Hankiewicz’s most enigmatic use of symbology comes in “Jazz,” a series of four-panel strips that are perhaps the most fully realized of his comics and a fine example of comics-as-poetry. These strips are about opposites and are expressed using the full range of the comics language. This range of visual approaches inherent in comics gives each strip its power, meaning and ability to express the tension between opposites. Some of the strips are titled “Asthma,” implying constriction and desperation. Some are titled “Jazz,” implying free-flowing, unrestricted and improvisational movement. Various other titles (“Soup,” “Nap,” “Prayer,” “Laundry”) depict varying levels of stasis and motion, energy and entropy. His visual approach, informed by George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and other classic strips, veers into strictly realistic depiction of a man and woman. ”Jazz” also embodies a frequent motif in Hankiewicz’s work, the sudden transformation of realistically depicted hands into cartoon hands. That transformation has a price, as that hand is shown as being injured by a flash of the lightning so often seen in his strips. At the same time, this transformation of hands can be likened to the kind of word-play seen in poetry. ”Jazz” is a symbolic narrative, an exploration of active and passive states of transformation, and an exploration of the relationship between word and image that is intrinsic to poetry.
In his work, Hankiewicz explores ways in which the mundane becomes alien and threatening, how communication can be a form of aggression, the madness that isolation can induce, and the possibility that we are essentially doomed to be isolated from both the world and each other. At the same time, this quest for connection is our only chance at creating meaning and purpose, impossible as it may seem. Hankiewicz’s comics are the most compelling of those that attempt to illustrate the complexity and frustration that this process can elicit. Indeed, for the reader seeking to explore comics-as-poetry, the work of Hankiewicz is essential because it so effectively subverts reader expectations and challenges them to wrestle with the form and meaning of his comics, effectively providing a bracing crash course.
Images [©2006 John Hankiewicz]
Tags: Asthma, John Hankiewicz, Poetry
Probably the best writing I’ve seen on Hankiewicz’s work. I keep pulling Asthma off my shelf and rereading it, but I can never figure out what to say about it.
Thanks, Derik. It took me a long time to grapple with John H’s comics, and one of the keys to doing so for me was to stop trying to impose meaning on each page and instead allow the meaning to reveal itself through careful study of what is actually on the page.