Moving Pictures (webcomic)

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Moving Pictures
Moving Pictures panel.png
Ila Gardner in Moving Pictures
Author(s) Kathryn Immonen
Illustrator(s) Stuart Immonen
Current status/scheduleCompleted
Publisher(s) Top Shelf Productions

Moving Pictures is a late 2000s webcomic written by Kathryn Immonen and illustrated by Stuart Immonen. Set in occupied France in World War II, the webcomic presents the complex relationship of Nazi officer Rolf Hauptman and Canadian museum curator Ila Gardner. The historical setting of Moving Pictures serves purely to frame the "fucked up" relationship between its two protagonists.

Webcomics are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or in comic books.

Kathryn Immonen Canadian comic book and webcomic writer

Kathryn Immonen is a Canadian comic book and webcomic writer. She has written a number of comic books for Marvel Comics since 2007, in collaboration with her husband Stuart.

Stuart Immonen Comic artist

Stuart Immonen is a Canadian comics artist. He is best known for his work on Nextwave, Ultimate X-Men, The New Avengers, and Ultimate Spider-Man. His pencils are usually inked by Wade Von Grawbadger.

Contents

The webcomic was published by Top Shelf Productions in 2010 in the form of a graphic novel, which was praised by critics for its sharp black and white artstyle and dark storytelling.

Top Shelf Productions American comic publishing company

Top Shelf Productions is an American publishing company founded in 1997, originally owned and operated by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock and a small staff. Now an imprint of IDW Publishing, Top Shelf is based in Marietta, Georgia.

Graphic novel Book with primarily comics contents

A graphic novel is a book made up of comics content. Although the word "novel" normally refers to long fictional works, the term "graphic novel" is applied broadly and includes fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work. It is distinguished from the term "comic book", which is generally used for comics periodicals.

Black and white monochrome form in visual arts

Black-and-white images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of gray.

Synopsis

"The history is just a backdrop to tell a fucked up love story that's about how we assign value to things and people, how we behave when not everyone is playing by the same rules."

–Kathryn Immonen [1]

The plot of Moving Pictures is set in Paris during its German occupation in World War II, following the officer of the fictional "German Military Art Commission", Rolf Hauptman. The story is presented by Hauptman interrogating museum curator Ila Gardner about certain missing artworks. As Hauptman's questions persist, Gardner's memories reveal that the relationship between the two characters is more complex than simply that of "interrogator and suspect". [2]

Paris Capital of France

Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts. The City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €709 billion in 2017. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, and ahead of Zürich, Hong Kong, Oslo and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong Kong, in 2018.

Paris in World War II Paris during World War II

Paris started mobilizing for war in September 1939, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland, but the war seemed far away until May 10, 1940, when the Germans attacked France and quickly defeated the French army. The French government departed Paris on June 10, and the Germans occupied the city on June 14. During the Occupation, the French Government moved to Vichy, and Paris was governed by the German military and by French officials approved by the Germans.

World War II 1939–1945, between Axis and Allies

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from more than 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 70 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

During the interrogation, Gardner recalls how she traveled from Canada to France because of her love for art. After the German occupation of the country, Gardner found herself working both with and against German forces in order to preserve as much artwork as she can. As the character was assigned to relocate the museum's entire collection, Gardner had to cooperate with Hauptman, who she both hates and finds an inexplicable affection to. Writing for Bleeding Cool , Greg Baldino described this relation as an "affair fueled by passions and paradoxes." [2]

Canada Country in North America

Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Its southern border with the United States, stretching some 8,891 kilometres (5,525 mi), is the world's longest bi-national land border. Canada's capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

Bleeding Cool internet news site

Bleeding Cool is an internet news site, focusing on comics, TV, film, and games. Owned by Avatar Press, it was launched by Rich Johnston on 27 March 2009, and has gone through several iterations of design, and many forum changes. Avatar also publishes an associated magazine, Bleeding Cool.

Creation

Conception

Moving Pictures is the second webcomic created by Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, who both had experience creating comic books together for Marvel Comics. The pair's first webcomic, Never as Bad as You Think , is a comedic slapstick comic strip with little to no story. Greg Burgas of Comic Book Resources noted the difference in tone between the Never as Bad as You Think and Moving Pictures, the latter taking on a much darker subject matter and more complex story. The two webcomics share a "sharp" artstyle, with characters being rendered as "skinny and pointy". [3]

Marvel Comics Company that publishes comic books and related media

Marvel Comics is the brand name and primary imprint of Marvel Worldwide Inc., formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, a publisher of American comic books and related media. In 2009, The Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment, Marvel Worldwide's parent company.

Slapstick style of comedy

Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such as saws and ladders.

Comic strip Short serialized comics

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in daily newspapers, while Sunday newspapers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the development of the internet, they began to appear online as webcomics. There were more than 200 different comic strips and daily cartoon panels in American newspapers alone each day for most of the 20th century, for a total of at least 7,300,000 episodes.

Kathryn Immonen came with the idea to create Moving Pictures after reading Janet Flanner's reports from Paris, which Flanner sent to The New Yorker during World War II. One of these reports was a quip in which she "thanked" the Nazis for "letting the Louvre staff get some good dusting and mopping in", a satirical piece Immonen described as "pretty irresistible". It took some time before the Immonens could find the opportunity to work on the webcomic, as Stuart still had a lot of stories from Marvel to work on. [1]

Janet Flanner American journalist

Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She wrote under the pen name "Genêt". She also published a single novel, The Cubical City, set in New York City.

<i>The New Yorker</i> Magazine on politics, social issues, art, humor, and culture, based in New York City

The New Yorker is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Started as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is now published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric Americana, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.

Louvre Art museum and Historic site in Paris, France

The Louvre, or the Louvre Museum, is the world's largest art museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement. Approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square metres. In 2018, the Louvre was the world's most visited art museum, receiving 10.2 million visitors.

Development

Stuart Immonen frequently referred to photographs of 1940s France while illustrating Moving Pictures. Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-247-0775-38, Paris, Strassenszene.jpg
Stuart Immonen frequently referred to photographs of 1940s France while illustrating Moving Pictures.

Though it was initially written as a one-act play, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen started uploading Moving Pictures as a webcomic in the late 2000s because of "scheduling mechanics", allowing them to create the comic in a timely fashion through weekly deadlines. The Immonens had a small buffer of pages to upload in case they couldn't make a deadline, and the two shared "post-script duties" such as Photoshop processing, lettering, making the pages ready for upload, and posting itself. Stuart described this sharing of work as "easier than the conventional writer/artist relationship". The script of Moving Pictures wasn't broken down into pages or panels, which allowed the Immonens to expand or contract the narrative in a more freeform style. [1]

The Immonen's researched the setting of the story, but kept the setting somewhat vague, blanking newspapers and documents shown in the webcomic and leaving out the names of historical figures. Stuart argued that he doesn't mean to romanticize the war period and only means to use the setting as a backdrop for what Kathryn describes as a "fucked up love story." [1] The tone of Moving Pictures was inspired by Au Passage du Pourquoi-Pas by Anne Baraou and Stanislas Barthélémy, as well as works by Michel Rabagliati. Stuart said that he was mostly inspired by photographs of the time and place itself, expressing that he "tried to render the period with respect." [1]

A print publication by Top Shelf Productions was planned in May 2009, a publisher suggested to the Immonens by Brian Wood. [1] The graphic novel was published a year later than initially planned, in June 2010. [3]

Reception

After the print release of Moving Pictures in June 2010, the comic got the attention of various publications. Baldino of Bleeding Cool reacted positively to the black and white artstyle, saying that the simplicity of the lines and shapes were reminiscent to the works of Ivan Brunetti and Andi Watson. Bladino also lauded the "nuances of gestures and expression, the interplay of body language and spatial relationships," and said that Kathryn Immonen's storytelling is of high quality. [2] Publishers Weekly similarly praised the simplistic artstyle for its sharp contrasts. [4] Burgas of Comic Book Resources praised the comic's "beautiful" lettering and striking use of silhouette. [3]

Jason Michelitsch of Comics Alliance described Ila Gardner as a "ballsy choice as a main character", as he said that the entire book hinges on the character. Characterizing Gardner as a character who "works at being unlikeable, ... cold and nihilist", Michelitch asserted that all other characters in the graphic novel are defined in terms of their relationship to the curator. Partly because of this, Michelitch described the sensation of reading Moving Pictures as that of "creeping, suffocating emptiness", with powerful use of negative space and obscuring faces in shadow, "literally removing the humanity". [5] The A.V. Club praised Gardner's character and difficult storytelling as "powerful experimentalism ... illustrative of what a major writing talent Kathryn Immonen really is," and they praised Stuart's artwork for its "skillful use of light and shadow." [6]

The Moving Pictures graphic novel was nominated for a Doug Wright Award in 2011 for the "Best Book" category. [7] Stuart Immonen was nominated for a Stumptown Award that same year, for the category "Best Artist". [8]

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Moving Pictures may refer to:

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Dueben, Alex (2008-09-26). "Kathryn & Stuart Immonen Talk "Moving Pictures"". Comic Book Resources .
  2. 1 2 3 Johnston, Rich; Baldino, Greg (2011-01-31). "Review: Moving Pictures by Kathryn and Stuart Immonen". Bleeding Cool.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Burgas, Greg (2014-09-12). "Year of the Artist, Day 255: Stuart Immonen, Part 4 – Never As Bad As You Think and Moving Pictures". Comic Book Resources .
  4. ↑ "Moving Pictures". Publishers Weekly . 2010-06-01.
  5. ↑ Michelitch, Jason (2010-06-09). "Moving Pictures by Kathryn and Stuart Immonen [Review]". Comics Alliance . Archived from the original on 2015-09-14.
  6. ↑ Heller, Jason; Murray, Noel; Pierce, Leonard; Robinson, Tasha; Williams, Christian (2010-06-18). "June 18, 2010". The A.V. Club .
  7. ↑ MacDonald, Heidi (2011-03-16). "2011 Doug Wright Award finalists announced". Comics Beat.
  8. ↑ Brite, Stephanie (2011). "2011 Stumptown Comic Art Awards". Comic Vine.
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