You know how some people like saying there is no limit to creativity? Of course there is a limit! If there was no limit, there would be no space for words like out-of-tune, gaffe, faux pas, plot-hole, inconsistency,...

That being said, there is creativity when you sing off-key, or paint something butt-ugly, or dance clumsily, if the intent is to be purposefully deviant either to express an idea or challenge the limitations of creativity... and that my friend has rules as well.

For example, when you are being told a song is going to be off-key and you begin to feel like it is not off-key enough, it lacks some creativity because its intention is not met!

The limitation to creativity is relative to the artist's intention and the audience's expectation. It is both negotiable and nonnegotiable. And where it is negotiable, it makes for some excitement. Most disagreement on whether a new-something is creative or not happens in that negotiable space. Most agreement on whether a new-something is creative or not happens in nonnegotiable space, where the new-something is new but stays within an already explored and accepted creative space.

Note: I am not done with this post. I don't think I will be for a few days, so keep reading.

My comic compilation list (not arranged in order) is a work in progress. The comments are not reviews, just random thoughts they trigger as I think about them right now. Some day, I hope to spend the time and make more than just random comments. I am not feeling that level of commitment right now!

XKCD: Munroe calls it a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language. I agree with the romance bit. I sleep with my husband on one side and a laptop with two stick people making out while speaking of taking dreaming in stride on the other. (Also read Jasoos Sampat: an XKCD inspired webcomic)

Indexed: I use pie charts and venn diagrams to explain absolutely everything I work on or talk about. If I am not drawing them, I am imagining them in my head. It amuses Tapi when I pull out a pen and paper and mark our argument points across the x and y axes either to prove him wrong, or show him how much we differ from each other in our opinions or reasoning ("mine are closest to the point of origin, therefore, i win!") Eccentricity in Mathematics is named after me! :)

Dilbert: Scott Adam's blog makes an interesting read. He usually takes an idea or a bit of news and muses on it. It's mostly the kind of stuff that makes your mind drift away. Of course, his comic is nothing like his blog. For one thing, it does not indulge you in aimless thought. You read it and wish he wasn’t talking about your life!

Virus Comix: Verbal Diarrhea does not even begin to describe Subnormality. Winston Rowntree presents his observation of life, which is colorful and quite depressing. The only frills to his social criticism seem to be the dark humor he provides as he makes fun of our lives!

Garfield minus Garfield: It may be interesting to see Calvin minus Hobbes... Hold on. Let me google it. Here it is... although not quite what I expected. Conceptually I was thinking up something of deeper significance. But it is still fascinating to see him talk to an inanimate stuffed animal instead of an anthropomorphized one! It brings out a different emotion about Calvin... and his parents even. Tell me what you think.
Ok! Suddenly I realize I haven't said a thing about Garfield minus Garfield. But, it has inspired thought about how other comics minus some main characters might be like.

Sinfest: Sinfest is all over the place with its range of topics. There is nothing it does not deal with - from morality, to religion and political commentary, cameos of comic characters, love and sexuality... even the drawing style is somewhere between manga and cute-sy "casper the friend ghost"isque! It is the sort of comic you want to wake up to on a relaxed sunday morning.

Questionable Content: I am not a big fan of toilet humor. For instance, I love South Park but I find the scatological bits off-putting. You might catch me laughing at them sometimes, but it's a reflex reaction that is not in any way indicative of my inner revulsion! Questionable Content too has some questionable content, but it looks great, has talking gizmos and is entertaining. It also makes me laugh as I think how funny it "could have" been!

AppleGeeks 3.0: It says "Apple" "Geeks" and is a webcomic written by someone with an Indian name living in Maryland. We are a match made in heaven. :)

Joy of Tech: It has been around for almost 10 years now and is all over the place with technology related themes; It's fun going through the older archives and looking at techonlogical trends over the years. It shows how we're becoming both cynical but addicted to technology. (Ok! That was balderdash) They also take digs on the cultish following for apple products!

MegaTokyo: I find now, unlike years ago, that there’s a complex plot that has been developed from what was once a gag-a-day type of strip. In a way, it pays homage to manga comics and online gamers! You pick up a lot of Leetspeak slang from it, like n00b and Pwned!

A Softer World: I have read a few photo novels, but mostly adaptations of popular films or TV series, like Battlestar Gallactica and Star Trek. But, this is the first Fumetti webcomic I read and is ridiculously creative. Not just because they use photographic art instead of illustrations, but the dark humor in this is reflective and real.

Alien Loves Predator: This is another Fumetti comic that uses non sequitur humor! It’s quite absurd and funny.

NightZero: Another Fumetti. Reads more like a novel or a soap opera! (Ok. Kill me!)

Dinosaur Comics: This is my most favorite geek comic! The interesting thing about it is that he never changes the art in the comic from one strip to another.. just the dialogue.. and the sheer variety of ideas that he has explored and culled into the same visual is brilliant. And then there is the clever humor in each strip disguised as being daft! ... Also interesting: A japanese school teacher used the comic as part of a study plan and had his students create their own Dinasaur Comics strips by writing out the dialogues in the panels. Now that's what I call creative writing! Here it is.

Diesel Sweeties: I am sad to say, the conversations in this remind me of mine with Tapi. Maybe if I show it to him, the time to come will see us speaking sagely!.. and how would that go! .. and what would that be!
On a side note, I also like the repetition of the same illustration in all panels of the strip!

PhD Comics: Actually called Piled Higher and Deeper! It’s a huge favorite among my friends who don’t relate to Dilbert yet! Their emotion rubs off on me a lot, cos I seem to relate to the strips dealing with procrastination. If you have been in school long enough (like I have), you can get out of school all you want, but you can’t take the student out of yourself!

Hark, A Vagrant: Each one is different from the other, but again when it comes to mean humor, they are all the same!

The Perry Bible Fellowship: Absurdist humor is usually best when mixed with religion. Although, you don't want to start a day with grimly mocking or cynical commentary about life, even if it is afterlife. Wait a second! As I look at my comic list, I realize I am the perfect audience for it! Also, it offers a range of styles in its visuals from minimalist to elaborate, which makes it interesting.

It’s been a while since I wrote about comics, even though I seem to be immersed in them all the time. It really says a lot about how the things you are most involved in escape the usual banter unlike things that trigger nostalgia.

I had been thinking about how bookstores are suddenly stocked with a lot more manga comic books, graphic novels and uncategorizable illustrated books than the regular comics that make it to the newspapers. It seems like we are suddenly willing to read comics from right to left, back to front, bottom to top, and in any which way possible. This is all very thrilling to me, except sometimes I am intimidated by the sheer innovativeness of the medium. I feel especially behind times when I see kids squatting on the floor perusing them with such enthusiastic familiarity. It is almost embarrassing, more so than not being able to keep up with the current economic crisis.

Still, I can’t help but wonder why when it comes to discussing the development of comics, we are so unbending in the way we define the medium.

Take the history of comics for instance. Even though comics are a fairly new art form, there is so much uncertainty on when it began, and certainly a lot of disagreement on who should be considered the pioneer. This is not surprising given that as you trace back its origins, the distinguishing line between traditional art and caricature is almost nonexistent. In books about the history of comics, writers either relate its beginnings to the age of hieroglyphs, the primitive writing systems of ancient egypt where symbols denoted objects and concepts or skip many years of significant development of the medium and credit Outcault for pioneering the modern comic strip with The Yellow Kid.

In the centuries between the Hieroglyphs and The Yellow Kid, there is so much illustrative art that was developed that simply did not get the deserved attention for the strangest reasons.

Take Rudolphe Töpffer’s work for instance. Almost 70 years before Outcault’s The Yellow Kid, in 1827, Rudolphe Töpffer created the first comic strip in Switzerland. In a span of 10 years he authored seven graphic novels and went on to publish the world’s first comic book called “Histoire de M. Vieux Bois”. The comic book was later published in several languages around the world and even made it to a New York paper, Brother Jonathan in 1842. It was retitled "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck".

The 40 page comic book had 6-10 panels with illustrations and text in captions on each page and told a story about Mr. Oldbuck, who was in love with a rather large woman. The book illustrates instance after instance of Oldbuck trying to win over his “ladye-love” only to be rejected. He finally attempts suicide.

Sounds unhappy, but it was humorous, very imaginative, told in picture format and seems to fit all the criteria that would qualify it as a comic strip. But, Outcault wins on minor technicalities. The Yellow Kid is the first comic to use text balloons. This they felt was particularly significant given that it is the essence of the comic format as we know it and makes the text an integral but “accompanying” part of the strip. Neither the text nor the picture alone can drive the narrative forward, whereas in Mr. Oldbuck, the pictures carried relatively little of the narrative load. The story can be understood by reading the captions alone, and the pictures only worked to add to the humor. Moreover, The Yellow Kid has continuing characters that appeared in strip after strip throughout its existence. Whereas Mr. Oldbuck appears only in this 40-page story.

Still all this in the context of today, where we have many non-series comic books, seems to me like we need to expand our definition of comics and give Töpffer the honor it deserves.

Moreover Brother Jonathan, (in which “The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck” was published decades before The Yellow Kid) is a character who predates Uncle Sam as the epitome of America. So if it is comic enough for Brother Jonathan should it not be comic enough for the rest of the Americans and the world?

When Anand was here with his friend Snuggy, we spent a few hours in the Newseum before the Pearl Jam concert. I have been itching to write about it, and relive the whole adrenaline rush I felt as I walked through certain sections, especially the Pulitzer Prize Photography Exhibit, which was emotionally overpowering, in a way that was disturbing and humbling at the same time.

There was a small exhibit displaying the oldest to the newest editorial cartoons and comics in a timeline fashion, which I was thrilled to see. I took a picture with the original copies for the first Yellow Kid and The Katzenjammer Kids, and saw so many of the comics that I had only read about in books about the history of comics. I am glad the newseum thought it worthwhile to dedicate a section to this art form, even though I secretly wish it were bigger.

There was a whole floor with newspapers all through time, reminding us of how far we have come in this literary genre and profession of gathering news and exposing and influencing belief systems all over the world.

We spotted the Telugu "Eenadu" newspaper on a wall that lists all the newspapers of the world. I never thought of it as a paper worth mentioning in a museum outside the country. Hey, why the heck not!

I learnt a few things about the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall in a way that I will remember for a very long time. Seeing the visuals of people escaping to west berlin from the east, of brave reporters, of photographers and fighters was moving. Here's an online exhibit on the newseum site The wall itself looked colorful. I'm told all good art comes out of bad circumstances. This could very well be an example of it.

As I felt about the Berlin Exhibit, I felt even as I walked through the 9/11 gallery, which focussed on the challenges the media faced in reporting news about the horrifying event that shook the world. Many lost their lives or live with permanent injuries.

Aside from the galleries and exhibits, we saw a collection of articles, unlike anything you will see in other museums. There was Time Magazines truck lined with bullet holes in every inch of it's body, protecting journalists as they reported news in the Balkans; there was the laptop and passport of the Wall Street Reporter Daniel Pearl who was murdered in Pakistan; there was the door that burglers taped after they broke into the watergate complex, leading to Pres.Nixon's resignation, among many others and they all felt very REAL serving as a reminder that these things REALLY happened, like they were not fictional, faraway things that don't affect us. These are real people risking their lives to report terrible events all over the world. They shape and reflect our future. By the time you walk from floor to floor, it hits you - the remarkable work, the sacrifices, the tragic events, the struggles, the humanness, the REALness of it all.

But, in all this, I feel like I only passed through the exhibits and didn't get a chance to take everything in. I am eager to go back soon, and spend a good half day, if I can just find an unhurried weekend to do it.

ps: the new NEWseum is impressive looking and worth going to just for the architecture. A $400M, 250,000-square-foot contemporary structure smack in the center of downtown DC (near the US capitol).

I was so excited to bump into this website with digitized copies of The Yellow Kid. It’s one of those comics that you hear about all the time and never get to reading. I remember reading a lot about it in books about the history of comics and even heard a lot of amusing stories about the ruckus it created in the media world, but it is only in the last week that I have been able to see a good amount of the strips and appreciate it for what it really is.

In the 1800s, comics were suddenly becoming a popular form of entertainment. With the advancement of technology, newspapers and magazines were able to publish quality illustrations and comics soon became the differentiating factor that set the standard by which print material was being judged.

Initially these strips were modest affairs, mostly in black and white appearing in the bottom of the page, but by the end of the century, newspapers began to publish the “Sunday Funnies” supplement that soon became a thriving genre.

While most of the strips were moderately popular with no prize-winning artists, there was one that suddenly emerged as a leading light by the end of the century. It is Richard Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley (1895-1897), which was America’s first commercially successful newspaper comic strip that first appeared in the Truth magazine, and later in Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper called The New York World. It was the leading light for a lot of reasons, some of which had very little to do with comics- the medium.

Hogan’s Alley may not be a "comic" in the strict sense of the word, as it had only one large attractive illustration, produced in color, that took up a full page. But, the term comic in those days meant "being part of the newspaper" and not "being comical" and therefore fit the description perfectly. Moreover, it was the one to have influenced the use of word balloons in comics. To be precise, even though Outcault was not the first to combine bubbles and a multi-image narrative, and that word balloons had been used since Mayan art in 600 CE, the popularity of Hogan’s Alley made comics particularly recognizable by their use of word balloons and became the driving force of the form.

Hogan's Alley is about the New York tenement ghettos, whose inhabitants are mostly Irish immigrants. The children in the Alley are troublemakers who are coarse and crass, but possess a charming innocence that allows them to comment unreservedly on the injustices and hypocrisy they perceive in the city dwellers. As Outcault took Hogan’s Alley to different newspapers, the kids became less vulgar or more, less critical or more, depending on the audience and their capacity to take in Outcault’s critic of the class and racial tensions of New York.

Hogan’s Alley had a kid by the name of Mickey Dugan, with huge ears, a bald head, and a yellow nightshirt with dialogues written on them, who appeared every now and then in a small role. He was an insignificant character in the early strips, but soon emerged as a lead character as people began to refer to him as The Yellow Kid, because of his distinct looks.


Around 1896, William Hearst, the arch-rival of Pulitzer, lured Richard Outcault to join his company and began to publish
Hogan’s Alley in his newspaper. This prompted Pulitzer to sue Hearst and Outcault and the judge ruled that Hogan’s Alley belonged to Pulitzer, but that Outcault could take The Yellow Kid, wherever he liked. Thus, Outcault drew for Hearst’s The Yellow Kid and Pulitzer hired George Luks to draw for Hogan’s Alley, creating two rivaling strips with the same theme for two different newspapers. Eventually, the two rivals gave in and Hogan’s Alley came to be known as The Yellow Kid even in Pulitzer’s newspaper as it was the more popular one.

The rivalry of the two leading newspapers and their reputation for editorializing news for profit became so popular that during the Spanish American War, the sensational news reporting style, where news of the war became more and more unreliable came to be known as “yellow journalism” (today’s infotainment).

The Yellow Kid was the first comic to be heavily merchandised with him appearing in everything from toys to whiskey bottles to ladies fans to cigarette packs and hundreds of other products and Mickey Dugan began to make guest appearances in other comic strips as well. Eventually with the popularity of other comic strips, Hearst and Pulitzer began to run an array of comic strips in one page instead of dedicating a full page to The Yellow Kid. Outcault too lost interest in the character when he learnt that he had no exclusive commercial control over it. However, both newspapers continued to be called The Yellow Kid papers.

Despite the sad end of The Yellow Kid, and it’s very short life, it changed the comic landscape forever. Just as it left, a fierce circulation war began with hundreds of strips making their appearance in papers all over the country. Press barons were fighting hard to retain cartoonists, but the demand was obviously greater than the supply. This led to the emergence of strip syndicates, who collected works of cartoonists and distributed them to different newspapers all over the country.
Three names of cartoonists are mentioned by historians as being the most highly syndicated: Windsor McCay, Lyonel Feininger and George Herriman. It seems, Outcault left the party a tad too soon!

This was one of the first comic strips to make it to newspapers (1905–1913), by a man who was also the pioneer of early animated cartoons. He set the standard for Walt Disney and the likes in the later decades.

During this time, a single comic strip usually occupied an entire page in a newspaper, which is a huge contrast to our times where 20 artists share the same space and fight for attention. Whether this points to the popularity of comics, the lack of competition or the lack of other media entertainment is debatable. But, that a newspaper is willing to forgo one entire page for a “child fantasy” comic strip says a lot about what they thought eye-popping images can do to entice readers.

Little Nemo in Slumberland is about Nemo, a 5 year old kid, who falls asleep when the lights are turned off and dreams of a fantastical world with surreal characters. Nemo’s main purpose is to make it to Slumberland where he had been summoned by King Morpheous to be the playmate of his daughter, the Princess. At the end of each strip while he’s on his way to Slumberland, a terrible mishap befalls him leading to serious injury or death, like him turning into a monkey or being crushed by a giant mushroom. In the last panel, he wakes up, screaming in his sleep and a grownup in the household comes to scold or cajole him.

For an early 1900 comic strip, the rendering style is extremely sophisticated and colorful (following the popular art nouveau fashion of that era), with interesting perspective drawings that suggest limitless distance, and a linear cinematic structure. For a children’s fantasy, the adventures in the dream world are really dark and threatening, which may be attributed to McCay’s creative genius. However, a lot of comic writers also consider this his major flaw and write that he focused too much on the drawing than the writing!

Over the years, there have been hundreds of adaptations of Little Nemo, in book and movie forms but none have been as successful as the original… today the original print pages go for $50,000 or more… (and to think that there was a day when people wrapped fish in these masterpieces!!!)

There is a book called Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays! with the best of his works, reproduced in “actual size”, with the exact look of newsprint selling for $120.

I spent my last year in Manipal working on my 150-page masters thesis on the power of comics. It wasn't the beginning of my fascination with the art form, but definitely my first introduction to the expansive world of graphic art. I remember sitting for hours on the stone bench outside my uncle's house, facing the valley and reading about how comics smuggled their way into art books and went through many revolutions and movements over three centuries to gain some cultural legitimacy. The history of comics, even though relatively short, is still vast and fascinating and infinitely debatable. It is one medium that we easily immerse ourselves in, enjoy thoroughly and still refuse it the artistic status it deserves.
My research was meant to be a study on how comics can be used for development communication. Since illiteracy or semi-literacy and poverty go hand in hand, graphic storytelling was seen as one way to convey social messages. I read hundreds of visual narratives and graphic novels and studied illustrations that were being used to raise awareness and have witnessed their power in influencing attitudes and our manner of living. But, more than anything, the medium is undoubtedly one of the most straightforward and universally intelligible mediums that I have come across.
As I speak of "development" and "social awareness", I think I should also mention that the comics I read were not those boring comics that no one ever reads. I presented a comparative analysis of Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes and Pat Brady's Rose is Rose and touched on lots of other popular comics since the early 19th century.
Has my thesis been beneficial to anyone or in anyway contributed to an understanding of the medium and how it can be used? Probably not. There is one untouched copy that has been sitting in my shelf for five years and another in my university library equally ignored, but my research was undoubtedly one of the most fun and rewarding experiences of my life. I remember when thanking my guide on the "Acknowledgements" page, I said "It took me 21 years to do something that has motivated me to learn more"
Despite doing a second Masters in Film and Video since then and working in the development field as a creative media designer for a few years now, I still think my love for comics has in some way influenced my career choices.