The Mechanics of Middleport

Confused about block/case/mould terminology? Don’t be – there’s a comic for that!

I’ve just finished the final collection of new illustrations for Middleport Pottery – more nineteenth-century pottery manufacturing jobs, and more diagrammatic panels showing processes involved in making various kinds of production moulds.

The more work I’ve done at Middleport, the more I’ve been impressed by the way in which comics as a format have been able to communicate the complexities of this kind of archaeology. Industrial archaeology is the archaeology of process. It’s impossible to look at material from an industrial archaeology site and not talk about how these things were made. From bits of steam engines to kiln-waste to underglaze transfer ceramics, this stuff is the material tip of a huge and revolutionary social, cultural and technological iceberg.

Yes, I know you can say that about almost any period in history, and yes, archaeology talks about how flint axes were made, how bone tools were made, how Roman tiles were made. But there’s something about the archaeology of the industrial revolution that binds discussion of material and process that much closer together.

Comics – a medium explicitly concerned with sequence – has increasingly felt like the natural way to illustrate this link between material and process. I feel like I’ve been able to combine a wide range of visual modes – narratives of process, cutaways, diagrams, reconstruction, etc. – into a consistent visual whole using comics as a mechanism which actively structures the visual delivery of this diverse content.

And as an archaeological illustrator, this is what I’ve been looking for: a medium which can make sense and render consistent the many different modes of visual exposition on which archaeology relies. This – perhaps even more than story-telling, even more than speech-bubbles, panels, gutters or even sequence itself – embodies the potential which comics offers to archaeology. And it is this which I’m going to be exploring more in my next archaeological comics project about archaeology on Palau.

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Palau Field Journal comic – first look

Some of you will have already seen these images – they were included in my paper at the Comics Forum conference in Leeds a couple of weeks ago. These are the first completed panels, pages and part-pages from Palau: An archaeological field journal – my comic of excavations on Palau this summer. The gallery below is pretty much a random selection of images from the comic; there’s a lot more writing and drawing to be done on it. But I think it gives a fairly good indication of how the finished comic will look. Whether or not it will end up being in full colour throughout depends on negotiations with a publisher, however!

Rock painting on Long Island

Long Island interior

Writing the field journal

Diving

Excavating skeletons

Discussions at Drop Off

Hisakatsu Hijikata

Cultural Centre, Koror

Copra traders

Chuab

The bat cave

Badrelchau

Uighurs on Palau

Stone Money

Odd dreams

Peleliu

Flying to Palau

Storyboard carving

Sonya Atalay

Map of Palau

Globe

Cover

Scott on Orrak

Storyboard

Mai Tai at Riptide!

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Comics & Archaeology at Comics Forum 2012

“It’s a long way down” – page from Palau: An Archaeological Field Journal, and one of the images in my presentation at Comics Forum this weekend.

Just spent two excellent days at Comics Forum 2012 in Leeds, where I gave a paper on my Palauan field journal comic on Thursday.

This year’s theme was “Multiculturalism”, and prompted a range of extremely diverse papers, presenters and attendees – some fascinating presentations about comics I’d never imagined existed: Unexpectedly ambiguous crime information comics produced by the Omani Royal Police, comics about the workings and impact of the International Criminal Tribunals, sex, sexism and sexuality in Italian fumetto, black comic characters and creators in the US, comics in China, Slovenia, Israel and Canada; the papers ranged from the expected and familiar to the unexpected and unfamiliar and back again.

I presented my own paper on Thursday afternoon, alongside Mary Tabakow and her paper on the Royal Omani Police comics. It was voted “Pick of the Papers” for the day, and my prize was copies of Fluffy and Please God, Find Me a Husband! by Simone Lia. Even better, Simone Lia was Thursday’s keynote speaker, and so she happily signed – doodled – both books for me. Fluffy has always been one of my favourite graphic works, and so getting not only a signed copy but a chance to sit and talk with Simone while she drew in them for me was a real treat.

Simone’s keynote talk was actually an “in conversation” with Ann Miller. The format worked really well, and Simon chatted easily about all sorts of things – picking fluff off the carpet at Gatwick airport, her children’s book illustration work, the origins of Fluffy, and the unexpected backstory to the genesis of Please God, Find me a Husband!.

Friday’s keynote – in the same conversational format – was Charlie Adlard talking with Hugo Frey. Again, the conversational format was great, and Charlie talked at length about some of his earlier works – illustrating Doris Lessing’s Playing the Game and White Death before going on to talk about his work drawing The Walking Dead and hinting at what he might do next (nothing to do with Zombies – he was quite clear on that!).

Some highlights from the conference for me: Ian Horton on British colonialist “heroes”, Ana Merino on Latino identity and Love and Rockets, Frank Bramlett on the quotidian in comics, Rebecca Scherr on framing and Footnotes in Palestine, Keina Yoshida on comics and international criminal justice, Asta Vrecko on comics about Italian atrocities in annexed western Slovenia during the Second World War, Corey Creekmur on underground comix and race and William H. Foster III on the changing image of African-American and black women in comics.

As usual, there were the inevitable conflicts that meant you couldn’t go to everything – I was particularly sorry to miss Paul Harrison on Egypt in comics, but managed to catch up with him later, and Umar Ditta’s paper on representations of relationships between cultures. But perhaps it’s best to leave a conference wanting more!

Came away with some plans and projects for the future: I had an invitation from The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics to submit my paper on archaeological comics, Ian Horton invited me to take part in a teaching symposium next year bringing together a variety of illustrators from different disciplines, Ian Hague and the Comics Forum committee are putting together some kind of “official body” to formalise the social networks the conference has generated, and wants to include “informational” comics of the kind I’m working on in archaeology as part of what they will cover, and Bill Foster has promised introductions to some comics writers and artists with Caribbean backgrounds, which might suggest a “next step” as far as my Caribbean archaeology comics are concerned.

As with last year, a great conference: diverse, dynamic, full of interesting people buzzing with interesting ideas. A big thank-you to Ian, Carolene, Hattie, Emily and the rest of the Comics Forum team for organising such a great conference – almost can’t wait until next year!

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Back From Palau

Orrak island – early morning.

Back now from six weeks’ excavation on Palau. It was a great island and great season. A bit of diving, a bit of snorkelling, a bit of yomping around islands with some great company, some memorable late-night parties – and yes, some great archaeology thrown in for good measure.

Now I’ve got about four months’ post-excavation work to do on all the Palau material – not least pulling Palau: An Archaeological Field Journal into shape. As I suspected, things got too busy during the season itself to do much more than sketch and make notes – but I did come back with almost three notebooks full of drawings full of material, and have started work organising it all into something coherent. My aim is to have a substantial portion of it complete by the time Comics Forum rolls around in November – complete enough to present some of the experience of doing the comic as part of a paper on archaeology and comics. I’ve also got a bundle of finds illustrations to ink in, plus a series of cutaway reconstructions on our site on the island of Orrak to finish for the Bureau of Arts and Culture.

Lots of stuff to get through – so this won’t be the last I post about Palau.

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Palau Cover

I suppose, first things being first, it’s appropriate to start with a cover for my Palau comic. Here it is: Palau was the origin for Rai (stone money), the unique limestone being quarried on the island and then transported to various other islands across Micronesia – notably to Yap.

I thought the image of the Rai was a good way of summing up Palau’s archaeological context, and also perhaps suggesting something about some of the wider political issues to do with cultural heritage.

This image was included in my SAA paper which I gave yesterday in Memphis, along with a few other preliminary sketches of Palauan artefacts and places.

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