the terrorists”—makes it 23). As a response to the violence of 9/11, I untenable to hold a position in which one argue that Art Spiegelman provides us with a opposes both and queries the terms in which the prism to theorize on transformative politics after opposition is framed (Butler 2004, 2). Indeed it is 9/11 through his animal-human cartoon images important to ask, “what politically, might be in his work on 9/11 titled In The Shadow Of No made of grief besides a cry for war” (Butler 2004, Towers (2004). By playing on the fundamental xii). How do we reduce our complicity with elemental binary of man/animal, not only does violence? Would thinking in terms of both-and Spiegelman help us comprehend the politics of 55

Art Spiegelman In The Shadow Of No Towers,Pantheon Books: a division of Random House, front cover, 2004 © the author

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binaries, but he also provides us with a framework hijackings of September 11 would to visualize its undoing. Hence, in this essay, I themselves be hijacked by the Bush study how Spiegelman’s animal-human cartoons, cabal that reduced it all to a war drawn in response to 9/11, constitute counter- recruitment poster. At first, Ground Zero images that defy binary thinking and enable a had marked a Year Zero as well…When democratic ethos at variance with caged the government began to move into full political subjectivity. dystopian Big Brother mode and hurtle As the son of holocaust survivors, America into a colonialist adventure in Spiegelman narrated the horrors of the Iraq—while doing very little to make concentration camps through the comic America genuinely safer beyond medium in Maus, a form usually connected to confiscating nail clippers at airports—all “the very unserious, unsacred world of the rage I’d suppressed after the 2000 Loonytoons” (Gordon in Versluys 2006, 980). election, all the paranoia I’d barely Published in two parts, Maus subverted the managed to squelch immediately after traditional use of comics to tell a tragic tale, 9/11, returned with a vengeance. New portraying Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. traumas began competing with still Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for fresh wounds and the nature of my Maus, which was the first time a comic novel had project began to mature (Spiegelman won the prestigious award. Spiegelman’s 2004, unpaginated). contribution to the world of comics is certainly not restricted to Maus. As a pioneer of the What is critical to the narrative urgency of his underground comix movement in the 60’s and comic book on 9/11 is that Spiegelman 70’s, he worked towards varied experimentations witnessed the collapse of the Twin Towers. The in comic art that helped to situate the place of collapsing towers left an indelible imprint on his comics in the aesthetic history of modernism and mind, ”unhinging him” from his daily activities, postmodernism (Witek 2007, x). In Arcade: The reiterating the lesson learned from his parents, Comics Revue (co-edited with Bill Griffith in 1975), Auschwitz survivors, of always keeping his bags Spiegelman extended the artistic terrain of the packed (Spiegelman 2004 unpaginated). underground commix movement by working with Cartooning seemed a way for younger artists. In 1980, Spiegelman, along with Spiegelman to come to terms with the his wife, Francoise Mouly, co-founded RAW, a ephemeral nature of existence after 9/11. He large format graphic magazine that featured recalls being “reminded how ephemeral even strips by underground comic artists such as Chris skyscrapers and democratic institutions are”: Ware, Mark Beyer, and Dan Clowes. In his “When a monument—like two 110 story towers contribution to RAW (subtitled Open Wounds from that were meant to last as long as the Pyramids— the Cutting Edge of Commix), Spiegelman becomes ephemeral, one’s daily life, the passing experimented with drawing and narrative styles, moment, takes on a more monumental quality” producing strips that helped create an avant- (Spiegelman in an interview with Nina Siegal garde of comic art (Siegal 2005).[2] Maus 2005). Spiegelman uses cartoons to grapple with demonstrated, without a doubt, that cartooning his feelings of disbelief, trauma, and vulnerability can tell “serious stories with serious purposes” after 9/11. Cartoons are a medium of great (Harvey 1994, 245). And consequently, as Joseph condensation and allow him to pack and un- Witek writes, “comics today are made differently, pack the event.[3] Below is an exchange marketed differently, read differently, and between Spiegelman and Harvey Blume (1995) discussed differently than ever before, and Art which clearly elucidates the temper behind his Spiegelman has been central to every one of work. those changes” (Witek 2007, x). In The Shadow of No Towers (2004) AS: I had an entertaining moment continues Spiegelman’s work on serious stories with the New York Times Book Review through an apparently unserious medium. when MAUS was given a spot as a Spiegelman writes about the rationale for his bestseller in the fiction category. I wrote project on 9/11: a letter saying that David Duke would be quite happy to read that what I had anticipated that the shadows of happened to my father was fiction. I the towers might fade while I was slowly said I realized MAUS presented sorting through my grief and putting it problems in taxonomy but I thought it into boxes. I hadn’t anticipated that the belonged in the nonfiction list. They 57

published the letter and moved MAUS totally non-representational painting or to nonfiction. But it turns out there was a in totally representational painting, the debate among the editors. The funniest moment of collision is the one where I line transmitted back to me was one get the biggest charge. It's also true at editor saying, let's ring Spiegelman's the end of the '20s, before the '30s set doorbell. If a giant mouse answers, we'll in. That particular curdled innocence of put MAUS in nonfiction. the '20s is still central to me; and if there's a place where The Wild Party still H: What about this moment of the loss remains relevant in today's world it has of innocence draws you? to do with something I can't fully articulate; it has to do with that AS: It's always what interests me; it's particular collision, the collision between what exists between categories. It is the world that rhymes and the world when something is at the point of that doesn't. meeting something else but hasn't melted into it. The example I keep This fascinating dialogue reveals how going back to is Seurat. I always like Spiegelman’s Maus created havoc on the Seurat's paintings. Depending on where distinction between fiction and non-fiction. In the you stand you see either dots or people hearty collision between categories, much like in a park. But it's not just a field of dots Seurat’s paintings, Spiegelman finds the “biggest and it's not just people in a park. It's a charge,” the inarticulate moment of sheer point of discovery because there are no creativity that necessitates bringing together easy categories. It's true for Seurat, and different worlds, different sensibilities, fact, and it's true for this particular moment of the fiction. Spiegelman is inspired by what “exists zeitgeist that takes place in the '20s, between categories,” “the collision between the and it's true for comics becoming world that rhymes and the world that doesn’t.” His literature as they lose their central way of working through the trauma of 9/11 function as things that sell newspapers, oscillates between a world that makes sense and let's say. the world that doesn’t. Often the world that makes sense is the world of cartooned H: So breakdown of genre is the caricature, of mice, ghosts, and fires. The “real” moment of possible discovery. world of categories provides little solace or explanations. AS: It's not just a breakdown of genre; In The Shadow Of No Towers breaks very often it's a breakdown of values. from a neatly sequential narrative form. Very Genre is just the superficial different from the narrative style used in Maus, manifestation. Spiegelman’s In The Shadow Of No Towers is H: People get used to looking at genre irregular in style and does not have a patterned for guarantees. Fiction is fiction; narrative. Spiegelman draws himself in different nonfiction is nonfiction. When those sorts moods and semblances and conveys his of distinctions weaken, it can be personal anguish through irregularly sized and unnerving. shaped panels alongside splashes of vivid colors. AS: And that's the terrifying moment that The book is personal and intimate portraying the can lead to revelation. Nonfiction inability and non-compliance of the author to associates itself with the exterior world render a normalized picture.[4] The book consists and fiction presumably deals with of thick, weighty pages like a children’s book. This sensibility. There's a point where those makes it impossible to turn the pages quickly, to things do and must meet. In Seurat, you simply fast-forward. The labor of trauma is have a post-Impressionist moment stylistically represented. Half of the book (ten where the question is what is a picture? pages) is about Spiegelman and his family Is the rectangle a window or is it a dealing with 9/11 interspersed with the artist’s canvas? Different values, different world commentary on the Bush administration, views are implied in each answer. Not followed by six full pages of old comic strips. just a matter of style, not just a matter of Spiegelman introduces the second section in craft. And there's a move eventually prose, explaining why old newspaper comics through Seurat to a certain kind of field served as his solace after 9/11. Even though the abstraction. Whatever value I find in two sections of the book are ostensibly 58

Art Spiegelman Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Apex Novelties, front cover, 1972-1999 59© the author

separated, the latter half spills onto earlier interview Spiegelman remarked: sections in content and style. [5] Spiegelman plays with sequencing and content, juxtaposing If one draws this kind of stuff with different styles of image making in quick people, it comes out wrong. And the succession. This strategy undermines a way it comes out wrong is first of all, categorical coherence for “a” systematic picture I’ve never lived through anything like (world) building. The author’s disorientation after that—knock on whatever is around to the events of 9/11 is effectively portrayed in his knock on—and it would be counterfeit style of presentation. I argue next that try to pretend that the drawings are Spiegelman’s picture (de)building questions our representations of something that’s world building through his use of animal images. actually happening. I don’t know what a German looked like who was in a Spiegelman’s Animal Images specific small town doing a specific thing. My notions are born of a few Spiegelman’s use of animal images in scores of photographs and a couple Maus was not without controversy. Taking his of movies. I’m bound to do something epigraph from Hitler, “the Jews are undoubtedly inauthentic (quoted in Witek 1989, a race, but they are not human,” Spiegelman 102). drew the characters in Maus as anthropomorphized animals. While some drew To Spiegelman, depicting nationalities as animals offence from the depiction of nationalities as keeps representation “authentic.” What is animals because it supports ethnic stereotypes, important to consider is that Spiegelman uses others were able to discern in the cat-and-mouse animal images to represent complex relational relational dynamic an effective metaphor for dynamics, not simply individuals, per se. In Nazi-Jewish relations. Positively, Joseph Witek Poland, Spiegelman met with visceral reactions points out, “there is something almost magical, or to the depiction of Poles as pigs. To Polish editors at least mysterious, about the effect of a and commentators, the depiction of Jews as narrative that uses animals instead of human mice and Nazis as cats was unobjectionable. characters. The animals seem to open a generic However, for them the portrayal of Poles as pigs space into a precivilized innocence in which was extremely problematic. On this issue, human behavior is stripped down to a few Spiegelman retorted, “[l]et’s be honest about this: essential qualities, and irrelevancies drop away” On this particular subject, if there weren’t any (1989, 112). Moving beyond the appropriateness problem, that would be a problem” (interview of animal images and its uses, classifying Maus in with Lawrence Weschler in Witek 2007, 231). On a particular genre was also problematic. To the issue that calling someone a swine is a much categorize Maus in the “talking animal” or “funny greater insult in Poland than in America, as swine animal” genre of comics seems a gross misfit. is what the Nazis called the Poles, Spiegelman While many remain dissatisfied with the term said, “Exactly! And they called us vermin. That’s “talking animal” to describe Maus, they sought to the whole point. You see, I didn’t make up these delve further to fathom how a holocaust comic metaphors, the Nazis did. I was just trying to book depicting nationalities as animals can be explore them, to take them seriously, to unravel so critically compelling (Witek 1989, 109). I and deconstruct them. I must say, I keep waiting suggest that Spiegelman’s animal images for some Pole to take umbrage at the fact that I represent a “counter-image” that plays with any portray Jews as rodents—I mean, I’m not holding rigid classificatory schema. Moreover, it is a my breath or anything, though it would be nice” counter-image not in the sense of being against (quoted in Witek 2007, 232). Spiegelman refers to image but in opening up images to their the Reich as a sort of animal farm. Jews, as malleability and porous borders. Questions of vermin, were pests to be exterminated, whereas genre, appropriateness, and usefulness are Poles, as pigs, were not to be likewise destroyed. playfully subverted in propelling the reader to They were to be put to use and worked for their think in-between and through the frames of the meat. images, and of reality. Spiegelman continues to use animal Spiegelman told an interviewer, “[o]ne images in In The Shadow Of No Towers. The of the things that was important to me in Maus rationale for the use of animal images in In The was to make it all true” (quoted in Witek 1989, Shadow Of No Towers is very different from Maus. 102). It is important to note that the depiction of In In The Shadow Of No Towers it is clearly not the humans as animals makes it “all true.” In an fear of being “inauthentic,” as he clearly 60

witnessed the towers, its destruction, and lived in we gloried in sunshine laws and a the shadow of no towers. On September 11th, freedom of information act. Now we Spiegelman and his wife stepped out of their have a government that says public lower Manhattan home to see the first plane documents cannot be entrusted to smash into the first tower. In a panic, they the people or even the people’s realized that their daughter, Nadja, was in the representatives. Once we could count heart of the pandemonium as her school was on law to protect our liberties. Now located right next to the towers. After they people are arrested and jailed in managed to get Nadja from school, the couple secrecy, without counsel, without saw the second tower collapse. recourse. Even their families do not know what has happened to them. We got Nadja out a few minutes before Once we were free to criticize and the school decide[d] to evacuate and ridicule a president who was merely made our way home on the the servant of the people. Now we are promenade alongside the Hudson. We called to account for undermining the turned to see the North tower tremble. dignity of the office, for not showing The core of the building seemed to respect for The Leader, no matter have burned out, and only the shell what he does. The more young remained--shimmering, suspended in people he sends to die, we are told, the sky--before ever-so-slowly collapsing the more we must show respect for in on itself. Françoise shrieked "No!. . . their killer, lest those dead appear to No!. . . No!. . . " over and over again. have died in vain, which means more Nadja cried out: "My school!" while I will be sent to die. And intellectuals stared slack-jawed at the spectacle, conspired in this destruction of not believing it real until the enormous freedom: the time of irony is over, they toxic cloud of smoke that had replaced said. Henceforth we are sheep. Sheep the building billowed toward us (2004, who will not even bleat (Spiegelman in 3). Sharpe 2005, 1).

Since September 11th, Spiegelman has Spiegelman exhibits explicit partisan political been living in the shadow of no towers. sentiments without clothing them in indirect Spiegelman tries to make it real, to understand guises. It is clear, he states, that democracy in what happened on that September morning. The America is under siege, freedom a farce, and acrid smell from the Holocaust looms large (“I citizens reduced to sheep who obey without remember my father trying to describe what the bleating. His use of animal images in In The smell in Auschwitz smelled like. The closest he got Shadow Of No Towers needs to be understood as was telling me it was ‘indescribable.’ That’s an integral part of his political stance, not only exactly what the air in lower Manhattan smelled communicating his anxiety over the politics of like after September 11th]” (Spiegelman 2004, 3). the present, but also his anger and need to forge Maus lives on in In The Shadow On No Towers in a different kind of political ethos. He uses animal the burning images of the twin towers, incessantly images in In The Shadow of No Towers to guard questioning: Is this a different kind of against a passive animalization of our political crematorium? Who and what burned here? subjectivity. Memory leaks through from one event to Spiegelman’s animal images In The another, imploring us to see the similarities, and Shadow Of No Towers take on a politics very the differences between the two.[6] different from Maus. The animal figures in In The To Spiegelman, “under cover of Shadow Of No Towers are predominantly his own. darkness” (without the presence of the glowing Other humans, even when they are called “Killer towers), our democracy is being stolen away Apes,” are seldom portrayed as animals. This is a from us under the guise of the need for national significant departure from Maus with deep security. implications for the meaning of play in the animal images. In In The Shadow Of No Towers Under cover of this darkness, this state Spiegelman is portrayed with a mouse head. In of panic in which we are encouraged Maus this means “vulnerability, unalloyed to cower, our democracy is being suffering, victimization” (Andreas Huyssen in stolen from us, in the name of Versluys 2006, 984). Here, in In The Shadow Of No protection, of national security. Once Towers, Spiegelman as a mouse showcases the 61

Art Spiegelman Fig. 1, In The Shadow Of No Towers,Pantheon Books: a division of Random House, page 2, 2004 © the author

self’s multiple energies of transformation. In a articulates subjectivity as an assemblage of frame adjacent to the one depicting the author’s forces and constant movement. Spiegelman psychic collapse (Figure 1), the autobiographical shows himself clean-shaven before 9/11. He grew stand-in (as a mouse) is surrounded by Osama a beard while Afghans were shaving off theirs Bin Laden and George Bush. The protagonist as a and finally his face changes into that of a mouse mouse feels himself to be “equally terrorized by (See Figure 1). Spiegelman has to undo himself Al-Qaeda and by his own government.” What to deal with the present. Spiegelman depicts is the self’s total weariness In Figure 1, Spiegelman engages with the and consequent disintegration under the trauma. binary of man and animal by turning into a But this disintegration does not subtract. It re- mouse. Alongside the binary of man/animal, 62

Spiegelman plays with other binaries such as rearticulation of subjectivity as intensive mind/body, and good/evil. The poster on the wall multiplicity. What they emphasize is the need to showcases Spiegelman’s brain as residing think through the present in terms other than a outside his body. And there is no difference distinctively identified “I” vs. “Them,” towards between good and evil with both Bush and intensive interconnectedness. Similarly, in Osama bin Laden assuming threatening Spiegelman’s work, identity loses its relevance in postures. Binary thinking collapses at this moment being able to deal with the present. The present of trauma and all that remains is the weight of demands a “counter-image,” different from the present. The text in Figure 1 reveals that legitimizing, identity nurturing representations. Spiegelman was still trying to figure out what “he Maybe, this is what “becoming animal” looks like actually saw” on that September day. The events when one moves away from stable forms of of 9/11 play around Spiegelman revealing the identification towards contamination of states of continuity between binaries (i.e., good and evil). experience and constant mutative becomings. Meanwhile the “heartbroken narcissist” keeps Spiegelman is not animal, nor is he human. looking at himself in the mirror. None of his Indeed, “[i]ssues of self-representation have left reflections (with a beard or without) satisfy him [him] slack-jawed.” and he changes into a mouse. Spiegelman has Steve Baker, in an article titled “What to undo himself as a human to deal with the Does “becoming animal” look like?” seeks to present and the trauma of the past. Maybe, by explore what to him is the “most perplexing undoing himself, the mirror will stop reflecting the question:” the question of whether or not human bound in the politics of 9/11, and will “becoming animal” amounts to something that enable a reflection that is more satisfying. might be acted upon: a practice rather than However, it is not that Spiegelman mere rhetoric (in Rothfels 2002, 68). Steve Baker portrays himself at all times with a mouse head. A looks to the works of contemporary artists who cartooned human Spiegelman is juxtaposed with use animal imagery to test and illuminate the animal-human Spiegelman throughout the “becoming animal”. After a careful study, Baker text. The human is always in the past, the animal- opines that “[t]he question is not so much what it human in the present; as if dealing with the is as what it does… In “becoming animal”, trauma necessitated Spiegelman “becoming certain things happen to the human: the ‘reality’ animal.” It is useful to use Gilles Deleuze and Felix of this “becoming animal” resides in that which Guattari’s “becoming animal” to understand suddenly sweeps us up and makes us become” Spiegelman’s human to animal-human (2002, 74). Through becoming animal transformation in In The Shadow Of No Towers. Spiegelman discerns the continuity between Deleuze and Guattari’s “becoming animal” good and evil, human and animal. Leonard moves us beyond the paradigm of man/animal, Lawlor frames it very well when he writes of makes us question the borders of such Deleuze and Guattari’s “becoming animal”: “If delineation, and presents the vision of an we want to change our relationship to the world, affirmative reformulation of the present. to others, and to animals, we must understand “Becoming animal” is the blurring of the how it is possible for us to change—how it is boundaries between the human and animal, an possible to enter into the experience of undoing which de-centers man’s definition of becoming” (Lawlor 2008, 171). To Deleuze and himself in opposition and against the animal. It is Guattari, “becoming animal” is a creative thus an un-humaning of man with the potential process which changes us and our relationship to to make politics all the more humane. Deleuze the world. and Guattari write, “[b]ecoming animal does not In a complex set of images (Figure 2), consist [of]…playing [an] animal or imitating an Spiegelman depicts himself as evolving from a animal…[I]t is clear that the human being does lamp-human to a shoe-human and finally to the not ‘really’ become an animal any more than the mouse-human figure. Significantly, the mouse- animal ‘really’ becomes something else. human is the culmination of the process of Becoming produces nothing other than itself” change and represents an intricate working (1987, 238). Building itself up on alliances rather through with the despair and anger. Human than binaries, “becoming animal” provokes identities (neither the lamp nor shoe) do not incessant questioning of the divisions which suffice and what is yanked out is the mouse- define political and social intelligibility and human. It is only this which enables working legitimacy. By interrogating our bordered through the political complexities of the present, articulations (both tangible and intangible, within its incessant frustrations. The first image shows a and without) Deleuze and Guattari provoke a 63

Art Spiegelman Fig. 2, In The Shadow Of No Towers, Pantheon Books: a division of Random House, page 9, 2004 © the author

calm Spiegelman reminiscing about his cat that Significantly, in Figure 2, mouse just died. He rationalizes the adoption of a new Spiegelman hurls the cat away. He had earlier cat because it looks like the old cat. The second justified the adoption of a new cat because his and successive set of images show him working old cat died and the new cat looks like the old through with “displacements,” political cat. After working through the other less benign manipulations less benign then his personal displacements, Spiegelman cannot bear to sit rationale for a new cat (e.g., “remember how we with his new cat. Less and more benign become demolished Iraq instead of Al-Qaeda,” or how unimportant. He sees how dualistic thinking easily “New York’s appropriate anxiety about the toxins escalates, and actions spill into each other to released into our air on 9/11 is displaced by our create very serious repercussions (i.e., “how we !@%^ Mayor passing a law against smoking in demolished Iraq instead of Al-Qaeda”). Also, in a bars!” [Spiegelman 2004, 9]). Understanding text box at the end of the panel, Spiegelman these “displacements” makes Spiegelman writes a disclaimer: “No creatures other than the displaced: his hand becomes his head; his head Artist were abused in the creation of this strip”). moved to his hands; his shoe becomes his head. Spiegelman does not abuse animals by hurling Finally, he becomes animal and ventilates his the cat away. Rather, he uses the hurling of the growing anger. Now we see that the picture of his cat to showcase symbolically how he dead cat framed behind his arm chair comes incorporates the politics of “becoming animal” alive. The dead cat and the new cat become by moving through appearances that keep him one and the same, which mouse Spiegelman reified inside the vicious cycle of displacements. hurls away. “Becoming animal” makes The successive set of images shows Spiegelman see the dead past residing in every that 9/11 is very much Spiegelman’s holocaust. vestige of the present. By undoing himself he is The use of the lamp cover brings to mind able to truly see through the displacements. accusations levied against the Nazis in using 64

Jewish people’s skin for the purpose. The use of Spiegelman, Americans have become the shoe is also a symbolic reminder of animalistic in their political apathy. From Aristotle’s Spiegelman’s father’s occupation during the war: depiction of man as a political animal in the that of a cobbler in the death camps. Collapsing Politics, politics and the political man have long holocaust symbolism with animal imagery adds been conceptualized in association with the multiple dimensions to the images above. animal. To Aristotle, speech enables men to live Descriptions of the death camps reverberate with with justice in the Polis, an attribute exclusive to the language of the slaughter house: “‘[T]hey human beings as political animals.[10] It is an went like sheep to the slaughter. They died like engagement in politics that makes men non- animals. The Nazi butchers killed them’…The animalistic and thus “political animals.” crime of the Third Reich, says the voice of Spiegelman plays with a similar idea when he accusation, was to treat people like animals” imagines American citizens as animals in political (Coetzee 2003, 64). Spiegelman’s successive apathy (i.e., with their head stuck in the ground metamorphosis in the images, his attempts at like ostriches). To become animalistic is very undoing himself, resonates strongly with different from “becoming animal” understood as Coetzee’s emphasis on the “sympathetic a creative reformulation of the present. imagination” where we don’t encapsulate Spiegelman’s “becoming animal” defies gravity ourselves in our bodies as a “pea imprisoned in a of all sorts. “Becoming animal” is a heightened shell” but instead attempt to share the being of awareness of oneself, not going underground, another. To Coetzee, “…there is no extent to the but defying all foundations. “Becoming animal” limit to which we can think ourselves into the seeks to reinscribe “subversion at the heart of being of another. There are no bounds to the subjectivity” (Braidotti 2002, 145). sympathetic imagination” (2003, 80). The The animal images in In The Shadow of “sympathetic imagination” necessitates being No Towers are a means to represent irreverent to oneself, to ones’ boundaries which Spiegelman’s working with the trauma of the inhibit reaching out. event. In a sense, we could contend that It is only when Spiegelman is irreverent, not Spiegelman’s animal images are not about only about others, but about himself, that he is animals at all. Figure 3 was not really about able to grapple with the present. Subjectivity elephants, donkeys, or ostriches. Joseph Witek becomes fluid, multiple and discontinuous, a discerns the curious indifference to the animal process of interrelations. Spiegelman’s nature of the characters as a distinguishing mark transformation above also reminds us of of the talking animal tradition in popular Deleuze’s somatic dimension. This somatic narratives where the characters as animals are dimension is understood in vitalistic terms, freely not attributed with their specific animal adopted from Spinoza’s conatus, namely, living characteristics (1989, 109). About Maus, Steve matter yearning to become and go on Baker further points out that “[t]he metaphor becoming (Gatens 2000). What we see here is cannot hold, and yet that metaphor is at the “body anarchy” and a movement through a heart of the story and of the identities with which protocol bound dictation for material existence. it is concerned. In one sense of course it is Deleuze draws on both Spinoza and Nietzsche to outside the story: the story is about people not defend his enabling view of a subject resistant to animals; the animal ‘masks’ are a mere conceit, social norms and an oppressive State. His subject as the viewers’ privileged glimpse of the string creates havoc with the neatly formatted version holding the second mask in place makes clear” of “man as rational animal.” Similarly (2001,148). In an interview shortly after the Spiegelman’s images, as in Figure 2 above, publication of Maus, Spiegelman described his exemplify undoings and non-fixity. characters’ animal heads as being “mask like.” In In The Shadow Of No Towers, He referred specifically to certain incidents in the Spiegelman also uses animal images to satirize graphic novel where identities were doubly the political situation. The following image is a masked (see next image, Figure 4), and insisted biting critique of binaries, the two party binary in that these showed the character’s animalization this case. In Figure 3, Spiegelman refers to to be a metaphor which inevitably broke down Republican elephants and Democratic donkeys from time to time (quoted in Baker 2001, 146). as self-interested animals who don’t really serve In Figure 4, taken from Maus, the public interest.[9] What is needed is a new Spiegelman’s father approaches a Polish “and revolutionary” Ostrich party where all trainman masking himself as a Pole with a pig Americans would join their fellow citizens in rising mask. Being a pig is reduced to wearing a up to stick their heads in the ground. To mask.[13] 65

Art Spiegelman Fig. 3, In The Shadow Of No Towers, Pantheon Books: a division of Random House, page 5, 2004 © the author

Yes, In The Shadow Of No Towers freedom and understanding of complexities, of continues with the non-animalness of the animal interrogating what lies between the boundaries of images. In fact, in In The Shadow Of No Towers, the human and animal, and striving to become Spiegelman plays with the animal images that he otherwise. inherits from Maus and moves further towards a So, what kind of identity thinking does politics that entails shifting identity thinking, Spiegelman inspire? Would masking serve as a whether that of man or animal. Here, animals useful exercise in democratic politics after 9/11? become more than a metaphor, for they How do we differentiate between wearing animal become testimony to the dance of being, to the masks and “becoming animal”? The use of need for scripting the ontological choreography masks in Maus seeks to showcase the that Donna Haraway heralds elsewhere complexities within identity categories, the (2003).[14] What becomes central is the process possibility of assuming another identity or of undoing, recomposing and shifting the concealing identity. In In The Shadow Of No grounds for the constitution of subjectivities. As Towers, Spiegelman’s animal-humans do not Deleuze and Guattari write, “[b]ecoming animal conceal identity. They emphasize it even more means precisely making the move, tracing the stringently. Spiegelman emphasizes identity to line of escape in all its positivity, crossing a reveal its lack, its inability to deal with the present threshold, reaching a continuum of intensities with any singularity. Only in “becoming” can “it” that only have value for themselves, finding a grapple with the present. Spiegelman’s project is world of pure intensities, where all the forms get not about categorical propositions to be undone” (1975, 145). Through his animal images, affirmed or negated. It is more about generating Spiegelman represents a life lived and connections and proliferating lines of inquiry in understood more intensely, of increasing one’s what Deleuze and Guattari have called a 66

Art Spiegelman Fig. 4, Maus , Pantheon Books: a division of Random House, page 64, 1986 © the author

“rhizomatic” network of thinking: rudimentary process of putting on a mask and “[B]ecoming is certainly not imitating, or taking it off. In contrast, “…becoming animal lets identifying with something; neither is it regressing- nothing remain of the duality of a subject of progressing; neither is it enunciation and a subject of the statement; corresponding…becoming is a verb with a rather, it constitutes a single process, a unique consistency all its own; it does not reduce to, or method that replaces subjectivity” (Deleuze and lead back to, ‘appearing,’ ‘being,’ ‘equaling,’ or Guattari 1975, 36). Maybe, to speak of ‘producing’” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 239). “differences” between masking and ”becoming Yes, “becoming animal” is very different animal” is itself self-defeating because the from simply masking. While masking entails a politics of ”becoming animal” refers to a play with appearance and realty and often panorama rather than a gospel of truth. Perhaps, signals politics with subversive potential, it still ”becoming animal” should be felt in its intensity, remains in the present. It still speaks the language rather than in accounting for differences. It is a of oppression, even in its endeavor to overturn it. rhizome of currents. Masking works within binaries in the very Spiegelman’s use of animal images in 67

Maus is meant to subvert ethnic stereotypes and other by undoing oneself from ontological showcase Nazi-Jewish relations as a cat-mouse closetedness. In “becoming animal,” game. In In The Shadow of No Towers, Spiegelman does not simply become Jew, but Spiegelman challenges identity again with the also Afghan, and other minorities, and thus use of animal figures. 9/11 is his holocaust and images the politics of dissent against majoritarian he continues with its central trope in making politics. The undoing of hegemonic sense of the events of September 11th. There are majoritarianism showcases Spiegelman’s motive no “real” cats in In The Shadow Of No Towers, only for change from the present status quo. Spiegelman himself as a mouse. The cats today Conclusion are less explicit. The cat-mouse game here More than three thousand people were becomes puzzlingly insidious, in a way, when the killed on September 11, 2001. America declared cats are our government (similar in a manner to war against “terror” which was largely amorphous, the German Jews), and ourselves, Spiegelman nebulous, and “evil.” An aggressive foreign policy himself before he becomes mouse and seeks to was used as a benchmark to install the new undo his complicity with the present status-quo. attitude of governance—pro-active, Thus, in In The Shadow Of No Towers, Spiegelman interventionist, preemptive. Amidst the creation of “becomes animal.” In “becoming animal” the Homeland Security Department and passage Spiegelman ceases to hunt “others.” He undoes of the Patriot Act, many lamented the fall of himself as a human (cat?) to fully realize his own American democracy (Wolin 2008; Butler 2004; potential in understanding and dealing with the Baudrillard 2002). Terror mirrored terror. The war present. The animal images are a counter- against terrorism was of global reach, the enemy image. They showcase the inadequacy of or “evil” seen and unseen. As Wolin succinctly normal representation. Being human, contained, notes, “[t]errorism, power without boundaries, does not allow him to see contained existence. becomes the template for superpower; the Through “becoming animal,” Spiegelman messes measureless, the illegitimate, becomes the with form, allows himself to be irreverent towards measure of its counterpart” (2008, 73).[17] In boundaries. He counters animal politics by other words, the Superpower models itself on the “becoming animal.” “Becoming animal,” in this terrorism it seeks to combat, and vice versa. Two case, is understood not as a mirror of animality, forms of power, terrorism and super-power, but as a movement beyond mirroring, a remain locked in indefinite mimicry. Where is the transgression of the present. space for democratic functioning or democratic In Figure 5, we see Spiegelman re-imagining within this vicious cycle of incessant smoking profusely and deliberating on the mirroring? political climate after 9/11. In In The Shadow Of Art Spiegelman’s work exhibits a critical No Towers, does Spiegelman “become Jew” as reaction to the re-iteration of the circle of he ponders about the dismal state of affairs after violence. He is traumatized by Bush and Bin 9/11? Does Maus creep into his work on 9/11 in Laden, by “good” and “evil.” Tugging at the significant ways? oppressively constructed parameters of binary Maus reverberates in In The Shadow Of No thinking, Spiegelman images the “human” Towers through the image of the mouse-human. caught within this circle of violence through his Spiegelman’s image of himself as mouse-human animal figures. Spiegelman’s mouse-human in In takes on complex meaning and plays in The Shadow Of No Towers exhibits the active continuity with Maus and in reference to the tension of the politics of 9/11. In “becoming specificities of 9/11. Deleuze and Guattari’s animal,” Spiegelman provides not simply a “becoming animal” is becoming minority.[16] It is deconstruction of the status quo, but also an undergoing minor existence understood as active project of reformulation. His animal- “abominable sufferings.” Abominable suffering human will not join the Ostrich party members defines a minority for Deleuze and Guattari, and with their head buried in the ground, nor will it “the affect of shame at being a man, at being remain polarized as a Republican elephant or human all too human, with our oppressions, our Democratic donkey. Instead, Spiegelman’s clichés, our opinion, and our desires, is really the animal-human exhibits the self’s active ability to motive for change” (Lawlor 2008, 174). Thus, respond to trauma by undoing its complicity with “becoming animal” in becoming minority violence. In Maus, Spiegelman’s portrayal of undergoes sufferings without mimetic recognition humans as animals showcased the relational or representation. In “becoming animal,” one status of the Jews, Poles, Americans, Nazi’s, etc. does not represent the animal. Rather, one In In The Shadow of No Towers, Spiegelman’s undergoes the being of an- portrayal of himself as an animal provokes the 68

Art Spiegelman Fig. 5, In The Shadow Of No Towers, Pantheon Books: a division of Random House, page 3, 2004 © the author

image of the predicament of American citizens Spiegelman chooses to revert back to his original as vermin after 9/11. Also, it illuminates the imaging of the plight of certain identities in enormous resources in the hands of a citizen to relation to oppressive power structures. Moving undo his/her compliance with the circle of beyond a description of the violence and instead work within self and society subjectifying/animalizing conditions of increasing to re-think political possibilities. government power in our lives after 9/11, In “becoming animal,” Spiegelman Spiegelman uses animal imagery to speak to seeks to transgress the limitations of the 9/11. How can one maintain a critical present.[18] He chooses to question and undo his perspective on the present conditions and bordered cartographical terrain as a “human.” provide a vision otherwise? Spiegelman’s animal- He doesn’t simply re-inscribe his states of injury. human figure, which is neither human nor This kind of politics best answers Wendy Brown’s animal, mocks a cohesive identity’s limitations to concern when she writes, “given the subjectivizing capture the complexity in the politics of 9/11. conditions of identity production in a late modern American politics after 9/11 marked the world capitalist, liberal, and bureaucratic disciplinary into “good” and “evil.” Spiegelman responds social order, how can reiteration of these through his animal-human images to transgress production conditions be averted in identity’s subjectivizing identity categories, an insidious part purportedly emancipatory project?” (1995, 55). of the politics of 9/11. Thus he earnestly Brown implores us to move beyond a disciplinary, questions, through his animal-human images, subjectivizing identity politics that keeps us what it means to be a political animal. trained into separate groups. Instead, she asks us how subjectivizing conditions can be subverted As mentioned earlier in this essay, when we work with identity as an emancipatory Aristotle’s postulation of man as a political animal project, which was identity’s ostensible purpose. set the tone for centuries of political theorization Spiegelman’s animal images in Maus brought on the nature of man as an animal with before us the deathly play with identity, the language. Armed with language, man is a holocaust and the cold-blooded animal-like political animal destined to live in the Polis. slaughter of people. Regarding 9/11, Moreover, as Aristotle stipulated, although, in 69

point of time, the individual is prior to the Polis, in needs to be properly tamed in order to retain his point of order and importance, the Polis is prior to ontological status as man. Thus Barber the individual. Man is a political animal and thus characterizes liberal democracy as the “politics the Polis represents the whole of which the of zookeeping” where civil society is an individual is just a part, and the whole is alternative to the “jungle” in the state of nature necessarily prior to the part. Being a political (1984, 20). This “zookeeping” has obvious animal provokes images of man’s participation in restrictive and definitive implications in fashioning the life of the Polis. The difference between man man and his State. and animal is one of the central images of Spiegelman’s animal-human images political theorization throughout the historical resist the domestication of man under the aegis formulation of its key conception of the social of the dominant political power (i.e., the State). and political man.[19] Living in the State, being Spiegelman, as mouse-human, is reflective and good (i.e., obeying) citizens is linked to the is able to gauge and protest against the fundamental difference between man and “weapons of mass displacement” in the hands of animal; as if maintaining the State requires the State (Figure 2). This mouse-human is resistant keeping to the distinction between man and to the “politics of zookeeping” and the straight- animal. We do see the re-iteration of the jacketing into Republican elephants or Aristotelian conception of the political animal Democratic donkeys (Figure 3). Speaking with resonating through centuries of “progressive” harsh irony, Spiegelman sees no difference thought. This continuity differentiates between between the leader of his own country and the man and animal through the use of language; “terrorists” (Figure 1). Spiegelman’s incessant recognizes man’s animal traits for which he critique resists a disciplined and domesticated needs the State to keep him in bounds (and thus political stance and emphasizes vitalic political political); and places the animal outside the involvement. In “becoming animal,” Spiegelman sphere of the State. Eloquently and aptly, subverts the “politics of zookeeping” and the Benjamin Barber refers to liberal democracy as delimited categorization of man as a political the “politics of zoo-keeping.” animal, a classification that ties man to compliant subject-hood under the State. The uninspired and uninspiring but Spiegelman’s animal-human figures are explicitly “realistic” image of man as a creature political and image the anguish of an American of need, living alone by nature but citizen to keep alive his political agency through fated to live in the company of his a traumatic period for American democracy. The fellows by enlightened self-interest present necessitates a counter-image where combines with the cynical image of “man is not a political animal.” government as a provisional instrument of power servicing these creatures to suggest a general view of Notes politics as zookeeping. Liberal democratic imagery seems to have been fashioned in a menagerie. It [1] Nira Yuval Davis (2001) notes that war is a time for absolute teems with beasts and critters of every thinking (i.e., good and evil, us and them). The pressure to description: sovereign lions, princely conform to binary oppositions increases during war time. Davis lions and foxes, bleating sheep and emphasizes that since 9/11 a “clash of civilization” narrative of the relationship between the Wwest and iIslam has occupied centre poor reptiles, ruthless pigs and ruling stage constructing the world as unbridgeable blocks. She notes whales, sly polecats, clever coyotes, that 2001 was designated by the UN as the year of “Dialogue ornery wolves(often in sheep’s among Civilizations.” This was initiated by President Khatami of clothing), and, finally, in Alexander Iran who wanted the UN to promote a counter-ideology to Huntington’s thesis. Davis notes that the notion of the dialogue Hamilton’s formidable image, all promoted by the UN and Iran does not challenge the reified mankind itself was but one great Beast notion of “civilization” as a bounded and homogenous entity. (Barber 1984, 20). Instead, she suggests, we need a dialogic political culture which respects differences among people and enables us to “establish the shared elements of emancipation within every living, human value To Barber, in liberalism, man is system” (2001, 3). Thus, to Davis, we need a “dialogical characterized as the selfish, egoistic animal that civilization” (2001, 3). needs the State to survive. The State keeps men in bounds so that they cease “becoming animal” [2] Robert Harvey writes on Spiegelman: “Art Spiegelman is a thinking cartoonist. His creations were invariably intellectualized, and maintain their political integrity. Not being carefully designed to exploit the resources of the medium (1994, animal, lets man remain man. However, he 237). 70

[3] In an interview with Gene Kannenberg, Spiegelman says mother’s father’s house, and he offers them shelter in his stable, at “Although my father was never interested in me becoming a great personal risk. Both have pig faces, and yet one behaves with cartoonist, and I can’t say that I learned much at his knee that was great generosity, while the other, if one wants to be generous useful for becoming a cartoonist, but one thing that was useful is, about it, behaves out of sheer self interest. And that’s what things because of his own paranoia, he taught me how to pack. It was were really like” (Iquoted in Witek 2007, 233). very important at a young age to see how much you could fit into the small volume of a suitcase. I always thought of it as a useful [14] In The Companion Species Manifesto (2003), Donna Haraway kind of early training” (in Witek 2007, 245). draws our attention towards understanding “significant otherness” or how we are co-constituted along with our companion species. [4] See Versluys (2006) for an excellent discussion on Spiegelman’s To her the scripting of the dance of being is more than a mimetic representation of trauma. metaphor; “bodies, human and non-human, are taken apart and put together in processes that make self-certainty and either [5] Spiegelman appears as the father in George Mcmanus’s Bringing humanist or organicist ideology bad guides to ethics and politics, Up Father, fighting with his wife who cannot sleep because much less to personal experience” (2003, 8). Spiegelman watches CNN all night and who wakes Spiegelman up with the blaring radio in the morning (and the fact that her face [15] Source: Spiegelman 2004, 3. suddenly changes into Osama bin Laden) (Spiegelman 2004, 8). [16] Deleuze and Guattari tell us that there is no becoming-man [6] David Hajdu wrote in the New York Times Book Review: as man is majoritarian. Thus there is becoming “Spiegelman clearly sees Sept. 11 as his Holocaust (or the nearest woman/animal/insect. As Rosi Braidotti eloquently points out,: thing his generation will have to personal experience with anything “The nomadic subject as a non-unitary entity is simultaneously remotely correlative), and in In The Shadow Of No Towers [he] hetero-defined, or outward-bound. All becomings are makes explicit parallels between the events without diminishing minoritarian, that is to say they inevitably and necessarily move the incomparable evil of the death camps” (quoted in Versluys into the direction of the ‘others’ of classical dualism—displacing 2006, 980). Also, Anne Norton in Leo Strauss and the Politics of them and re-territorializing them in the process, but always and American Empire (2004) sees in contemporary politics only on a temporal basis” (2002, 119). reverberations from the Holocaust and the treatment of Jews. [17] The term “superpower” first gained parlance in the 1950s in [7] Source: Spiegelman 2004, 2. relation to the US and USSR where they were designated as the two super-powers of the world. In the contemporary world, the [8] Source: Spiegelman 2004, 9. term denotes a power which can project dominating power anywhere in the world. [9] Interestingly, cartoonist Thomas Nast’s use of the Democratic Donkey and the Republican Elephant made these animals the [18] With Derrida, I do recognize that “transgression implies that symbols of partisan politics. the limit is always at work” (quoted in Chambers 2005, 622). In other words, even when we work “beyond”, we remain circumscribed by the original parameters. [10] In the Politics Aristotle writes, “It is also clear why a human being is more of a political animal than a bee or any other gregarious animal. Nature makes nothing pointlessly, as we say, [19] For instance Machiavelli writing during the Italian renaissance and no animal has speech [logos:   ] except a human being. A advises the ruler to be as powerful as possible. He must be both a voice [phonos:  ] is a signifier of what is pleasant or painful, lion and a fox—a lion flashing in physical strength and a fox with which is why it is also possessed by the other animals (for their excellence in cunning. Machiavelli further asserts that there are nature goes this far: they not only perceive what is pleasant or two ways to fight: one with a respect for rules and the other with painful but signify it to each other). But speech is for making clear no holds barred. “Men alone fight in the first fashion, and animals what is beneficial or harmful, and hence also what is just or unjust. fight in the second” (1994, 54). Machiavelli emphasizes that in For it is peculiar to human beings, in comparison to the other order to win, one must be prepared to break rules and be more animals, that they alone have perception of what is good or bad, of an animal. just or unjust, and the rest. And it is community in these that In Hobbes’ political thought, often viewed in the context of the makes a household and a city-state” (1998, 4). Here Aristotle legacy left by Machiavelli, we view how civil society is an emphasizes that speech belonging to man as a political animal alternative to the war of all against all that characterizes the state enables a political life which finds its fruition in the Polis. of nature. In tune with a Machiavellian temperament, Hobbes Moreover, speech peculiar to the political animal is to be depicts men as cruel, fighting, aggressive creatures who need the distinguished from mere voice which is shared by all animals. state for their own protection. Again, continuing in the emphasis traceable from Aristotle, the question of the man, animal, and State are integrally connected. Referring directly to Aristotle’s [11] Source: Spiegelman 2004, 5. account of man and animal, Hobbes tells us, in his Leviathan, that man and animal are different because men are continually in [12] Source: Image from Maus in Baker 1993, 147. competition for honor and dignity, which animals are not, and therefore war and the need for a common power. Hobbes writes, [13] Spiegelman’s use of masks also refers to the limitations of “…the agreement of these creatures is natural; that of men is by using singular animal associations as a generalizable trait. As covenant only, which is artificial; and therefore, it is no wonder if Spiegelman said in an interview with Lawrence Weschler, “In there be somewhat else required (besides covenant) to make their terms of the narrative itself, in terms of what actually happened to agreement constant and lasting, which is a common power to my mother and father, it’s all very complicated: There were pigs keep them in awe, and to direct their actions to the common who behaved well and pigs who behaved shabbily, just as there benefit” (Hobbes 1994, 109). Thus to Hobbes, animals do not were mice who did likewise…My mother and father are need the State, while men, because they are different from animals desperately roaming the streets of Sosnowiec, seeking shelter, need the State for their common benefit. Further, Hobbes wearing pig masks, and first they knock on the door of the pig- emphasizes that while animals can communicate; only humans have woman who used to work for them as my brother’s nanny, and speech. In De Homine, Hobbes writes, “…that we can command she slams the door in their face; then they make their way to the and understand commands is a benefit of speech and truly the home of the pig-man who used to work as the janitor in my 71

greatest. For without this there would be no society among men, Lawlor, Leonard. 2008. Following the Rats: Becoming-Animal in Deleuze and no peace, and consequently no disciplines; but first savagery, then Guattari, SubStance #117, Vol. 37, No. 3,pp.169-187. solitude, and for dwellings, caves. For though among certain Leventhal, Robert S. 1995. Art Spiegelman's MAUS: Working-Through the Trauma of the animals there are seeming politics, these are not of sufficiently Holocaust at http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/holocaust/spiegelman.html. great moment for living well” (Clarke and Linzey 1990, 19). The Machiavelli. 1994. Selected Political Writings: The Prince, The Discourses, Letter to Vettori. emphasis on language has a fundamental political significance. Here Trans. David Wooton, Hackett, Cambridge. we return to a re-iteration of the Aristotelian dictum that only humans with language are political animals. Among other animals Norton, Anne. 2004. Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. New Haven: Yale there may simply be the appearance of politics, not conducive to University Press.

“living well.” Rauch, Leo.1981. The Political Animal: Studies in Political Philosophy from Machiavelli to Marx, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Rothfels, Nigel, ed.2002. Representing Animals. Bloomington: Indiana UP.

References Sharpe, Patricia Lee. 2005. “The shadow since 9/11”: http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2005/09/the_shadow_si nc_1.html

Aristotle. 1993. De Anima, Translated by D.W. Hamlyn, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Siegal, Nina. 2005. Interview with Art Spiegelman. Progressive. January. New York: Oxford University Press. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_1_69/ai_n9525304

———. 1998. Politics, Translated by Reeve, Cambridge, Hackett. Spiegelman, Art. 2003. Maus: A Survivor's Tale. London: Penguin.

Baker, Steve. 1993. Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation. Manchester: ———. 2004. In The Shadow Of No Towers. New York: Pantheon Books. New York: Manchester University Press.

———. 2006. Only Pictures? Interview by Sam Graham-Felsen in The _____. 2000. The Postmodern Animal. London: Reaktion.

Nation. February 20th. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060306/interview. ———. 2001. Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation. Urbana: U of

Illinois Press. ———. 2006. “Drawing Blood: Outrageous Cartoons and the Art of Outrage,”

Harper’s Magazine, June, p 43-52. Barber, Benjamin R. 1984. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age.

Berkeley: University of California Press. Versluys, Kristiaan.2006.”Art Spiegelman's In The Shadow of No Towers: 9-11 and

the Representation of Trauma.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume Baudrillard, Jean. 2002. The Spirit of Terrorism and Requiem for the Twin Towers. London: 52, Number 4, Winter 2006, pp. 980-1003. Verso.

Witek, Joseph. 1989. Comic books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Blume, Harvey, 1995. "Art Spiegelman: Lips," Boston Book Review: Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. http://www.bookwire.com/bbr/interviews/art-spiegelman.html

———. 2004. “Imagetext, or, Why Art Spiegelman Doesn't Draw Comics,” in Braidotti, Rosi. 2002. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. ImageText, Vol.1, No. 1. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Published by Polity Press in association http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v1_1/witek/. with Blackwell Publishers.

———. Ed.2007. Art Spiegelman: Conversations. Jackson: University Press of Brown, Wendy. 1995. States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton, Mississippi. N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Wolfe, Cary. 2003. Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Posthumanist Theory. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press. Verso.

Wolin, Sheldon S.2008. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Chambers, Samuel. 2005. “Working on the Democratic Imagination and the Limits of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Deliberative Democracy” in Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 58, No.

4, 619-623. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 2001. “The Binary War,” Open Democracy,

http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict Clark, Stephen R. 1999. The Political Animal: Biology, Ethics, and Politics, London; New war_on_terror/article_89.jsp. York: Routledge.

Clarke, A.B. Paul and Andrew Linzey. Ed. 1990. Political Theory and Animal Rights, London; Winchester, Mass.: Pluto Press.

Coetzee, J. M., 2003. Elizabeth Costello. New York: Viking.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1975. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

———. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Gatens, Moira. 2000. “Feminism as ‘Password’: Rethinking the ‘Possible’ with Spinoza and Deleuze” in Hypatia, Vol. 15, No. 2, 59-75.

Geis, Deborah R., ed. 2003. Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's tale" of the Holocaust. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press.

Gussow, Mel. 2003. “Dark Nights, Sharp Pens; Art Spiegelman Addresses

Children and His Own Fears,” The New York Times, July 31st.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2003.The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago, Ill.: Prickly After completing a dual-degree Ph.D. from the Departments of Paradigm; Bristol: University Presses Marketing. Political Science and Women’s Studies at the Pennsylvania State University (May, 2009), Sushmita Chatterjee is currently teaching ———. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. at Augustana College, Illinois. She is currently working on a book

manuscript that studies post-9/11 identity politics through an Harvey, Robert C. 1994. The Art of the Funnies: an Aesthetic History. Jackson: University examination of Art Spiegelman’s visual politics. Sushmita enjoys Press of Mississippi. teaching, learning, and writing about democratic theory, visual politics, feminist theory, and postcolonial politics. Hobbes, Thomas. 1994. Leviathan. Trans. Edwin Curley, Hackett, Cambridge. 72

A NIMAL STORIES,

N ATURAL HISTORIES

& CREATURELY

W ONDERS IN

N ARRATIVE

M INI-ZINES

The Small Science Collective, a collaboration of scientists, artists, students, and anyone else interested in science, is responsible for the production of the “infectious” zines that employ the language of comics for the purpose of spreading scientific knowledge. Text by Andy Yang

pamphlet with a title “There go the Dinosaurs,” you could learn that dinosaurs went extinct due reation Myth to suffocation when all the oxygen-providing C plants died in Noah’s flood.2 Another, “Moving on Up!” provided a remarkable mish-mash of false “Is Their Another Christ?” information and ideology regarding evolutionary “Are Roman Catholics Christians?” biology: “Then science tells us of the greatest “Who is He?” event of all time – we lost our tails! And began our long journey into humanism.” 3 These are the questions that the titles of small As someone studying for a doctoral two-color comic books would pose whenever I degree in zoology, I found myself equal parts took short breaks in the lounge of the laboratory indignant and impressed by how these comics, building where I was undertaking my graduate as mis-informative as they were, could be so studies. compelling to read. Although I had been Given that I was living in North Carolina, intermittently dialoguing with/confronting an and well within what is known as the American outspoken set of Creationist students that were “Bible Belt,” finding religious propaganda on a holding lectures and who infiltrated evolutionary coffee table in a relatively public space wasn’t a biology courses on campus that semester, the big surprise. Indeed, these particular booklets, Chick tracts seemed far more potent and “Chick Tracts,” were some of the more ubiquitous persuasive in their small, quiet, and unassuming pamphlets one would come across. Pocket- way. It was humbling that the evangelical sized, inexpensive, and handy, these comics are housekeeping staff (who I suspected was eponymous of their originator, Jack Chick, an responsible for the scattering of the religious evangelical Christian who had the insight (he comics) was doing a better job of advocating for claims revelation) that graphic narratives could their view of the organic world than the be a powerful medium to spread the message professional biologists -- or for that matter, the of the Gospel.1 student Creationists -- on our own collegial turf. Though I was typically unfazed by these The prelevance and thus success of the pamphlets, I began to take exception when the Chick Tracts made a certain amount sense given ones being left in the lounge surreptitiously took the structure of university education where the on a decidedly anti-evolutionary bent. From one expectation is that you enroll in a course to learn 73

Small Science Collective The Carrier Pigeon by Mario Martinez, 2009 © the author

something about organisms or evolution. Outside but because of real snakes that scared me with the confines the campus’ four credit-hours their slither; because of the stories I heard about lecture and laboratory, however, there was a large pythons in the forest and way they discernable silence on the matter of nature and occupied my imagination visually and its many wonders. At best, a few taxidermied narratively. It had less to do with the classes I animals and pressed plants managed to wanly took -- which came after the facts of personal decorate the corners of academic halls, but experience -- and more to do with the beyond the walls of the biology classrooms, nary excitement I gained from imagining the lives of a peep nor petal about biodiversity could be creatures in the stories and pictures that found. As for educating our own community populated the books and magazines I about the natural world, I realized that happened across. academics like myself were doing a shabby job The ubiquity of the Chick Tracts made indeed. some of us start to wonder why their shouldn’t be Even for students enrolled within biology small, free science comics in public spaces that classes, experience with creatures can be largely could present a counterpoint to the religious restricted to a clinical treatment of well-prepared propaganda arguing that dinosaurs were on specimens that often do little to stimulate interest Noah’s Ark or that humans and monkeys aren’t or curiosity. I, for one, became interested in related. This gave birth to the Small Science zoology not because of pickled jars of snakes, Collective (SSC) zine project.4 74

Small Science Collective Dive Deep by Laura Hughes, 2009, © the author

75

Animal Stories as Natural Histories Encyclopedia of Life for example, endeavor to make “species pages” for every known organism “Zines” are booklets or pamphlets that are as a standard, universal internet reference to life’s conceived, created, and published outside of diversity.7 While such approaches are invaluable the commercial sphere, typically with a close for databasing basic information about attention to visual structure and content. Given organisms, the graphic narratives of comics and this, graphic narratives are often naturally the zines offer an important and distinct means to preferred format for most of the SSC’s zines. These visualize biodiversity that is grounded in a tradition work equally well as eight-page palm-sized which pre-dates our modern taxonomic booklets in paper, as accounts – the writing of “natural histories.” downloadable/printable/foldable PDFs, and also Before what we now call the Scientific as comics on the web. Revolution, natural history was a term that While the SSC covers a wide spectrum of described the general inquiry into the things that topics – from particle physics to pachyderms -- existed in nature.8 However, this was not limited many of the zines are what could be called to a standardized scheme of traits and attributes “animal stories.” These narratives have animals considered objectively verifiable. It also included as their subjects, and occasionally as their the various relations and configurations through narrators as well. They explore how the animals which things manifested themselves in the look, what they eat, where they are found, and broadest cultural sense. As Michel Foucault generally how they make a living in the world. describes in The Order of Things: However, these animal stories avoid a children’s book sensibility in significant ways. Animals are to write the history of a plant or not anthropomorphized so much as they are animal was as much a matter of personified as a means to highlight their unique describing its elements or organs as traits, qualities, and behaviors. Some of the zines of describing the resemblances that will invite readers to think of animals as friends or could be found in it, the virtues that it consider the animals’ situation in an analogous was thought to possess, the legends manner to our own human situation. However, and stories with which it has been the purpose in this is to create a conceptual involved, its substance, the foods it bridge for conceiving the complexities of what provided, what the ancients animals are, in contrast to what we typically or recorded of it, and what travelers simply presume them to be. In this way, we can might have said of it. The history of a distinguish narratives that explore animals and living being was that being itself, their unique and remarkable ways of being in the within the whole semantic network world from those stories that simply use animals that connected it to the world as characters in what fundamentally are human (p.140). 9 stories, dramas, and psychologies. Examples of this latter kind are familiar in Snoopy, Mickey The historia of “natural history” signifies “learning or Mouse, Garfield, Donald Duck and countless knowing by inquiry,” in its Greek root. The narrare other cases of animal bodies speaking in human of “graphic narrative” means to "tell, relate, tongues. Examples of animals as creatures in recount, explain," in Latin. Therefore these terms their own right, however, are much fewer and share a commonality of purpose. We see that farther between. One notable example is the creaturely comics and zoological zines can be Sunday version of the American newspaper understood as a contemporary form of the comic Mark Trail 5 which, after 60 years, still natural histories that were once woven from the highlights one species of animal and its ecology cultural threads of observations and imagination. in relation to the (increasingly human) What can such narratives accomplish environment. Another notable example of the compared with the objectivity and authenticity of animal-focused narrative is Isabella Rossellini’s detailed scientific illustration and its power to series Green Porno, which does something similar reveal? How do the practices relate? I posed in the form of narrative video short that is these questions to Alex Chitty -- a biology unmistakably zoöcentric in its sensibility. 6 educator, illustrator, and author of the comic Ever since Linnaeus, our modern scientific featured here, the Indomitable Water Bear: presentation of animals has been dominated by lists that enumerate atomized physical traits and I was drawn to scientific illustration evolutionary placement in the manner of because it helped me see. After bulleted points. Large scale projects like the looking closely at a specimen in order 76

Small Science Collective How to be a Proper Host…to a Botfly by J. R. Goldberg, 2007 © the author

77

Small Science Collective Snake Legs and Wisdom Teeth by Andrew Yang and Christa Donner, 2008 © the authors

to draw it, I understood it better. I also By this account, the graphic narrative form is liked being able to use ‘suspension-of- consistent with the sensibilities of scientific disbelief’ strategies because I could illustration in helping us visualize organisms in draw what the human eye couldn't ways not otherwise possible, while at the same actually see. For example I could time extending beyond the usual goals of draw both the interior and exterior of a illustration in terms of what is to be discovered. specimen at the same time, or I could Rather than simply visually specifying the details take a tiny detail from an initial of anatomy, the idea is to communicate the drawing and draw just that tiny part of possibility of what the organism’s behaviors, it as if we were seeing it under a actions, and (perhaps even in some sense) microscope. Drawing for a graphic personality are in terms of how it relates to other narrative takes these suspension-of- species. “If we just need to know what to call an disbelief strategies even farther - I am organism, then we never really give ourselves the conscious of the facts, but not chance to learn or develop an understanding of restricted by them. I can create a it,” says Chitty, “It would be a pity if by describing character that - though generally still these organisms in order to share knowledge with true to form - can stray from the truth others, we are actually defining them too and encourage opportunities for concretely and leaving viewers with the feeling viewers to establish a personal that no further investigation is required.” connection. 78

79

Small Science Collective Ear Wig by Lyra Hill, 2008 © the author

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If scientific illustration and its didactic (6) Website of the comic strip Mark Trail http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/mtrail/about.htm intent risks narrowing the sense of further discovery through its exactness and specificity to (7) The Encyclopedia of Life Project: http://www.eol.org/ form, the proposition is that narrative opens up (8) Shapin, Stephen. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago the possibilities for the viewer and reader to Press, 1998. p.232. engage in a whole other way. To the extent that (9) Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human it is true for the audience of the graphic narrative, Sciences. New York: Routledge, 2002. p.448. clearly this also seems to be the case for the authors as well. In talking with Chen Dou about her comic Meeting a Giant Octopus she commented, “I've always felt as if drawing animals brings me closer to the creatures that share residence on planet…it allows me to place myself in a different world where there is more interaction and understanding between human beings and other species.” It is in this way that the graphic narratives featured here draw a clear line between illustrating the possibilities for understanding animals and our relationships to them more fully on the one hand, and simply caricaturing them anthropomorphically on the other. Arguably, allowing for a more expansive understanding of animals is a unifying quality of the zines and comics that the Small Science Collective seeks to distribute. Given how ubiquitous the tendency is to either fetishize animals as wild and Other or superficially employ their forms for the purpose of decoration or costume, there is a real possibility to create narratives that function as natural histories of a post-Darwinian kind. This allows us to recognize and examine the fundamental (and fundamentally important) continuum that exists between humans, animals, and the totality of nature.

References & Notes

(1) The complete list of Chick cartoon gospel tracts: http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractlist.asp

(2) “Moving on Up?” full version available at: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1038/1038_01.asp

(3) “There Go the Dinosaurs?” full version available at: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1041/1041_01.asp Andrew Yang is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art An example of another anti-evolution Chick tract “Apes, Lies and Ms. Institute of Chicago where he teaches classes in biology, as well as Henn” available at: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1051/1051_01.asp the visual culture of science. He received his PhD in Biology from Duke University where he studied the evolutionary ecology of social (4) The Small Science Collective online: insects and the philosophy of science. The Small Science Collective http://smallsciencezines.blogspot.com/ project continues to grow among artists, scientists, students and anyone compelled to share their interest in various creatures and (5) The Green Porno video project of Isabella Rosselini: features of the natural world. Please feel free to contact us at http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/ [email protected].

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ANIM AL-CENTRIC

GRA PHIC NOVELS:

AN ANNOTATED

BIBL IOGRAPHY

Since, like comic-strips, graphic novels so frequently include animals, simply listing those graphic novels in which animals appear would be of little or no value or use. Innumerable lists of graphic novels already exist, including some that do list animal characters. But none focus on graphic novels that might best be called animal-centric, graphic novels focused on the lives of realistically-drawn and motivated nonhuman animal protagonists and./or have major themes that rise from the lives and challenges faced by these nonhumans in the actual worlds/habitats (domestic or wild) in which these animals live. Although those worlds are often controlled by and for the welfare of human animals, the intent of the graphic artist and writer in such novels is to provide insight into the lives and concerns of individuals who are other-than-human animals and present themes that provoke empathy and concern in human audiences for other-than-human beings, their well-being, rights, and survival.

Text by Marion Copeland

nimals leap from the walls of Lascaux, drew stories in the form of satiric pictures with from the inner walls of pyramids in Egypt captions underneath,” and feel certain that “a and Mexico, from the megaliths of Druid case” could also be made for seeing “Hogarth’s A and Mayan observatories, from the walls ‘Harlot’s Progress,’ and its sequel, ‘A Rake’s of museums and galleries, from the screens of Progress,’” as “graphic novels of a sort—stories movies, television, You-Tube, and from our DNA. narrated in sequential panels” (McGrath print Inherent in all human art, nonhuman animals format 1). British graphic novelist “Bryan Talbot’s seem to have claimed comics as their natural Alice in Sunderland explores, in part, the history of habitat since the form began, but have come the graphic novel in Britain, wending from into their own only recently in the animal-centric Bayeau Tapestry to Hogarth’s cartoons and Sir graphic novel, an evolutionary leap from the so- John Tenniel’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland called “funny animal” genre of comics. illustrations” (Mulholland 3). Certainly Jean th Perhaps this leap has occurred because Grandville’s early 19 century etchings showing the graphic novel relies less on the word than unique human-animal combinations have does the traditional novel even when it is influenced the tradition as have the profusely illustrated, and relies more on text than does the illustrated “little books” of Beatrix Potter. traditional “comic” even when it contains words, Scholars do agree that “graphic novels and, like Animal Studies itself, draws upon many and comic books have become an integrated st disciplines and perspectives in its creation. American cultural literary form of the 21 century” Most historians of the graphic novel (Brittany).[i] “The graphic novel is a story told assume comics and the graphic novel principally through pictures…like a comic book, “[o]riginat[e] with the illuminated text of the [13th but typically treats a more serious issue in a larger and] 14th century” (Bettley). Others stretch the format. For example, Art Spiegelman’s Maus,” genesis back further and into non-Western was created for an adult audience (Armstrong). climes: Charles McGrath claims that “[t]he notion Randy Malamud points out in Reading Zoos that of telling stories with pictures goes back to the when “Steve Baker examines the phenomenon of caveman. Comic book scholars make much of talking animals,” it is mainly in respect to comics, Rudolph Topfler, a 19th century Swiss artist who and that he builds on an “insight of [Ursula K.] Le 82

Art Spiegelman Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Apex Novelties, 1972-1999 © the author

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Guinn’s that something in the strategy of the the academic curriculum at various levels and in talking-animal story [which includes the “funny various departments; from communication animals” genre of comics] makes it inherently studies, to literature and literary criticism, to fine subversive of patriarchal culture (Malamud 137)” arts and, because they are so issue-oriented, to The graphic novel is, by nature, a history, social science, and psychology, as well. boundary-bending genre, and is now frequently In time, their reach will extend to the behavioral accepted as “the equivalent of ‘literary novels’ in and biological sciences (consider, for instance the mainstream publishing world” (McGrath 1).[ii] Hosler’s Clan Apis (2000) or The Sandwalk Although the current graphic novel remains, like Adventure (2003) and Keller’s Charles Darwin comics, decidedly masculine and violent, (2009) and, of course, to animal studies and featuring predominantly Caucasian superheroes, human-animal studies. and written and drawn largely by male Other signs of acceptance are the Caucasians, animal-centric graphic novels tend appearance of graphic novels, which once to be less stereotypical and are, on the whole, could be purchased only in comic book more issue oriented. George Herriman (1880- specialty stores, in book stores and public 1944), the writer and illustrator of the early libraries, and their being “increasingly reviewed as animal-centric Krazy Kat (1913), was African- just another aspect of contemporary writing in American, a fact reflected in the speech, The New York Times and other sources” (Snowball culture, and conflicts of his characters Krazy and 3). “The Comics Scholars’ email discussion list, Ignatz. Recent graphic novels have become which serves as an academic forum for those more culturally varied: Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s involved in research, criticism and teaching Cat reflects Jewish culture, as does Spiegelman’s related to comics (Ault, 2005), is hosted by the Maus. All three might as easily be classified as University of Florida…[which]…also hosts an nonfiction since the autobiographical content is annual Conference on Comics and Graphic so intricately entangled with the fictional content, Novels.” The “interplay between text and image” an entangling that is boundary-bending. What is in the graphic novel demands skills in visual more to the point is that Herriman, Spiegelman, literacy that, ironically, given the overwhelmingly and Sfar, unlike the deceptively titled Spaniel visual nature of contemporary activity, are not Rage (Vanessa Kelso), The Squirrel Mother currently being taught, although many educators (Megan Kelso), and Diary of a Mosquito are beginning to use graphic novels to teach Abatement Man (John Porcellino), have also visual, as well as textual literacy (Snowball 2). created animal-centric graphic novels, in which Looking just aslant, as Emily Dickinson the nonhuman protagonists face problems suggests, reveals the ubiquity, constant and unique to the cultures or habitats they share with shaping, of other-than-human animals in the others of their species, as well as with the humans graphic novel. Early on, we human animals around them. They are, as a result, less seem to have understood our role in Earth’s narcissistic and anthropocentric than current repertory company. More recently, star-struck, mainstream graphic novels tend to be. we’ve assumed (or pretended) we have the right Although scholarly theory dealing with to the best leading roles. Although they often graphic novels remains, as Gretchen Schwarz appear in comics and graphic novels as writes, in its infancy, it is of particular interest supporting characters, with or without agency, because—again boundary-shattering -- it “is other-than-human animals have also been emerging from multiple disciplines—art (Carrier’s created as protagonist and/or narrator, with 2000 The Aesthetics of Comics), English (Varnum agency – often as talking animal characters. In and Gibbons’s 2001 The Language of Comics), George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Walt Kelley’s and history (Harvey’s 1996 The Art of the Comic: Pogo, animals are sentient and aware that they An Aesthetic History), as well as cultural have a life story to tell. Rich and varied, from studies….At the extreme end of the scholarly eyebrow mite to dinosaur, their descendants literature is The System of Comics (2007) by appear as fully rounded characters in animal- French scholar Thierry Groensteen, a ‘semiology centric graphic novels, taking center stage with a of comics’ in which the author argues strut that probably feels familiar, even [erroneously, I think] that the words in a graphic anthropomorphic,[iii] but on closer inspection novel are really irrelevant” (Schwarz). could belong only to mite or dino. The increasing acceptance of the graphic novel as a serious genre for both adults and younger readers is resulting in its inclusion in

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A Bibliography of Animal-Centric wrappers, mark them as forerunners of the comic Graphic Novels, 13 th-21 st Centuries book. They are amazingly animal-centric, claiming in the preface to be “the first time in Partially Annotated literary history that animals were allowed to speak 13 th and 14 th centuries for themselves,” and, although Applebaum points out that this assertion is not literally true, pointing to Cervantes and Hoffman as writers Marginalia in hand-written and hand-drawn or employing this device, they are likely the first illuminated texts by monks and nuns in modern “comics” to allow animals that privilege monasteries often featured animals “painted in that is usually reserved for human animals (x-xi). vibrant colors and gold leaf. The purpose of illumination was literally to light up the page, to Goethe. Reineke Fuchs. Illustrated by Wilhelm make the text easier to read and more von Kaulbach. 1846 and 1857. comprehensible by illustrating the subject matter, This is “a latterday version of the Roman de by breaking up the blocks of text, and by giving a Renart…modeled quite closely on Grandville’s structure to the page.” (Bettley) animal pieces, these drawings by Kaulbach, very different from the bulk of his rather academic output, are esteemed most highly today by 18 th century many critics” (Applebaum xviii).

Hogarth. ‘The Four Stages of Cruelty’, 1751. 1895—the first comic strips appear in newspapers

th th 20 century 19 century Beatrix Potter, as Bryan Talbot points out in The

Tale of One Bad Rat (1995), might be thought of Grandville (Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gerard). as the first of the graphic novelists. The Metamorphoses of the Day. 1829. George Herriman. Krazy Kat. 1913. ______. Scenes of the Private and Public Life Krazy Kat—of Coconino County in the Arizona of the Animals.1840. Desert—evolved from a minor character in an early Herriman cartoon: The Family Upstairs. He ______. The Animals Painted By Themselves escaped to star in his own comic strip in about 1913, and until 1944, enhanced Hearst’s City Life and Drawn by Another. 1866. week-end supplements. He was ‘designed to appeal to intellectual readers who were ______. An Other World. 1858. otherwise revulsed by the scandals on the front “The ‘metamorphoses’ were the satirical human- page.’ “Like all great art, Krazy Kat [and animal combinations…[which have become Herriman’s illustrations for Archy are] less simple standard in modern comics from Disney and than [they] first [appear]. [They] [demand] study” Spiegelman, to Danales and Jason]….: full as do serious comics and graphic novels, bodies of animals in human clothes, human especially for readers not used to integrating bodies with animal heads, or even further words and visual art (Dale 94). This explains the variations. These hybrids…. are used degree to which Spiegelman’s Maus draws on emblematically to represent the [human] the series, and why R. O. Blechman’s “Magicat” personality traits (greed, cowardice, etc.) (Talking Lines) provides a fantasy update of Krazy traditionally associated with them in fables, Kat. bestiaries, folk sayings and other popular lore. This does not preclude loving attention on the Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale I: My part of the artist to the physical characteristics, Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon, 1986. and even the real habits of the animals Although most critics agree with Marianne depicted…. that he loved [and] knew…at first Dekovan that the German shepherds in Maus hand” (Appelbaum viii). “are the only animals that represent themselves,” The Animals, like many long books of there are clues in Maus II that Spiegelman the day, were published serially (a hundred intends to awaken his reader to a dimension installments from 1840-1846) in colorful paper 85

George Herriman Krazy Kat, 1913 © the author

beyond the almost unimaginable cruelty of the Nazi Holocaust: the issue of domestic abuse is Grant Morrison. Animal Man 1988-1995. Originally a DC Comics superhero, Animal Man clear in Vladek’s treatment of Nadja and Mala; and the house of Dr. Pavel, Art’s therapist, himself first appeared in Dave Wood’s Strange Adventures #180. Buddy Baker does not so a Holocaust survivor, “is overrun with stray dogs much shapeshift as temporarily borrow the and cats,” suggesting that the treatment of abilities of other animals. Wood’s Baker animals in modern society is analogous to the remained a minor character until 1988-1995 Nazi’s treatment of the Jews (Dekovan 368n1; when he was “revived and revamped” by Scottish McGrath 43).[iv] writer Grant Morrison with an important “Maus existed outside of any normal innovation: Morrison’s Animal Man, though still a comic book genre except, if one stretched far comic book character, emerged as an enough, funny animal stories” and “permanently advocate for animal rights and champion of altered…the graphic novel landscape,” as well vegetarianism like his creator. as the treatment of animals in the graphic novel Morrison’s series is now available as a (Weiner 35). trilogy: Animal Man (Vertigo, 2001); Animal Man: 1990-2000 Origin of the Species (Vertigo 2002); and Animal Man: Deus ex Machina (Vertigo, 2003).

Stan Sakai. Usagi Yojimbo: Books 1-10. Jeff Smith. Bone. Irregularly released 1991- Fantagraphics, 1987-present. 2004. Usagi is a 17th century “masterless samuri rabbit” Heavily influenced by Walt Kelley’s Pogo and who fights injustice against all creatures with the Disney’s Bugs Bunny, and originally conceived as aid of a rhino bounty hunter and a feline a comic book series to be published bodyguard. Sakai’s style is funny animal independently, Smith’s fantasy epic has translated by manga. appeared in graphic novel form since 2002 (GRAPHIX, 2002; Cartoon Books, 2004; Scholastic, 86

2005; GRAPHIX, 2008) and, among other honors, Communications, 1995. was featured in an exhibit at Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, July-December Bryan Talbot. The Tale of One Bad Rat. 2008. The Bones, nonhumans of no definable Milwakee: Dark Horse Books, 1995. Winner of the species, exiled from their homeland, find their Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album Reprint way to a mysterious valley populated by talking [2008]. animals of many species, including homo A tale of child abuse that draws its inspiration sapiens, surviving under the constant threat of the from the works of Beatrix Potter who, along with Lord of the Locusts. It becomes the Bones’ several turn-of-the-century writer/artists, might be mission to save this world from this menace. See thought of as the first graphic novelists. When SLIS Reading Group-Graphic.Novels: “Helen Potter…runs away from home [with her www.readalike.org/graphic_novels/sje.html pet rat] to escape an uncaring mother and a sexually abusive father…..she finds her way to the Dave Sims. Cerebus, a comic series begun in Lake District, drawn there by her love of the work 1977, combines adventure and fantasy of Beatrix Potter, and in that beautiful landscape elements, that take the little gray aardvark into a she at last finds peace.” human world. There are currently two (www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=02240847) collections: Church and State (1987-88) and Talbot’s tale is, writes Neil Gaiman, “‘a High Society (1994) and three independent lovingly crafted story about, in the end, the graphic novels: Jake’s Story, Melmoth, and meaning and value of fiction and art, about Flight. Sims describes his story about a three-foot what we take from the past, and what we bring aardvark as a 300-issue novel. Its “ironic and to the future.’” witty dialogue” is outstanding. 2000-2002 Art Spiegelman. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale II: And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon, 1991. Jay Hosler. Clan Apis. Active Synapse Comics #15, 2000. Ricardo Delgado. The Age of Reptiles: The Since Hosler is both a biologist and bee specialist Hunt. Dark Horse Comics, 1992. at Ohio State University, his novels carry special “Delgado brings to life the oldest stories of life on weight in their accurate description of animals. our planet….These stories of dinosaurs living when Herman Melville. Moby Dick. Adapted by Will the planet was the only storyteller are now imagined and relayed through Ricardo’s Eisner. Natier Biall Minostchine, 2001. distinctive illustrations….Ricardo leads us into a In contrast to the Classics Comics’ adaptation world…brought vividly to life through startling by Sophie Furse (2007), this is an adult graphic staging, fast-paced [wordless] stories, and the novel interpreted by one of the acknowledged fundamental struggles of nature. We are not masters of the genre. transported back but rather into a world we can Chris Onstad. Archewood. 2001 never know without our storyteller as a guide” The web-based series was gathered as a graphic (Tom Schumacher, Introduction). novel in 2007. “It’s not a graphic novel in every,

or maybe any, traditional sense,” writes Lev Robert Crumb. Kafka’s Metamorphosis. 1995. Grossman, “but Archewood is so profoundly “Crumb dominates the brief history of the graphic genius it would be a crime to put it anywhere but novel the way Cimabue dominates Vasari’s first on this [Top 10 Graphic Novels] list, and at the top volume of ‘Lives of the Artists’—as both an of it. Archewood defies categorization or inescapable stylistic influence and a kind of description, but a brief, futile attempt at a moral exemplar.” McGrath compares Crumb’s synopsis would go something like this: A bunch of style to Goya’s and Brueghel’s, claiming it is cats, some robots, a bear and an otter who’s 5 equally recognizable and powerful (McGrath 3), years old, live together in a fictional making it particularly suited to a retelling of neighborhood called Archewood, which you Kafka’s metamorphosis of man into insect. The might think of as a grown-up, suburban, stoned story is further updated in Blechman’s Talking version of Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood….The art is Lines (2009). at times crude, but it rises to moments of

extreme lyrical beauty, and the writing has Miyasaki, Hayao. Nausicca of the Valley of enormous emotional range—from aching the Wind. Perfect Collection: Vol. I. Viz 87

Jay Hosler Clan Apis, Active Synapse Comics 2000 © the author 88

sadness to some of the most brilliant, bizarre Grant Morrison. We3. Ill. Frank comedy happening anywhere, in any medium.” Quitely. New York: DC Vertigo, 2007. “…the story of three lab animals—a dog, a cat, Masashi Tanaka. Gon. DC Comics, 2001. and a rabbit—taken off the streets and hardwired into military battle suits [what Ursula Heise more accurately calls “cyborg superweapons with incipient language abilities]”. Trained to be the 2003-2004 next generation of soldiers, and marked for destruction by the project overseer, the animals

are freed by their handler, whereupon they Jay Hosler. Sandwalk Adventure: An Adventure promptly revert to more…traditional patterns of in Evolution Told in Five Chapters. Columbus, OH: behavior” (Craig). Although the rabbit is killed, Active Synapse, 2003. “the dog and cat are rescued and reconverted “[B]eyond the kitchen garden, through a door in into contented pets by a homeless man—an the hedge, Darwin had just designed and built ‘a ending whose neatness and sentimentality thinking path,’ a sandwalk that loops its way create an odd tension with the darkness of the round the edge of a small wood. Sand and red plot and the experimentalism of Quimby’s visual clay lodge in the ridges of his walking boots. He style, which put We3 at the cutting edge on walks the loop of the thinking path five times a innovation in the genre” (Heise 508). day before lunch” (Stott 69-70).

Greg Rogers. The Boy, the Bear, the Baron, Chris Ware. Quimby The Mouse. Jonathan and the Bard. 2004. Cape, 2003. This textless graphic novel “was short-listed by the Not the conventional cartoon mouse, Quimby is Children’s Book Council of Australia, Book of the “beset by insecurities and obsessions that haunt Year for Younger readers” (Snowball 5). him as he continues in a dark and cruel world”

(Kanneberg 313). “Cleverly appropriated old- Andy Runton. Owly: The Way Home. Top Shelf, fashioned animation imagery and advertising 2004. styles of the 1920s and [30s][v] are put to use…at Kannenberg comments that “Runton’s drawing the service of modern vignettes of angst and style has a[n]… obvious sophistication…[that] existentialism. As this cartoon silhouette of a conjures a whole host of emotions from his mouse ignominiously suffers at every turn, the seemingly simple [animal] characters and spaces between the panels create despair and conveys a great sense of their inner and outer a Beckett-like rhythm of hope deceived and worlds” (28-29). deferred (but never extinguished), buoying

Quimby from page to Adam Sacks. Salmon Doubts. Alternative page.” (www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?d!id=02240726) Comics, 2004.

Bill Willingham. Fables Vol #2: Animal Farm. 2005-2007 Ill. Mark Buckingham. DC Vertigo Comics, 2003.

The series which relocates fairy tale characters in modern New York, began in 2002. I include only Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges. Peach the most animal-centric of the collected comics, Fuzz, vol. I. TokyoPop, 2005. those focusing on nonhuman characters who are

“forced further into exile to a farm upstate where Joann Sfar. The Rabbi’s Cat. New York: their otherworldly nature can be concealed.” Pantheon Books, 2005. They remain discontent with such speciesism, feeling that their nonhuman natures are needed Anna Sewell. Black Beauty. Adapted by Jane to resolve the plots the human characters cannot Bridgman and Ray Richardson. New York: solve. Puffin, 2005.

Juan Diaz Canales. Ill. Juanja Guarnido. Paul Wright. Smelling a Rat. Jonathan Cape, Blacksad. Ibooks, 2004. 2005.

“Trevor Gristle lives in Merton with his mom and Jason. You Can’t get There From Here. dad and sister. He lives in a world of his own, Fantagraphics, 2004. dreaming of superheroes, and his stories are not always believed by his family. So when he returns 89

home one day with a giant seven-foot-tall anthropomorphizing the creatures, and instead insatiably greedy spotted rat called [he] magically bestow[s] human speech upon Ratman,…the rest of the Gristles, for once, are them, portray[ing] their communication as growls forced to believe him. and roars that are somehow intelligible to “From this starting point Paul Wright tells humans” (Kannenberg 480-481). and illustrates a brilliantly funny and surreal tale. His drawing is superb, his imagination knows no James Vining. First in Space. Oni Press, 2006. bounds and his satirical eye is as sharp as a The story of Russia’s first dog in space from the knife.” Ratman began as a comic strip in The dog’s point of view. LondoncTimes (www.rbooks.com.uk/product.aspx?id=02240738). Nick Abadzis. Laika. New York: First Second, 2007. See: Lisa Brown’s “A Graphic Novel Raises Rebecca Dart. Rabbit Head. 2006. Ethical Issues: Laika, By Nick Abadzis.” Society and Animals 16:3 (2008): 293-296 and “An Jessie Reklaw. “13 Cats of My Childhood” from Interview with Nick Abadzis, author of Laika.” Couch Tag, 2006. Although the graphic novel Animal Inventory Blog, Oct. 27, 2008: itself is an autobiography, the cats who were a http://www.animalinventory.net/2008/10/27/an_int part of Reklaw’s childhood family are rounded erview_with_nick_abadzis animal-centric characters in this selection from Pekar’s anthology (232-251). Sarah Boxer. In the Floyd Archives. New York: Random House Pantheon, 2007. “…an animal Aaron Reynolds. Ill. Leonard and Ekik. Insect tour of all things Freudian” Ninja. Stone Arch Books, 2006. www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/boxer.ht The first of a series combining the author’s love of ml. bugs and books. Tiger Moth is the leading character of this insect-rich world. Amanda Dine. Antlers: A Graphic Novel Exploring the Connections Between Human, ______. Tiger Moth and the Dragon Kite Animal, and Landscape. Undergraduate Contest. Stone Arch Books, 2006. Integrative Project Thesis, School of Art and Design, University of Michigan, 2007-2008. Anna Sewell. Black Beauty. Adapted by L. L. Owens. Ill. Jennifer Tanner. Stone Arch Books, Erin Hunter. The Warrior Graphic Novels, 2007. 2006. Brian Jacques. Redwall: The Graphic Novel Craig Thompson. Good-Bye, Chunky Rice. (Part One). Adapted by Stuart Moore. Ill. By Bret Pantheon, 2006. Blevins. New York: Philomel, 2007. When the little turtle, Chucky Rice, sails off to find Closely based on the original plot, the peaceful where he truly belongs, “his [inconsolable] little existence of the mice of Redwall is threatened by mouse friend” tosses “hundreds of bottles into the an invasion of city rats. Survival necessitates the sea—each one containing the solitary line, ‘I miss emergence of a leader under whom the Redwall you’” (Kannenberg 200). animals can band together. Neither the shortness nor its reliance on black and white help Bill Willingham. Ill. Mark Buckingham and this version achieve the richness of Jacques’ Sharon McManus. Fables: Wolves. DC Comics story, although Blevins’ training in Marvel and DC Vertigo, 2006. Comics allow for impressive battle and action sequences full of grit, if not blood. Even more Bryan K. Vaughan. Pride of Baghdad. Ill. Niko important, as one reviewer said, “Blevins never Henrichon. New York: Vertigo/DC Comics, 2006. forgets that these are animals, not little people in Although Pride of Bagdad is Vaughan’s first animal clothing” (Elizabeth Bird 5 Dec 2007: animal-centric graphic novel, realistic www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1790000379/ nonhumans, while not the protagonists of the post/16600). comic books as they are here, do play significant roles in earlier Vaughan publications. In Y: The ______. Redwall: The Graphic Novel (Part Two). Last Man, for instance, the hero’s sidekick, Ambersand, is a capuchin monkey. “Vaughan Neil Kleid. Ill. By Alex Nino. New York: Philomel, invests the lions with believably leoline 2007 ‘personalities,’….avoid[ing] the trap of 90

David Peterson Mouse Guard, 2009 © the author

Simone Lia. Fluffy. 2007. with the reality that he is not a human being? All “Originally published by the author [Canbanan is at least partly resolved in…Lia’s utterly irresistible Press] in four volumes, Fluffy is described by graphiccnovel.” Simone Lia as ‘a story of unanswerable questions, (www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=02240804) love, despair, adventure and happiness.’ Fluffy is a baby rabbit who is being looked after by an Masashi Tanaka. Gon: Vol. 1. CMX, 2007. anxious, single man called Michael Pulcino. Wordless, like Delgato’s The Age of Reptiles, Gon Michael tries to make it clear to Fluffy that he is is an out-of-time tiny T-Rex wandering “near- not his daddy, but Fluffy appears to be in denial. photorealistic…environments” where he meets Michael is being pursued by Fluffy’s nursery modern “animals of all sorts who breathe not only school teacher, and partly to escape her, he authenticity but life into a story” which argues for and Fluffy set off to visit his family in Sicily. Will animal cooperation and ethics (Kanneberg 39). Michael escape her? Will Fluffy come to terms 91

______. Gon: Vol. 2. 2008-2010

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Adapted by Kate Dicamillo. The Tale of Despereaux: The Sophie Furse. Ill. Penko Gelev and Sotir Graphic Novel. Adapted largely from the film Gelen. Barron’s Educational Series, 2007. version by Matt Smith and David Tilton. A graphic novel version in The Classics Comics Candlewick, 2008. tradition: see also Melville 2001. George Herriman. Krazy and Ignatz 1943- Osama Tezuka. Buddha: Vol. I Kapilavastu; 1944: He Nods in Quiessant Siesta. Vol. II The Four Encounters; Vol III Devadatta. Fantagraphics, 2008.

Delphine Perret. The Big Bad Wolf and Me. Dan Jolley and Don Hudson. Warriors: Sterling, 2007. Tigerstar & Sasha—Into the Woods. “Delphine Perret has created an irresistible, HarperCollins, 2008. almost-graphic novel without boxes for the very Sasha, placed with a new family when her junior set, replete with the kind of ironic-cool beloved human is sent to a nursing home, runs humor and subtlety that made the “Calvin and away to the woods behind her old home. There Hobbes” cartoons so beloved…. she encounters clans of wild cats, very like the The Big Bad Wolf and Me takes well-known cats in Erin Hunter’s Warrior series. simplicity and the art of the drawn line to Drawn in an effective manga style, Sasha admirable heights, relying on two-color drawings teaches readers what it feels like to lose a home in brown, black, or blue, with an occasional and have to struggle to survive in a wild world sparing dash of red, yellow, and green. Perret without human caregivers (Jung). brilliantly controls her blank spaces, and is not afraid of letting her two characters hang around Walt Kelly. Pogo: The Complete Daily and in them. It’s nice to think there may be further Sunday Comic Strips Volume 1: Into the Wild Blue adventures of The Big Bad Wolf and Me” in which Yonder. Fantagraphics, 2008. the boy continues to ‘retrain…the wolf to be big and bad’” (Rosenberg). Steve Purcell. The Collected Sam & Max: Surfin’ the Highway. Tell Tale Games, 2008 (20th David Petersen. Mouse Guard Vol. 1 Fall anniversary issue). 1152. Arachadia Studios, 2007. A freelance team of police, a dog and a rabbit, deal with everything from volcano David Petersen. Mouse Guard Vol. 2: Winter gods “to a legion of rats (and the world’s largest 1152. Archadia Studios, 2009. prairie dog), and demons. They also take a trip “Set in the year 1152, a contingent of anthro- to the moon where they meet moonrats and pomorphic mice…must defend their rodent giant cockroaches” (Kannenberg 336). world from a rogue dictator. The guard wishes to live peacefully and protect against harmful Doug TenNapel. Monster Zoo. creatures without upsetting the balance of the Image Comics, 2008. mouse society and predator-prey relationship they share with the world surrounding Aaron Reynolds. Kung Pow Chicken. Stone them….Sharing many of the fantasy tropes Arch Books, 2008. (See Reynolds, 2006) found in Bone, Mouse Guard also includes bold character depictions [and, unlike the black and ______. The Pest Show on Earth. Stone Arch white Bone] is entirely in color” Books, 2008. (See Reynolds, 2006) (www.readalike.org/graphic_novel/sjc.html). Andy Runton. Owly: The Way Home and The Bittersweet Summer. Top Shelf, 2008. Aaron Reynolds. The Dung Beetle Bandits. Stone Arch Books, 2007. (See Reynolds 2006) Johann Sfar. The Rabbi’s Cat, Vol. II. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008. ______. The Torture Cookies of Weevil. Stone Arch Books, 2007. (See Reynolds, 2007)

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Walt Kelly Pogo, 2008 © the author

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Shirley Hughes. Bye Bye Birdie. 2009. Rodale. 2009. This is famed children’s author “Shirley Hughes’ first Rodale's multitextured version introduces a graphic book for adults. A young man, in his more accessible Darwin, no less complex—or best bow-tie and boater, meets a fashionably fascinating. The graphic novel follows Origin's dressed—and rather bird-like—young lady. But original chapters, combining snippets of Darwin's when he takes her home she undergoes a text with quotes from letters, illustrative examples transformation and our hero’s dreams of from his time and from the present, and connubial bliss suddenly turn into the stuff of occasional invented dialog. Fuller's full-color nightmare: Totally wordless, Bye Bye Birdie plants, animals, charts, maps, and scientific showcases Shirley Hughes’ brilliant drawing and accoutrements are effective. An afterword from her extraordinarily vivid imagination.” Keller brings the scholarship up-to-date, from (www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspz?id=02240807) Mendel's pea plants to Wilson's sociobiology. For a really animal-centric telling see: Jay Hosler's Hakabune Hakusho. Moyamu Fujino: Animal The Sandwalk Adventures. Academy. Vols. I and II. Tokyo Pop, 2009. Fifteen year-old Neko, who has been rejected by Bo Obama: The White House Tails. every high school she has applied to, is finally Bluewater Productions. accepted at Morimoni where, she discovers, all The original comic book, which sold out the other students are animals who can transform when it was released in September 2009, will be into humans and are there to learn how to released as a graphic novel in March 2010, using behave in human society. Perhaps her the fun-loving Bo to instruct readers about White acceptance can be explained by the fact that House history and past presidential pets (Daniels). her name, Neko, means “cat.” Can she pass? The manga tradition reflects the Japanese Erin Hunter. Illus. Bettina Kurkoski. Seekers: culture in its animal-centricity. Toklo’s Story. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

______. Moyamu Fujino: Animal Academy. Secondary Sources Vol III. Tokyo Pop, 2010. Anthony, Lawrence with Graham Spence. Babylon’s Ark: The Incredible Rescue of the Kevin C. Pyle. Katman. New York: Henry Holt, Baghdad Zoo. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007. 2009. This source authenticates the plot of Pride of Bagdad and makes a point about the actual Lisa Trumbauer. Ill. Aaron Blecha. Graphic situation that applies, as well, to Vaughan[AD8]’s Spin: The Three Little Pigs: The Graphic Novel. animal-centric graphic novel: “This was about Stone Arch Books, 2009. more than just a zoo in a war zone. It was about making an intrinsically ethical and moral Zheng Jun. Tibetan Rock Dog. 2009. statement, saying: Enough is enough” (50). Not yet available in the United States, the novel’s hero is a Tibetan mastiff named Metal who grows Applebaum, Stanley, Introduction and up in a Buddhist temple, learning, from his grandfather, the ancient wisdom of his breed. Commentary. Fantastic Illustrations of Grandville: This includes “the secrets of walking upright and 266 Illustrations from “Un Autre Monde” and “Les speaking human language,…canine meditation Animaux.” New York: Dover, 1974. [Heavenly Mastiff Yoga],” and a hatred of their Armstrong, Elizabeth. “Researching College “ancient enemy, the Tibetan wolf” (Danwei Student’s Social Life” quoted in Pothaar). When he becomes the www.indiana.edu/~sotl/download/participants04.pdf companion of a rock musician, very like the author, and moves to Beijing, Metal discovers a Bettley, James. The Art of the Book: From secret underground world where all dogs walk Illustrated Manuscript to Graphic Novel. London: upright and talk. There he forms a rock band with Victoria & Albert Museum, 2001. Brittany, friends he met in obedience school. Zheng Jun Michelle. “Graphic Novels Come of Age.” describes the film inspired by the novel as a Ledger, 2009. serious version of Kung Fu Panda. http://www.uwtledger.com/home/index.cfm?even

Keller, Michael. Ill. Nicolle Rager Fuller. Brown, Lisa. “A Graphic Novel Raises Ethical Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Issues: Laika, By Nick Abadzis.” Society and 94

Grandville The Metamorphoses of the Day, 1829

Animals 16:3 (2008): 293-296. [Nothampton, MA] Weekend Gazette 28-29 ______. “An Interview with Nick Abadzis, author N. Abrams, 1997. of Laika.” Animal Inventory Blog, Oct. 27, 2008: http://www.animalinventory.net/2008/10/27/an_int Daniels, Serena Maria. 2009. “’The White erview_with_nick_abadzis Carrier, D. The House Tails’: Bo Knows Comics.” The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park, PA: The [Nothampton, MA] Weekend Gazette 28-29 Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. November: C6.

Craig, Matthew. “The Book Review: We3.” Dekevon, Marianne. 2009. “Guest Editorial: Ninth Art—for the Discerning Reader Why Animals Now?” PMLA 124. 2(March): 361- http://www.ninthart.com Accessed 3/6/07. 369. Dale, Rodney. Cats In Books: A Celebration of Cat Illustration Through the Ages. New York: Harry Dine, Amanda. “Antlers: Written Thesis.” N. Abrams, 1997. www.personal.umich.edu/~adine Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. Tamarac, FL: Daniels, Serena Maria. 2009. “’The White Poorhouse Press, 1985. House Tails’: Bo Knows Comics.” The 95

______. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Kannenberg, Gene Jr. 500 Essential Graphic Narrative. Tamarac, FL:Poorhouse Press, 1996. Novels: The Ultimate Guide. New York: Collins, Goldsmith, Francisca. The Readers' Advisory 2008. Guide to Graphic Novels. ALA. 2010. Goldsmith’s (director of Lloyd, Stephen. Review: “Pride of Bagdad”. branch services, Halifax P.L.s, N.S.) aim with this Suite101.com Dec.18,2008: guide is to get librarians onto the radars of http://graphicnovelscomics.suite101.com/print_article.cfm/pride
_of _bagdad fanboys and fangirls and train reader's advisory

(RA) professionals about which comics to offer to McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The which readers. She addresses how to advise Invisible Art. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. comics-savvy readers of all ages, as well as nudge "traditional" readers toward graphic novel McGrath, Charles. “Not Funnies.” The New options. Additionally, she addresses how to York Times Magazine 11 July 2004 suggest interplays of graphic novels with films and gaming, and discusses how they are Malamud,Randy.ReadingcZoos: supplements to more broadly based Representations of Animals and Captivity. New [mw9] books like David S. Serchay's The Librarian's York: New York University Press, 1998. Guide to Graphic Novels for Children and Tweens (LJ 9/15/08), Robin E. Brenner's Understanding Moore, Clayton. “Graphic Attack: Vertigo Manga and Anime (LJ 9/15/07), and Michael Raises the Bar (Again).” Bookslut July 2006: Pawuk's Graphic Novels: A Genre Guide to www.bookslut.com/features/2006_07_009375.php Comic Books, Manga, and More (LJ 7/1/07). Accessed 3/03/07 Geis, Deborah. Approaches to Art Spiegelman’s Maus. 2003. Mulholland, Tara. “Britain Embraces the Graphic Novel.” The New York Times 5 Golda, Gregory J. 1997. “The Rise of the September 2007: Post-Modern Graphic Novel.” Integrative Arts 10. www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05comi.html?_=1&pages www.psu.edu/dept/inart10_110/inart10/cm9pgm.html accessed 12/23/06. Parker, Steve. “The Friday Review: Clan Apis.” Ninth Art 20 July 2001 “Graphic Novels in DDC: Discussion Paper.” www.ninthart.com/display.php?article=64 Accessed March 26 2007: www.oclc.org/dewey/discussion/papers/graphicnovels.htm Pekar, Harvey, ed. The Best American Comics, 2006. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Groenstein, Thierry. The System of Comics (originally published in French in 1999). Trans. Polzer, Natalie. “At U[niversity] of L[ouisville] Beaty and Nguyen. Jackson, Mississippi: Prof. Geis Lectured on “Spiegelman’s ‘Maus’ and University of Mississippi Press, 2007. Second Generation Holocaust Survivors.” LouisvillecNews: Grossman, Lev. “Top 10 Graphic Novels www.jewishlouisville.org/content_display.html?ArticleD=1 [2007].” Time, Art and Entertainment: accessed March10,c2009: Pothaar, Rebekah. “Zeng Jun’s Graphic www.time.com/time/apecials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,168 Novel, Tibetan Rock Dog: A Language that Crosses National Boundaries.” March 18, 2009: Gustines, George Gene. “The Feelings of http://shanghaiist.com/2009/03/18/Tibetan_rock_zheng_juns Life, Illustrated.” The New York Times 3 _tibetan_rock September, 2006: 21. On Vaughan’s Pride of Bagdad. Powell, Corey S. “Clan Apis. –Review.” Discover. AccessedcMarch24,2007. www.findarticle Heise, Ursula K. 2009. “The Android and the s.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_2_21/ai_5916... Animal.” PMLA 124. 2(March): 503-510. Preiss, Byron and Howard Zimmerman, Harvey, R. C. The Art of the Comic Book. eds. Year’s Best Graphic Novels, Comics, and Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. Manga: From Blankets to Demo to Black Sad. Jung, Michael. Kids’ Graphic Novels for Animal New York: St. Martin’s, 2005.

Lovers.2009:http://graphicnovelcomics.suite101.com/article.cf m/all_ages_graphic Rosenberg, Liz. “For Children: Wolf in a bad rug knocks on the door….” Boston Sunday Globe 96

25 March 2007: D7. References & Notes

Rothzchild, D. Aviva. Graphic Novels: A [i] On the whole “…graphic novels share so many characteristics with Bibliographic Guide to Book-Length Comics. comic books and collections of cartoon strips that separating graphic Libraries Unlimited, 1995. novels would be difficult…to do consistently….Many discussions of graphic novels…go on to use a broad definition that includes not only stand-alone stories in comics form published as books but also collections of stories Schwartz, Gretchen E. “Graphic Novels for [like Fables] initially published serially in comic books and collections of Multiple Literacies.” Reading Online—New newspaper comic strips reprinted in book form.” DDC [Dewey Decimal Classification] also lists graphic novels in 741.5—art—rather than in 800— Literacies: literature in order to emphasize that the visual aspects of the form are as, http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/jaal/11-02_colur if not more significant than the text itself (“Graphic Novels in DDC”). Vertigo, the publisher of Fables, as well as both Vaughan’s Pride of Bagdad and Morrison’s We3, claims that their books “teeter on the verge…of ______. “Teaching Visual Literacy Through literature” (Moore). Vaughan, also the author of the comics Swamp Thing Graphic Novels.” American Association of School and Y: The Last Man, sees Pride of Bagdad as his “first full-length, stand- Librarians (online Jan-Feb 2008): alone graphic novel” (Carl Banks).

http://www.ala.org/mgrps/divs/aaslarchive/kquarchives/vol8 [ii] Another indication of this acceptance is that, starting with Jay Cantor’s Krazy Kat: A Novel in Four Panels and Michael Chabon’s Kavalier and Snowball, Clare. “Graphic Novels: Telling Tales Clay, contemporary fiction has begun to allude to and borrow from the graphic novel, crossing, among others, the boundary separating text and Visually.” Synergy 4, 2(2006): 18-22: visual arts. Cantor and Chabon are joined in this by works like Umberto http://www.alia.org.an/~csnow/research/publish/synergy.http Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Evan Kuhlman’s Wolf Boy, Susan Schade and Jon Buller’s Travels of Thelonius, the Australian novelist Joshua Wright’s Plotless Pointless Pathetic, Hapless Hopelass and Goom, Spurgeon, D. “Comics Reporter Sunday and Gwen Vernon’s Dragonbreath and Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Interview: Nick Abadzis.” The comics reporter. Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew. The latter three “intersperse graphic novel sections with text novel sections…. [Travels of Thelonius i]s Reviewed March 6, 2008: the story of a post-apocalyptic world where humans have disappeared and http://comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_sunday_interview_ni there are civilizations of talking, thinking animals. Thelenonius is a ck_abadzis/ chipmunk who lives in the forest but longs for adventure; he is fascinated with the legendary humans” much as we are with dinosaurs and mammoths” (www.wandsandworlds.com). Wright’s Plotless is equally Stott, Rebecca. Darwin and the Barnacle: apocalyptic but substitutes anthropocentric angst for Buller’s focus on the The Story of One Tiny Creature and History’s Most survival of those species surviving homo sapiens. Vernon’s novels, intended for younger readers, emphasize quest, adventure, and Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough. New York interspecies cooperation with no human presence. Opening the genre to and London: W. W. Norton, 2003. books depending equally on illustration and text would also draw in hybrids like Gary Larson’s There’s Hair in My Dirt (New York: HarperCollins, 1998) and Sue Coe’s Pit’s Letter (2000) in which Varnum, R. & C. T. Gibbons, eds. The nonhuman animal protagonists like Larson’s Worm and Pit’s Dog are, as is Language of Comics. Jackson, MI: University Schade and Buller’s chipmunk Thelonius, protagonists, narrators with agency appearing in animal-centric stories. Press of Mississippi, 2001. [iii] The anthropocentric human-animal characters, from Spiderman and Weiner, Stephen and Keith R. A. Cat Woman, to Wolverine and Animal Man, are an important element in this tradition, akin perhaps to the hybrid traits found in Egyptian deities Decandido. The 101 Best Graphic Novels. and Greek gods and heroes, and similar figures in many other cultures. 2001. Seen from this perspective, they point in the direction of reverence for other animals and kinship between humans and other animals. It seems significant that Scott McCloud classifies Morrison and others working in Weiner, Stephen. Faster Than a Speeding this tradition as “animists” and recognizes that the devices they develop “to make their [nonhuman] characters and plots come alive” for human Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel. New York: readers can be isolated and examined (quoted in Wolk 181). Morrison Nantier, Beall, Minouschine, 2003. took his first steps toward the animal-centric in The Invisibles, where readers are forced to get outside their context by substituting a multiple , de-centered perspective for human sterioptic vision (Wolk 262, 266), thus Whyte, Malcolm. Great Comic Cats. San overpowering the anthropocentric “I” with what is actually a multiple-self Francisco: Pomegranate, 2001. composed of multiple species. As Wolk puts it, the graphic novel is “an ideal medium for diverting the reader’s consciousness into multiple subjectivities” (370). Wolff, Carlo. 2010. “On Graphic Novels: Humanity, Glorious and Vile.” The Boston Sunday [iv] Spiegelman complicates the matter even more by raising the question of what mask to give his non-Jewish wife prefaces the story; the masks Globe 3 January: K7. themselves are revealed sometimes as masks although at other times the characters seem to be humans with mouse, cat, or pig faces. Wolk, D. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels [v] Wolk likens the technique to that of Harriman’s Krazy Kat with Work and What They Mean. Cambridge, MA: seemingly anthropomorphized animals revealing themselves as real cat, DaCapo Press, 2007. mouse, and dog (353ff).

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Beatrix Potter The Tale of One Bad Rat 972-1995 © the author

Marion W. Copeland, an independent scholar, is currently affiliated with Humane Society University (HSUS) where she offers two courses: Animals and Literature and Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Animal Studies. She has tutored and lectured in the Masters of Science program in Animals and Public Policy Program at the Center for Animals and Public Policy” at Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and is professor emerita of English at Holyoke Community College (MA). In addition to being fiction review editor for both Society and Animals and NILAS (Nature in Legend and Story), she is co-editor of What Are the Animals to Us? The author of many reviews and essays, she has also published two books: Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa) and Cockroach. 98

Antennae.org.uk Issue sixteen will be online on the 21st of March 2011

Antennae.org.uk Issue seventeen will be online on the 21st of June 2011 99