Untitled work by Mcbess

 - from Mcbess' website, image 11 of 47

     I'll open up by saying that I really dig comics*. It's an underappreciated and often overlooked artistic medium that combines both visual art and language to tell a story. For a while, I was going to post up a single page from Spike's excellent webcomic Templar, Arizona (without a doubt I'll bring her up again before the semester's through), but Spike posted a link on her twitter feed to the work of another artist called Mcbess (real name Matthieu Bessudo). The above image is his, and I like it because his style is so damn cool. It's like what happens when 30's cartoons a la Steamboat Willie meet tattoo art. It's not a comic, but the style is comic-like, and (in addition to thinking that it pushes the envelope regarding what we might consider aesthetically valuable work) I think it illustrates rather well how one can create a character using visual art. By gathering together an eclectic assortment of objects and symbols and positioning them around (and on!) the central figure of the woman, Mcbess suggests that the woman has a certain relation to them, that they say something about her. The pocketknife above her head, for example, and her toothy grin might indicate a certain dangerousness, certainly an air of mystery (that and "The Dark Side" written over her left shoulder... and the axe). She's a cartoon, sure, almost a pinup, but she's vastly (I think) more interesting than the stern-faced Greek nudes you see in museums and she's nowhere near being a whitewashed, objectifying Playboy spread.

     If it's truth and beauty we're looking for in artwork, then maybe this image can't help us much. But I believe very much that literature (including comics) has the strange capacity to show us something of the truth, just as we are astounded by some handful of lines we read. Intriguing characters being arguably the single most important feature of fiction, I place a lot of value in artists that can draw the viewer in before even the first word appears on the page.

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* or, if you prefer, graphic novels.