It’s not even past

Just wanted to highlight and/or revisit this idea from Faulkner’s brain in relation to Bayou. I think the notion that we talked about in class, as the past being a constantly hanging thing, always present and reoccurring, influencing the present and the future is a pretty truthful and complex idea. The fact that a comic in the 2000’s can revisit the planes of the past and make them bright again is a baffling kind of idea to think about. This occurrence of the old rekindling in the form of the new seems to back up Faulkner’s words pretty seamlessly. By taking the recent past (recency depending upon perspective) and shaping something new, “the past is never dead, it’s not even past” holds true. But I’m rambling right now. What I mean is, this notion of creating new from old ideas, ways, existences etc. in terms of time backs up Faulkner’s words in a metaphorical sense: that is, it’s not even past as the “past” representative of time or an idea of time as humans know it. However, if we read Faulkner’s statement more literally, time becomes less important. If we read: “it’s not even past” as “it’s not even itself,” now this statement suggests something about the past being something else entirely, or not entirely.
So if the past is not the past as we know it in terms of just what happened before now, the wtf is it? Your guess is as good as mine. But I guess that maybe it is Bayou that is this “otherly” sort of past. The past is never dead. Yeah okay, we understand, Maus brings back Holocaust, Fun home brings back Bechdels childhood, Bayou brings back the racist South. But do they really bring them back? Or are they bringing back something else? Maybe, I dunno, whatevs. poop

Bechdel’s desk

Bechdel\'s desk
This random clip of Bechdel reveals her desk in her present life. Or recent past. We talked about the contrast of her desk/ work area with her father’s in the book and how they differ. Here, it looks like Bechdel has sunken into a claustrophobic work space like her father used to have.
Yeah kind of a weird clip of her but I dunno.

We3, The Form!

Some of the formal aspects in We3 are very different from Nat Turner one being the full page “bleed” I think it was called. In We3 Grant Morrison seems to be upping the ante with the full page images, making them stretch onto two full pages instead of just one. The images (for example the guy who gets assassinated in chap 1) also have this extreme 3-D effect to them; they look like they are happening outside of the comic book. In the two page “bleed” where the guy in chapter one gets assassinated, the bullets obliterating his body actually look like they are coming from behind the audience into his pierced flesh. Or maybe not behind but it puts us in the eyes of the animal weapons (We3).
How Morrison achieved this effect stretched over two pages is an interesting topic to investigate. It looks like it would take some serious skills in perspective to draw or paint or computerize these massive 3-D images.
Finally, the power of these two page images is immense in the action category. When the reader turns the page and hits one of these panels, there is nothing else to look at besides this one moment. In a one page bleed, the reader has the other page to distract the eyes even if only for a moment. In other words, it takes less effort to focus on the intensity of the two pager because there is literally nothing else to look at.

Well, I was curious as to see what the guy actually looked like, so, I went out on the web in search of a picture of old man Ward. Unfortunately, finding a picture of him is apparently about as rare as finding words in his woodcut novels… however, I did manage to find one real life photo when he was old and saggy-> http://www.bcn.net/~mmccurdy/penmaen.htm (scroll down to the bottom) he is also with Allen Ginsberg.

I also saw what is apparently a self portrait of himself, done in 1927.

After reading Gods’ Man, I wanted to see who was the man behind such haunting images, and, I wasn’t disappointed.