Project Proposal

The main concept of my essay, argument, and the general idea of my thesis is that Jimmy Corrigan is an intersection of two distinct lineages in comics, that of the superhero and of expressionism, forming a distinct expressionist superhero. Additionally, this does not only apply to the character of Corrigan himself, but to the depiction of his environment, America specifically.

After introducing the above and illustrating the goal of the essay, I will begin by giving a brief history and definition of the concept of a superhero. This will be done using Danny Fingeroth’s Superhero on the Couch. By doing so, I will be able to have my audience and myself be on the same page regarding a mutual understanding of the superhero.

Secondly, I will follow with a brief history and definition of the concept of expressionism. Using standard definitions as the term “expressionism” from common dictionaries, while supplementing them with art books such as Bram Djikstra’s American Expressionism, I hope to have a similar effect as with the superhero definition, so that my audience and myself may be on the same page.

Next, I will argue that Jimmy Corrigan is a superhero comic based on its art and visuals. I will do so by comparing it with the Hulk graphic novel we read for class, and showing similarities. For example, how in both graphic novels, the backgrounds change to a single, bright color in particular moments of heightened emotional stress.

Following this, I will continue my argument that Jimmy Corrigan is a superhero comic based on its story. This will be accomplished by demonstrating the story’s following of the hero’s journey, implementing a source that thoroughly defines it, and using Geoff Klock and Danny Fingeroth’s books, respectively. I hope to use the hero’s journey even more effectively by comparing Corrigan with a clearly non-superhero comic that doesn’t follow the story arc, preferably an R. Crumb comic which would make for a nice connection.

Finally, I will conclude the Corrigan-as-a-superhero portion by using my own insight and comparisons of Corrigan fitting the mold of a superhero. For instance, the apt subtitle of “The Smartest Kid on Earth” is a clear evocation of superhero comics’ subtitles, as with Superman, “The Man of Steel.” Coinciding with this, I will present Corrigan’s powers and weaknesses, attempting to present him as a superhero in his version of Metropolis: mundane American suburbia; of course, there is something to be said about his residing in the city of Chicago.

Following this portion, I will present Jimmy Corrigan as the quintessential expressionist comic. Using the “Not Funnies” article, the aforementioned definition and description of the concept of expressionism, and Chris Ware’s interview in The Comics Journal website form the Copenhagen Comics Festival, I will extract specific examples from Jimmy Corrigan to show it as expressionist art. Specifically, the following quote from the interview will be extremely useful: “I think that thinking of the panel as a camera is really … well, it’s one way of doing it, certainly, but the advantage of being a cartoonist is that you are not looking out into the world to make your work, you’re looking into yourself.”

I will conclude the entire essay thus far to make clear my argument that Jimmy Corrigan contains both aspects of superhero comics and expressionism.

For the last part of the essay, I will compare the depiction of the American superhero’s environment with that of Jimmy Corrigan. Using the Hulk and Superman, I will explain how these comics depict America with pride and patriotism, as a nation of strength, values, and righteousness. I hope to contrast this with Jimmy Corrigan’s impression of America as a nation of isolation, bleakness, and other attributes that I will obviously be more detailed with upon closer examination of the work.

Finally, I will conclude the essay by reiterating what has been previously stated, but also by comparing the ends of traditional superhero comics and the end of Jimmy Corrigan.

Sources:

“Not Funnies” by Charles McGrath for The New York Times, July 11, 2004.

How to Read Superhero Comics and Why by Geoff Klock, Continuum International

Publishing Group Inc., 2002

Djikstra, Bram, American Expressionism, Harry N. Abrams Publishing Co., 2003.

Fingeroth, Danny, Superman on the Couch, Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2004.

Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics

Kirby and Lee’s The Hulk

Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan

Chris Ware interview at Copenhagen Comics Festival via The Comics Journal

http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v5_1/bennett-jackson/ “Graphic Whiteness and the Lessons of Jimmy Corrigan” by Juda Bennett and Cassandra Jackson for Interdisciplinary Comics Studies

Project Proposal

For my final project, I wanted to revisit a mystery novel that I read a while back which for some reason stuck in my head as a more powerful story than any other book I read. “The Name of the Rose”, by Eco Umberto, is a murder mystery novel published in 1980 that tells a story of murders that were committed in relation to a book. It is solved at the end that these murders were committed by a blind librarian by the name of Jorge Borges who wants to keep the secret of a book that is believed to be a “cipher and perfect compendium of all the rest: some librarian has perused it, and it is analogous to a god” (Borges 85). I would like to do a research paper on the influence that Jorge Borges and his “The Library of Babel” had on “The Name of the Rose” and also the relations between the two books to the Tower of babel in the “Genesis”.

Outline:

Introduction:

- State the argument that is to be defended in the paper

- Summarize the 2 new works of literature being used in the paper

- Give a brief description of the influences cause by Jorge Borges himself as well as by his book on the writing of “The Name of the Rose”

- Give a brief description of how languages and books are interconnected with the Tower of Babel and God from “Genesis” and slight connections to “The City of Glass”

Body Paragraph 1:

- Describe the meaning and the similarity in the structure of the library

o Hexagonal shape

o Labyrinthine structure

- Describe how the library is related to the universe and its ordering corresponding to the orientation and literary content of the known world map then

Body paragraph 2:

- How Jorge Borges’ own life influenced the character of the blind librarian, ‘Jorge Borges’, in the novel.

- Describe the importance of the book and its significance

o Said in Jorges’ “The library of Babel” that a specific book exists that is a compilation of the knowledge of all else and ones who read it are in the same level as God

o How this “knowledge” is the downfall of many people in “The name of the rose”

Body Paragraph 3:

- How the final burning of the library with its knowledge that is said to make a God out of a man is related to the destruction of the Tower of babel to keep man from reaching the status of God

- Languages being lost

o As God confounded the languages of the people during the destruction of the Tower of Babel, the ancient languages are lost with the burning of the library

o How “The city of Glass” relates the experiment in it to the primary language before the Tower of Babel and how certain languages, their history and their connections to the modern languages that can be found in only some rare books in that particular library are lost forever.

Conclusion:

- Summarize the overall concept of the argument

- Conclude by restating the initial thesis

Sources:

1) Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.

2) Borges, Jorge Luis, Erik Desmazières, Andrew Hurley, and Angela Giral. The Library of Babel. Boston: David R. Godine, 2000. Print.

3) Crumb, R., and Robert Alter. The Book of Genesis. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. Print.

4) Eco, Umberto, and William Weaver. The Name of the Rose. New York: Everyman's Library, 2006. Print.

symbols: Superman Representation

 Ware defines the term symbol as “something that represents something else, esp. common in bad literature. Also, a printed or written sigh used to represent an understood corresponding aspect of experience, generally read, and not appreciated as an esthetic for in and of itself.” Notable leitmotifs  in Jimmy Corrigan include a robot, a bird, a peach, a miniature horse, and a flawed superhero are each important representations of a deeper meaning. Of these reoccurring symbols throughout the novel, the image that really seemed to stand out on the pages was Superman.

Jimmy Corrigan is a boy with a serious over reactive imagination and awkward personality. These traits stem from his failed family life, being extremely uncomfortable and shell shocked when it comes to forming friendships or relationships, and finally he fears being rejected or dislike which causes him from properly developing social skills. We first see the form of Superman while Jimmy is a small boy eager to meet a flawless and skilled male role model. Of course, this goes to shambles when the man behind the mask picks up his mother for a one night stand. In Jimmy's innocence he doesn't recognize the morning after awkwardness for what it was or how passing on the message "he had a real good time" could possibly affect his mother. The next time Jimmy encounters a real life Superman is when he watches someone jumps to their death. This keeps unsettling him as he sees reminders in newspapers and causes distress to follow him into his fantasies. To balance the awkwardness Jimmy feels upon meeting his father again, he tries fantasizing that fate brought this meeting together. In his dream he is tucking in his son at bedtime, relating how his visit to his father eventually led to meeting the mother of the child. Their intimate moment is broken by the appearance of a small toy like figure of superman at the windowsill. Superman then turns into a giant that destroys the house along with Jimmy's "son".

The representation of Superman seems to be acting as a warning for horrible things to come. Jimmy had so many wonderful dreams as a kid of how Superman was the greatest hero/ideal to look up to on face of the earth. He considered Superman a father figure since he never was able to have a relationship with his real father. He imaged that if his father, if he ever met him, would just be like his idol; but little did he know that fantasy was untrue. The image of Superman throughout the novel didn’t represent hope and a father figure to look up too; it symbolized the original Superman at the beginning of the novel, the man who didn't stick around. We can make the connection that Jimmy’s dream Superman is contradicted to the Superman that he encountered in real life. So in all, not only does Superman symbolize hopelessness and despair but it instills disappointment from ever fantasizing about high aspirations in life.

Superman's deception

Being a comic, there are images everywhere in Jimmy Corrigan, but Ware does an excellent job focusing in on some to give them extra meaning. Two symbols that are used interchangeably throughout the book are the well known images of Superman and his mask. Ware defines a symbol with the typical description of “something that represents something else,” but goes even farther to claim that it is “a sign used to represent an understood corresponding aspect of experience, generally read, and not appreciated as an esthetic form in and of itself.” Superman and his mask can satisfy either of these definitions. In the most basic sense, Superman is not really who he claims to be, but just some man in need of a day job who dresses up as superheroes for money. Superman is representing this man, and the man represents him, while the mask serves as the means to this deception. Ware fulfills the second part of his description by adding an emotional tie between Jimmy and Superman. Growing up without a father, Jimmy clings to this idealized vision of what grown males can be, praising Superman comics. This strong male figure gives Jimmy someone to look up to and becomes his idea of the ideal father. Readers can recognize this scenario and feel sorry for Jimmy, giving Superman an esthetic contribution to the comic.

Our first indication of Superman is the image of Jimmy, excitedly getting ready to go meet his idol, wearing a homemade superhero mask. Superman is the only possible father figure available to Jimmy, causing him to cling to this unrealistic dream of Superman as his father. He is awed by this average Joe who is dressed up like his hero, being too young and naïve to realize that he’s just a manipulative sleazeball. Here, the mask represents this man’s manipulation. He is able to conceal who he really is in order to get what he wants. Hiding behind his safety net mask, he gets all of Jimmy’s praise and gets to sleep with Jimmy’s mom.

The mask takes a shift in meanings as Superman hands it over to Jimmy the next morning. Ware physically represents this by changing its color from red to orange. Now, it becomes something that Jimmy will hide behind, but rather than manipulating others, he attempts to manipulate himself. Jimmy hides behind this mask, trying to hold on to his idealized vision of his father as some sort of superhero. Even once he gets too old to believe that Superman is his dad, he never lets go of the hope that there is something exciting and exotic about this mystery man he has never met. The mask stands as a symbol for this desperate hope. After traveling to visit his father, Jimmy is disappointed that he is just as boring and normal as his son. Rather than vacationing on a boat, drinking gin and tonics and having beautiful women waiting below deck, Jimmy finds himself dining at Burger Kuntry listening to his dad complain about the service. This real-life version of his father is absolutely nothing like Superman or his daydreams.

Jimmy’s desperate wish first came crashing down when he received the letter from his father asking to meet. With this jolt of reality, Jimmy started to question the idea of his father as someone to look up to for having such a great life. By knowing the truth, there was no going back to his Superman days. There was no way his father could ever live up to Superman, so Jimmy was bound to be disappointed, even if any of his various daydreams about his father somehow came true. This idea is put into a visual representation as Jimmy’s co-worker, dressed as Superman, commits suicide. Jimmy’s Superman image of his father dies just as a real Superman comes crashing down from the top of a building. And just as Jimmy’s co-worker left with a suicide note, so did Jimmy’s dream dad. The letter from his real father was what lead to his death. Ware complexly uses the image of Superman to give the reader a feeling of both deception and a false, desperate hope in this deception. Knowing Jimmy’s background and the state of his life, there is emotion involved as he clings to his romanticized lie, giving the image of Superman an esthetic quality, and thus fulfilling Ware’s definition.

Project Proposal

For my final project, I would like to continue with the revision I have been working with all along. Each time I’ve revised, I feel like I have a lot of good ideas but the focus is kind of lacking so I want to take the opportunity to really focus those ideas and apply them to both Vertigo and Jimmy Corrigan for the final project.

My main argument for the previous revisions have been that Vertigo is a comic that must be read in a unique way due to its unique style of telling a story. It requires the reader to take into account even the tiny details of the drawings before each new one in order for the story to make sense. Since it is lacking words, the “correct” interpretation can be difficult to arrive at. I mentioned the psychological idea of “top down processing” as a way to explain how the reader must work with the details.

What will be new to my final project/revision is that I would like to add in examples of this intense reading of comics from Jimmy Corrigan. The importance of paying attention to details between this book and Vertigo is very similar. I’m also going to compare the uniqueness of the two books in relation to typical comics. While Jimmy Corrigan looks like a normal comic at first glance, the images and layouts are very different from what we’re used to. I’m also going to discuss how words are so important for Jimmy Corrigan and so unimportant (since they don’t even exist) in Vertigo as a compare/contrast section. For this reason, I think that it will be fitting to link the two books together even though Jimmy Corrigan does have words and the passage of time is shown very differently. My main goal is for the argument that I’m trying to make to be very clear. In my previous revisions, I think I really tried to do that, but it ended up being a lengthy, cluttered mess of half ideas.

Also, last time I focused solely on top-down processing but I have come to realize that there is a lot of bottom-up processing involved as well. So, I’ve found some sources to add that and in doing so, I’ve come across some ideas about visual processing that I would like to talk about to explain how it’s possible that we come up with enough ideas to create a story from a bunch of what would otherwise be random pictures.

Sources:

My main sources will be the articles used in previous revisions, Vertigo, Jimmy Corrigan, and McCloud.

“Reading Comics” by Douglas Wolk (book)

This article on words in comics : http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?vinst=PROD&fmt=6&startpage=-1&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=2331154731&scaling=FULL&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&cfc=1&TS=1322780944&clientId=17454

Processing: http://www.credoreference.com/entry/estpsyctheory/top_down_processing_theories

Detailed Project Proposal- Expression: McCloud and Vertigo

1. Proposed Research:

For the final project, I am researching the topic of expressionism in regards to Scott McCloud’s, “Understanding Comics” and Lynd Ward’s “Vertigo.” I plan to use the definition of expressionism, including McCloud’s, and then demonstrate and prove how “Vertigo” is an expressionist work of art.

More specifically, I first plan to discuss expressionism, according to academic sources as well as McCloud’s definitions. I will conclude that section by highlighting synaesthetics and explaining what it means, how it works, and why it is important.

Secondly, I will apply the definitions of expressionism to “Vertigo” by analyzing specific Ward illustrations and explaining the expressionistic characteristics. I will also make specific connections between McCloud and “Vertigo.” Here, I will begin to confirm my thesis.

Lastly, I will refer back to synaesthetics by applying its definition to “Vertigo,” and showing how Ward incorporates synaesthetics. This will also confirm my thesis.

Each paragraph will incorporate information from academic sources in order to support my thesis.

- Exact Sources (thus far):

1.) “Expressionism.” Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd, 1993. Credo Reference. Web.

- This academic source examines all forms of expressionism. Several paragraphs specifically deal with expressionist art, which is extremely helpful and interesting when interpreting “Vertigo.”

2.) Heller, Steven. "Silent Pictures." The New York Times Book Review 10 October 2010: 16(L). Academic OneFile. Web.

- This academic source is an analyzation of Lynd Ward. It has very insightful information regarding Ward’s expressionistic art.

3.) Manning, Alan D. “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.” Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on, On page(s): 66-69, Volume: 41 Issue: 1, March 1998

- This is also an academic source, but instead deals with McCloud and his definition of expressionism. It is very educational and beneficial by explaining in explicit detail McCloud’s ideas.

4.) McCloud, Scott. “Understanding Comics.” Harper, 2000

5.) Ward, Lynd. “Vertigo.” Dover: 2009

2. Clear Argument or Thesis:

My overall argument is that McCloud’s definition of expressionism applies to Ward’s “Vertigo.” Given the complexity of the definition of expressionism, I am having a difficult time creating a thesis statement. My current thesis statement is: ‘By investigating the fundamentals of expressionism, including Scott McCloud’s definition, it is evident that Lynd Ward’s “Vertigo” is representative of expressionistic characteristics.’ Although this may be a working thesis statement, I feel as if it may be too general. Furthermore, I am unsure if I should referenence the specific examples of “Vertigo” that I will be discussing in the essay.

3. Outline:

I. Introduction

-Brief description of expressionism

-Introduce "Understanding Comics" and "Vertigo" and explain interest in the relationship between the two, and the relationship to expressionism

-Thesis Statement: By investigating the fundamentals of expressionism, including Scott McCloud's definition, it is evident that Lynd Ward's "Vertigo" is representative of expressionistic characteristics (Subject to change)

-Sources used: "Expressionism." ; McCloud, Scott. ; Ward, Lynd.

II. Body Paragraph I: Definition of Expressionism

- Explain definition of expressionism

-Explain McCloud's definition and characteristics of expressionism

-Explain synaesthetics

-What it means

-How it works

-Why it is important

-Sources used: "Expressionism." ; McCloud, Scott. ; Manning, Alan D.

III. Body Paragraph 2: Application of Expressionism to "Vertigo"

-Explain how expressionism applies to "Vertigo"

-Analyze specific ward illustrations that are expressionistic

-Make specific connections between McCloud and "Vertigo"

-Use specific examples from both texts

-Confirmation of thesis

-Sources used: "Expressionism." ; Heller, Steven. ; McCloud, Scott. ; Ward, Lynd.

IV. Body Paragraph 3: "Vertigo and Synaesthetics

-Specifically explain how "Vertigo" demonstrates synaesthetics

-Use specific examples from McCloud and "Vertigo"

-Further confirmation of thesis

-Sources used: Heller, Steven. ; McCloud, Scott. ; Ward, Lynd.

V. Conclusion

-Summarize main points

-Restate thesis