Part 2, both forward and backward. I learned after writing this that there are indeed scholars who write on the connection between Emblem Books and Comic Books. I was actually accepted to present a paper on this issue at a conference in Germany a couple of years ago, but finances kept me from attending. Whatever faults one might find with Moore's Promethea, it is still one of the most fascinating comics texts of the last few decades.
Link
to the Past: The Argument for “Metaphore”
First appears in Promethea #12, 2001, by Alan Moore, J.H.
Williams III, and Mick Gray
Reprinted in Promethea v.2 and Absolute
Promethea v.1
One
of the most important parts of establishing a form as a literature is
establishing a history. We look to Homer
for poetry, to Sophocles for drama, and trace the ways those forms have evolved
over millennia. Scott McCloud’s opening
to Understanding Comics and Thierry
Smolderen’s forthcoming The Origin of
Comics do their best to delineate this history of comics. McCloud reaches back to cave paintings and
Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Smolderen locates one of comics’ originary branches
in the work of William Hogarth. Artists such
as William Blake, or works like the Bayeaux tapestry are also often cited. One literary form that never seems to make an
appearance in discussions of the origins of comics is the emblem book. An art form of the sixteenth and seventeenth
century, it flared in popularity during these years and then disappeared; perhaps
this is the reason for its absence from comics studies. Peter Daly describes the emblem thus:
“[E]mblems are composed of symbolic pictures and words; a meaningful
relationship between the two is intended; the manner of communication is
connotative rather than denotative” (8), though he takes pains to note that
this is hardly a definitive description (for an example of an emblem, see Fig.
1 and 2 in Appendix). An emblem is
composed of the “inscriptio, pictura, and subscriptio”
(7, emphasis in original). The inscriptio is a “short motto or
quotation [that] introduces the emblem” (7), the pictura “depict[s] one or several objects, persons, events, or
actions” (7), and the subscriptio
comes “[b]eneath the pictura...a
prose or verse quotation from some learned source or from the emblematist
himself” (7). As Daly’s above quotation
suggests, there is a “meaningful relationship” intended between these three
elements. This is also reminiscent of
what McCloud calls “the most common type of word/picture
combination [in comics]...the interdependent, where words and
pictures go hand in hand to convey an idea that neither alone could convey”
(155, emphasis in original). By this
similarity alone, I contend that the emblem should have some place in the study
of pre-comics history.
Moore
and Williams’ “Metaphore” is an emblem book.
It is laid out in a way that not-so-subtly hearkens to the most common
versions of the emblem book from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (for
an example, see Fig. 3 in Appendix). As
we see in Figs. 1 and 2, from Stephen Bateman’s A Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation, the early modern
emblem opens with the inscriptio, a
description of the topic which will be covered by both pictura and subscriptio. Similarly, in “Metaphore,” each page features
a Scrabble tile anagram of “Promethea” that gives a commentary and introduction
of some sort on both the picture and the verse on the page. In Fig. 3, the inscriptio is “Metaphore,” and the verse commenting on the picture
notes the similarities between stepping over a cliff and beginning a venture, a
metaphor (Moore et al. n.p.). The notion
of a pictura in each emblem is
relatively self-explanatory, though Moore and Williams expand the possibility
of the pictura by including not only
a speaker of the subscriptio, but a
reader, in the figure of Promethea, as well.
This addition to the form serves a function in the serial of which
“Metaphore” is a chapter, and also links to the lineage of an art form that
defies solid generic delineators.
Similarly, the images along the bottom of each page of “Metaphore,”
showing the birth, life, and death of Aleister Crowley add another level of pictura/subscriptio, and asks the question of whether or not a picture can
also comment on the primary pictura
of an emblem. In Bateman’s emblem, the pictura is followed by a two-part subscriptio which comments on the
picture and on the idea of “covetousness.”
In “Metaphore,” the verse commentary from “Mike” and “Mack,”
(representing microcosmic and macrocosmic interpretations, respectively),
offers interpretation of the pictures on the page, both the Tarot card and the
life of Crowley, as well as upon the somewhat enigmatic Scrabble tile inscriptios. This brief comparison thus demonstrates, and
solidifies, the lineage between the two forms.
Comics communicate metaphorically much of the time, and certain genres
rely heavily on iconic resonances of particular visual cues (a lantern, for
example). It is my thinking that
scholarship on the emblem and scholarship on comics has a convergence that has
not yet been realized.
A further aspect
of “Metaphore” which makes it an important piece to consider is the way in
which it can be lifted from its serialized milieu, and read in isolation as an
emblem book. The pictures and words
within this 24-page chapter comment upon history, both of the human species and
its culture, and on the development of the individual human being as thinking
subject. Though a reader coming to this
text without any knowledge of its basis may wonder at the choices of speakers
in the text (Promethea, Mike and Mack, Crowley), they do not detract in any way
from the discussion going on on each page.
A single issue of an ongoing series that can be lifted from its
serialized format offers potential for the inclusion of
traditionally-serialized genres to be included in lists of important comics.
Appendix
Figure 1: Inscriptio,
Pictura, and partial Subscriptio,
from Bateman, A Christall Glasse of
Christian Reformation, courtesy Mills Memorial Library, McMaster
University, Hamilton, ON.
Figure 2: Partial Subscriptio,
from Bateman, A Christall Glasse of
Christian Reformation, courtesy Mills Memorial Library, McMaster
University, Hamilton, ON.
Figure 3: A modern-day emblem from Moore and Williams
"Metaphore."
Bibliography
and Works Cited
Bateman, Stephen. A Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation.
London: John Day, 1569. Print.Courtesy
of Mills Memorial Library, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON.
Daly, Peter. Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels between the
Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries. Toronto: U of T Press, 1979. ebrary.
Web. 3 Nov. 2013.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: DC
Comics, 2000. Print.
Moore, Alan (w), J.H. Williams III
(p), and Mick Gray (i). “Metaphore.” Absolute
Promethea v.1. La Jolla:
Wildstorm Productions, 2009. N.pag. Print.
