Calvin and Hobbes was the first comic series I truly remember reading when I was still a kid. Me, my brothers and mum used to bunch together in the bookstore and giggle incessantly at Bill Watterson’s jokes, the cleverness and absurdity that one boy and his tiger could endeavor upon in the course of four panels and the Sunday special. Calvin and Hobbes effectively opened up my world to drawing, storytelling, humor and intellect, where even now I’ll flip through one of the anthologies and realize how incredibly timeless some of the strips are.
Lately, I have on occasion picked up one of the books laying around the house and read through some comics, and I noticed something interesting: newspaper comic strips consistently break the fourth wall, very much in tune with classic Looney Tunes and the sort.
Azumanga Daioh by Kiyohiko Azuma
Very rarely have I come across a comic strip series that doesn’t outright address the reader with some punchline; in fact I think the very medium is limited so the cartoonist must employ the fourth wall aspect. The comic strip is much different comic books, graphic novels and manga in that it is limited by the number of panels, a resultant effect due to the nature of traditional newspaper print; additionally, since each strip is published daily, storylines often only run as long as two to four weeks due to the constraints of panels, printing and lining up with Sunday comics, which often take more time to print since newspapers must also process color. One exception to this storyline limit is Azumanga Daioh, the Japanese yonkoma series that detailed the everyday life of six Japanese high school girls until their graduation.
In comics, continuity is something cartoonist often play around with. The comic strips For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston and Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott featured continuous storylines where characters aged and past events factored in consistently with the present comic strip. While these comics may not necessarily age with our current timeline (Kirkman and Scott have stated that the timeline of Baby Blues is 1/3 slower than our current timeline) these comics are devoid of the chronological inconsistencies that would otherwise result in a paradox.
However, most newspaper comic strips feature ageless/un-aging characters for simplicities and serialization’s sake, employing varying degrees of continuity that meet the needs of the story and the punchline. Environments commonly change to keep the art interesting and relevant to the season, and perhaps the technology too.
Garfield by Jim Davis
Pearls Before Swine by Stephen Pastis
A pie chart on how you may have killed Kenny.
Comics like Garfield and Pearls before Swine rely on minimal continuity save consistent characters with consistent quirks and faults (in Swine, the dynamic between the gullible Pig and the egomaniac Rat is a staple to Stephen Pastis’ rhetoric; in Garfield, Garfield’s sarcasm and his owner Jon’s haplessness are also a staple to Jim Davis’ serial, though it has become stale as of late). This lacking continuity factor is similar to how Looney Tune characters would bludgeon and bash each others skulls in and return the next day fine; a modern and more extreme example of this lacking continuity factor how the character Kenny dies spectacularly in episodes of South Park, only to miraculously be back, alive and well subsequent episodes (this trend decreased drastically after the episode “Kenny Dies”).
The Far Side by Gary Larson
Comics like Bill Amend’s Foxtrot maintain the same character caricatures whose dynamic between one another depends on what is relevant during the time of the comics publication – it is a zeitgeist, effectively. By nature, comics like these are probably the best indicators for pop culture phenomenas during a given era: for fun, I recommend you go your local bookstore and look at older anthologies of Foxtrot and see how anachronous some of the references are these days (I still trip out when looking at old comics where Paige talks about Madonna tapes). You also have single or multi-panel comics that are political or social satires, or even one bit punchlines that hit you like that – with or without dialogue. Comics that come to mind include The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder, The Far Side by Gary Larson, or even caption contests held for The New Yorker.
Pogo by Walt Kelly
Then you have unusually special comics that have ageless characters and never explicitly depict anything that marks the comic strip’s specific publication date, all save minute details like a nondescript TV set or generic bicycle. Two of the best examples I know include Walt Kelly’s Pogo and Bill Waterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, where the characters express ideas that are universal and timeless, effectively making the thematics, messages and punchlines of the comic strips (ironically) ageless. In Calvin and Hobbes, Waterson has never depicted Calvin’s parents using a specific type of technology like a computer or wearing a specific fashion style; in Pogo, Kelly used anthropomorphic animals using basic equipment like a medicine bag only distinguished by its red cross.
Waterson’s and Kelly’s nonspecific style of drawing – in which characters are distinguished solely by basic physical features and their personalities – is similar to how Christopher Nolan used very little technology in Inception to keep the timeline of the film nondescript: the architect Ariadne constructs dreams first by hand rather than by computer; dream worlds are based on real life urban and natural landscapes like Paris and Los Angeles; phones, monitors, laptops or any dateable piece of technology never make a cameo once throughout the entire course of the movie – it’s all paper, pencil, and classy suits.
Despite the difference in continuity, nearly every comic I’ve mentioned (if not all) has broken the fourth wall in communicating directly with the reader what the character feels or reacts to the main punchline or reveal. It’s effectively a “That’s all folks” and “What’s up doc?” wink that breaks the confines of print and ink. It’s an active acknowledgement that the character knows they are being observed, and by directly addressing the reader the cartoonist effectively breaks down the wall of separation between artist and viewer, a barrier that is commonly inherent to all artistic mediums (especially narratives).
The Narrator in Into the Woods
Malcolm in the Middle
This fourth wall break is rarely accomplishable in any other medium besides newspaper comics and cartoons. The most original employment of the fourth wall (and breaking of it thus) is in Stephen Sondheim’s broadway musical Into the Woods, where the narrator who up until his timely death, is dragged into the story that he narrates to the audience and subsequently dropped 100 plus feet from the ground by a vengeful giantess (thus his timely death). The TV show Malcolm in the Middle also broke the fourth wall consistently with the main character Malcolm (Freddie Muniz) frequently looking at the character to narrate exactly how he is feeling at a certain moment before turning back to the events taking place, with everyone else oblivious to his narrative. Beyond Sondheim’s musical masterpiece and Malcolm in the Middle I can think of little else that has successful pulled off the fourth wall (and breaking it) without being corny, dimwitted or unappealing sarcastic.
Newspaper comic strips are unique like that. They present to us a visual way of reading and taking in an artist’s version of the editorial or humorist column. It’s a medium that compromises a lot to fit everything into four panels six days a week and a set shape for Sundays, or to fit as much substance and punch into a mere panel for the surest and hardest hit as possible – and hell, what a job it is.
For the record, the job apparently includes staring at empty space for long periods of time before coming up with an idea – something I’ve come to empathize with as of late.
Also, this happens to be the 100th overall tumblr entry since I began back in May 18th, 2010. Thanks to everyone who’s been reading! :)