Serials to Graphic Novels
Page 28
To those familiar with Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice outgrowing the White Rabbit’s house, Awano’s illustrations are a redeployment of the iconic scene by Tenniel, who refashioned Carroll’s designs with naturalism for a Sixties readership. Whereas Tenniel uses three plates to illustrate the growth scene up to the point where Alice kicks the lizard up the chimney in Wonderland, and Carroll uses five illustrations to show the same sequence in Under Ground, the Dynamite team allocates twenty-five panels—a mix of panoramas and close-ups—to present this same series of events. The sound effects add an aural dimension to Alice’s uncontrollable growth, which becomes not only volatile but also noisy.
Frame by frame, the growth scene in the Dynamite adaptation unfolds before our eyes. Alice enters the White Rabbit’s house, finds a bottle, and swiftly drinks its contents; a motion line and the words “GLUG GLUG” convey movement and sound, respectively, and illustrate the speed with which Alice is drinking. In the very next panel, Alice hits her head; a sound effect, “BUMP,” and a speech balloon with the word “OUCH!” (n. pag.) bring loud noises into the picture plane to magnify the effects of Alice’s change in size. As we turn the page, the panels proportionately increase in height to accommodate Alice, who is in the process of outgrowing the White Rabbit’s house. Whereas Carroll best captures the claustrophobia of the scene, Tenniel expertly transforms Carroll’s simple rectangular box into an authentic Victorian domestic interior house with casement windows (see figs. 39A and 39B, ch. 3, 145). The graphic novel medium allows for an expansion of this iconic scene into three segmented panels, calling attention to the expansiveness of Alice’s form (see fig. 58): the left panel shows Alice’s left foot on the grate of the fireplace, the center panel features her head and right leg in an uncomfortably twisted position, and the right panel focuses on her left arm and part of her torso as well as some toppled over furniture.
Sound effects in these three panels and surrounding ones (for example, “BOOOF,” “CRASSH,” and “CRASSH SMASH”), all in vivid colors and bolded capital letters inserted directly into the frames, magnify the enormity of Alice’s size, the disruption she is causing to the White Rabbit’s house, and the discomfort Alice is experiencing due to her uncontrollable growth. Nonetheless, Awano carries on Tenniel’s style of representational realism and uses these top three vertical panels of a five-panel page to create a country house that includes furniture and a chandelier that Alice is in the process of knocking over. The positioning of Alice is nearly identical to that of the Tenniel plate (see fig. 39B, ch. 3, 145), but Awano’s room is larger, which minimizes the menacing aspect of the scene since Alice still has room to grow. Still, Alice keeps on growing and growing, until, in the following panels, she reaches one hand out the window and one foot up the chimney.
In the two smaller panels on the page positioned below the frames of Alice outgrowing the house, Awano shifts our focus from Alice to the disgruntled homeowner, the White Rabbit. Tenniel more believably captured Carroll’s social caricature of the Victorian gentleman/rabbit perpetually afraid of lateness than Awano does: Awano’s rabbit wears a nondescript vest whereas Tenniel’s rabbit has a fashionable waistcoat, umbrella, and pocket watch—details that authenticate the character’s human traits (see fig. 40B, ch. 3, 148). However, Awano’s White Rabbit looks angry enough to burn down his own house to rid himself of Alice (as the source text dictates) although he first decides to send Bill the Lizard down his chimney (Bill is subsequently kicked out by Alice’s enormous foot). In contrast, Tenniel’s White Rabbit looks terrified of Alice’s large hand that descends from the window of his house, and Carroll’s White Rabbit looks like a mouse with donkey ears dressed in a suit (see fig. 40A, ch. 3, 148). Moreover, throughout the sequential frames appear colored sound effects that are onomatopoeic words to vocalize the disruption Alice’s growth is causing to the White Rabbit’s house. This graphic novel adaptation keeps Alice in a noisy state of perpetual growth until she discovers some tasty little cakes and changes size again, shrinking smaller than the Caterpillar sitting atop a mushroom.
Figure 58. “Alice Outgrowing the White Rabbit’s House.” Artwork by Érica Awano for Leah Moore and John Reppion’s The Complete Alice in Wonderland, 2009. The Complete Alice in Wonderland ™ and © 2014 Dynamite Characters, LLC. Image used with permission courtesy of Dynamite Entertainment. www.dynamite.com. All Rights Reserved.
A major device available to the graphic artist is the opportunity to change the size, shape, and layout of panels to influence the reader-viewer’s speed of reading. On the first hand, for the Campfire adaptation, Nagulakonda creatively varies panel angles, curves frames, and creates the illusion that panels are tumbling into each other to make the growth sequence of Wonderland fast-paced and dynamic. Close-ups of Alice finding the bottle in the White Rabbit’s house and sipping from it seemingly tumble into successive panels of Alice outgrowing the house, sticking first her hand out the window and then her foot up the chimney, sending Bill the Lizard flying out the chimney in a close-up panel with a blaring sound effect, “AAAIIEE!” (Helfand 21). The technique of overlapping panels speeds up the processes of reading and viewing and gives the illusion that Alice’s bodily transformations are happening very quickly. On the other hand, three of the panels in this sixteen-panel sequence reengage the same iconic Tenniel illustration of Alice outgrowing the White Rabbit’s house (see fig. 39B, ch. 3, 145), although Alice’s orientation is reversed. These three panels seemingly suspend time by returning the reader-viewer’s gaze to Alice’s discomfort, the impossibility of her situation, and her futile efforts to free herself.61 The Campfire Alice also cleverly devises a collage technique to animate the growth series, demonstrating how the graphic novel can approximate time-lapse photography. Superimposed images of Alice, each smaller than the one above it or larger than the one below it, simulate the processes of shrinking and growing, respectively. Alice is changing size in front of our very eyes.
Whereas Tenniel depicts Alice discovering the bottle whose paper label reads “‘DRINK ME’” (AA 16), Nagulakonda animates this same scene by superimposing images of Alice in four sizes, each successively smaller than the previous one (Helfand 9). The first three Alice figures are in faint lines and pale colors. However, the fourth and smallest Alice figure appears in solid lines and bright colors to indicate her present shrunken size. The shift in color palette illuminates the small size Alice has now become.
Much as in the “DRINK ME” scene, in the “EAT ME” scene (Helfand 10), Nagulakonda gives the illusion of rapid fire change, in this case of growth, by superimposing three increasingly larger figures of Alice onto the first image (see fig. 59). Faint lines and pale colors depict Alice as she first bites the cake marked “EAT ME” and famously declares (echoing the source text, AA 20): “Curiouser and curiouser! Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was!” (Helfand 10). In the largest image, Alice, who is now more than nine feet high, appears in solid lines and bright colors that signal she has completed her transformation, at least for now. Helfand and Nagulakonda also increase the height of the panels, which seem to grow larger to accommodate Alice’s now telescopic height.
Figure 59. “Curiouser and Curiouser!” Artwork by Rajesh Nagulakonda for Lewis Helfand’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, 2010. © Campfire 2014.
Growing blends seamlessly into the following dramatic scene where Alice cries great tears, shrinks once again, and nearly drowns in a pool of her own tears (Helfand 11). Alice is contemplating her identity in two interconnected thought bubbles—“Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning?” and “But if I’m not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I?” (11)—when the panel angle shifts to a long shot, showing just how tiny Alice has become.62 The final panel on this page is a close-up of Alice falling into the pool of her own tears, a scene that Tenniel and Carroll rendered. However, in the graphic novel format, the words “SPLASH!” in a wavy font mimic the color and sound of the brightly colored bl
ue water noisily splashing outside the frame into the outside gutter. Nagulakonda animates the rush of water, Alice’s long flying locks, and the terror on her face. There is no closure to this dramatic moment—the figure of drowning Alice bleeds into the gutter—and the drama continues as the reader-viewer turns the page to find Alice attempting to swim in the water, declaring in a word balloon: “I wish I hadn’t cried so much! I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!” (12).
One of the most disquieting bodily distortions in Under Ground and Wonderland occurs when Alice, upon eating one side of a mushroom, shrinks so rapidly that “she felt a violent blow underneath her chin: it had struck her foot!” (AA 53). Carroll drew this eerie scene in Alice’s Adventures Under Ground as did Rackham in his 1907 edition of Alice in Wonderland; in contrast, Tenniel did not delineate it or the frightening scene where Alice’s “immense length of neck … seemed to rise like a stalk” (UG 62) above the treetops, both of which Awano and Nagulakonda illustrate. Tenniel “rejected [these] two unpleasant possibilities” (Morris 191). Might both distortions have been perceived as too disturbing for an 1860’s middle-class readership that valued aesthetic appeal? Awano may have been following Rackham’s interpretation of this scene, since the scriptwriters directed her to his illustrations, but the scene’s inclusion in the Dynamite and Campfire adaptations shows an engagement with and redeployment of Carroll’s author-illustrated Under Ground.
Those familiar with Carroll’s drawing of Alice’s large head balancing precariously on her disproportionately small feet and hands will recognize the imprint of Carroll’s caricature (see fig. 60B) within Awano’s graphics (see fig. 60A). However, Carroll’s single illustration powerfully grows into three panels that animate the distortion, frame by frame. In the first panel, a tiny Alice attempts to wrap her arms around the large, round mushroom to break off a part of it from each side; the Caterpillar tells Alice that eating one side of the mushroom will make her grow taller, and eating the other side will make her shorter. The sound effect “CHOK” appears directly where each of Alice’s hands is breaking off a piece of the mushroom, so the reader-viewer hears her action. In the second frame, Alice is loudly eating the piece of the mushroom—“MUNCH MUNCH” is inserted in large bold letters—that makes her shrink. The third panel, which resembles Carroll’s original (see fig. 60B), is a more aesthetically pleasing rendition of this same disturbing scene, more along the lines that Tenniel might have achieved had he illustrated this scene. Awano makes Alice’s facial features pretty and gives fullness to Alice’s hair that curls on the ground. Carroll’s Alice, in contrast, looks dreamy and complacent in his Under Ground illustrations, as if she is accepting of her gruesome distortion.
Figure 60. A: “She Felt a Violent Blow on Her Chin.” Artwork by Érica Awano for Leah Moore and John Reppion’s The Complete Alice in Wonderland, 2009. The Complete Alice in Wonderland ™ and © 2014 Dynamite Characters, LLC. Image used with permission courtesy of Dynamite Entertainment. www.dynamite.com. All Rights Reserved;
Figure 60. B: “She Felt a Violent Blow on Her Chin.” Illustration by Lewis Carroll for his Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, 1864.
Alice’s wide eyes and alarmed expression in Awano’s depiction match the source text where Carroll indicates that Alice “was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change” (UG 62). “Good gracious!” (Moore and Reppion n. pag.)—Alice exclaims in a word balloon positioned against the gray-blue sky. Alice looks as if she knows she must act quickly because, according to the source text, “There was hardly room to open her mouth, with her chin pressing against her foot, but she did it at last, and managed to bite off a little bit of the top of the mushroom” (UG 62). At this point, Alice’s neck elongates uncontrollably, and an eagle takes her for a serpent. In graphic novel format, a scene that Carroll depicts in two small pictures in his handwritten Under Ground becomes a terrifying twelve-panel sequence across a two-page spread (Moore and Reppion n. pag.). Alice’s long neck and head reach above the treetops, much as Carroll attempts (UG 62–63), but Awano’s illustration, which improves upon the original, approaches the transformation from a variety of angles. Close-ups, long shots, and one aerial view show the extent of Alice’s extremely strange bodily distortion.
Graphic Alice—in recalling designs from Carroll and Tenniel—is an inheritor of the schools of caricature and realism, refashioned once again in a new medium. Growing, shrinking, twisting, turning, and vocalizing her discontent, a dynamic Alice transforms before our eyes in the graphic classics, bringing new readers to Carroll’s enduring tale.
The Victorian illustrated book bridges aesthetic periods and connects two derided genres, the serial and the comic book. This resilient genre thus moves beyond Queen Victoria’s time to find new expression for our time. The graphic classics returns to, reuses, modifies, and in some cases remediates characters and iconic scenes and also foregrounds historical and psychological elements indelicate for a Victorian readership. In adaptations of Alice, Oliver Twist, and other nineteenth-century novels, panels of different shapes and sizes, sound effects, motion lines, superimposed figures, panoramic views, and new approaches to iconic illustrations demonstrate the graphic novel’s ability to reshape a nineteenth-century classic into a form that engages twenty-first century readers with words and images on multiple levels. The graphic classics refashions the style and creative vision of an author or illustrator into a prescient hybrid form that recalls the revelatory dimension of the Victorian definition of illustration and resituates the nineteenth-century novel for a new age. Peeling back these layers of illustration reveals the still powerful original imprint of the Victorian caricaturist and realist.
Notes
Introduction: The Arc of the Victorian Illustrated Book
1. Madame Merle presents her meditation on identity to Isabel Archer in ch. 19 of James’s The Portrait of a Lady. The following passage posits that the self has a “shell” of material “things.” Pondering where the self begins and ends, Madame Merle declares:
you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances. There is no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we are each of us made up of a cluster of appurtenances. What do you call one’s self? … It overflows into everything that belongs to us—and then it flows back again. I know that a large part of myself is in the dresses I choose to wear. I have a great respect for things! (181)
2. See Deborah Cohen’s chapter on “Home as a Stage: Personality and Possessions” in Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions, 122–44.
3. Kooistra includes a parenthetical reference to Thad Logan’s The Victorian Parlour: A Cultural Study that, in turn, quotes from a period source by Lucy Orrinsmith, who describes the Victorian parlor as follows: “On a circular table (of course with pillar and claws) are placed books—too often selected for their bindings alone—arranged like the spokes of a wheel” (2). The table I imagine has claw feet as a nod to Orrinsmith’s description.
4. In Drawn from Memory, Shepard includes one line drawing entitled “Spend the afternoon in the drawing-room” featuring Shepard and his brother reading in the drawing room in front of the fire with books on the carpet between them. In North and South, the reference to the Hale family’s books appears in ch. 10, “Wrought Iron and Gold,” 72, and the reference to the Thornton family’s books in ch. 15, “Masters and Men,” 103.
5. The Household Edition of Dickens includes John Forster’s biography The Life of Charles Dickens in addition to the complete works. I recommend Allingham and Louttit’s “The Illustrators of the Household Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens (22 vols., 1871–79)” in
6. Arlene Jackson calls attention to the Victorian illustrated
book’s third, oft-neglected period in Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Richard Maxwell discusses the decline of the genre in his afterword to The Victorian Illustrated Book, but also considers ways in which the genre crossed borders into advertising, the art book, the art press, and modernist objects, 385–419.
7. Paul Goldman and Simon Cooke’s Reading Victorian Illustration, 1855–1875 also follows the format of an essay collection, focusing on this one productive period of the Victorian illustrated book.
8. Even the most recent edition on the Victorian illustrated book, Paul Goldman and Simon Cooke’s Reading Victorian Illustration, 1855–1875, shows scholars actively recalling these early assessments.
9. Philip Allingham separates Leech from the other caricaturists in his commentary on “Ignorance and Want” and notes that Leech’s whimsical style, “although it may be described as caricature verging at times on cartoon, was more rigorously realistic and less emblematic than Browne’s,”
10. Lisa Surridge and Mary Elizabeth Leighton are in the process of co-authoring a book on Victorian illustrated serial fiction from 1859–75.
11. Navasky and Maidment focus on the comic print, and their works inform my revaluation, especially if we consider that by the late eighteenth century in England, the term “caricature” had broadened to include book illustration as well as strictly visual forms of print culture.
12. To answer this question, Harvey suggests that Pickwick made “the comic fancy a reality one could laugh at” (8) and also raises the eighteenth-century tradition of graphic satire and caricature, which I discuss in ch. 1.