Framing the Frames

Mara Sedlins:

Hello!

Since I last wrote here, the restoration work on Church & State II has shifted from negative scans to original artwork. And although the original scans ultimately lead to better quality results, right now I’m immersed in some tone-heavy, labor intensive pages that make me miss the momentum of working on the faster, easier negatives. Also, I’m no longer working on the pages in order - so the cleanup work no longer aligns with reading the book for fun :( But! I carry on.

To revisit the goal of staying sane, I’d like to reflect a bit on frames and framing. When I first see what I can tell will be a challenging page, I take a moment to prioritize. And what almost always comes first is the frame. Dave’s use (or disuse, or “misuse”) of frames can get really interesting - but generally, most pages have a white border between the image and the edge of the page that needs to be pristine. Next comes the ever-present Letratape bordering. After that, I begin to tackle the rest of any number of issues that might be present. But when I begin work on each page it’s nice to know where I'm going to start.

Here are a few pages from the beginning of C & S II, minus everything but the frames:





The way I see it, the frame is what anchors the rest of the page. It’s a basic visual grammar that makes sense of what it contains, that makes the page legible. Here (for most pages), we know the intention is for the frames to be clean and uniform. Since Cerebus was created before the advent of digital techniques, Dave and Gerhard had to painstakingly maintain this uniformity by hand (and we aim to complete their efforts where time has damaged the effect). Maybe this heightened consciousness of the frame was what allowed them to experiment so successfully with breaking it.

A detail, pre/post-cleanup

Here’s one of the subtler examples of an unconventional frame (note the crosshatched shadows nestled between panels):

(I'm sure there are many more examples, but those are the ones in front of me at the moment.)

When I was glancing through the Cerebus In My Life posts a few weeks ago, this statement by Kevin Harrison stuck in my mind:

“Sim taught me that focus, attention to detail, and consistency meant that you could create a world that could contain everything. Every genre, every concept, every character, every reflection, belief, strife, and joy...sort of just like our own world, except Cerebus has more Lord Julius in it.”

I also appreciated Steve Harold’s comment on my last post - he observed that “One of the best things about Cerebus was that Dave was very determined to get the book out on time and always have an issue on the comics rack every month.”

Each type of behavioral consistency creates its own stable framework, building trust with readers so that the artist can take creative risks - an inspiring example of what can be accomplished with the right balance of discipline and daring.