Comics as High Art & Fine Literature: A Look At Geist's "The Tourist"

To those in the know, this isn’t news, but I recently completed (horribly, and by the skin of my teeth) my masters thesis document. Tentatively titled Halftones, Stripes & Guttersnipes: The Coincidence of Comics As High Art & Fine Literature, the 35 page document asserts that sometimes, not always, but sometimes comics can fit simultaneously in both categories. While I may one day publish that document here, or in another more appropriate location, today is not that day.

However, I would like to call your attention to the work of a gentleman who goes by the moniker of Geist in his social media escapades. Recently, Geist (real name Mark Ryan of the United Kingdom) launched a crowdfunding campaign for the first two issues of his series, The Tourist. Intrigued by the description and a predisposition to Mark’s unique and amazing art, I got in on it. Time passed, rather quickly as time does, and at last, my prize arrived. I don’t know precisely what I was expecting as I peeled open the protective plastic bag, but what I got blew those expectations out of the water and into deepest hyperspace.

What I think I like best about The Tourist is that it makes the reader a character in the story, and that story is unique to each reader. Peppered with coded text, the book reads like a vacationer’s scrapbook. However, this vacationer, or tourist, has just returned from visiting strange and foreign worlds. Geist’s line work and design aesthetics pop off the page like a language all their own. I found myself ignoring the coded text bits and just absorbing myself in the often mystifying imagery. And the narrative is what you bring to it. Your feelings on travel, vacations and recording memories are put to the test against this high contrast black and white smorgasbord of swirling ephemera.

A sampling from issue 1 of Geist’s The Tourist

Further enhancing the illusion of travel, or having traveled, my backing of this project also rewarded me with some colorful little extras. Included with issues 1 and 2 (which were both beautifully printed on excellent stock) were four bookmarks, or postcards, themselves replicas of the publisher mastheads from the first four issues of this groundbreaking series. As well, Geist was kind enough to include travel stickers. One looked rather like a passport stamp. (Full disclosure: I very nearly applied one of these stamps to my newly minted passport, but, given that I will be traveling internationally in the near future, I would prefer not to give the Swiss and Italian governments the idea that I might have contracted some extraterrestrial bug, or virus.)

In all, I was inordinately pleased with what I got, and considering the cost of printing and international shipping rates, it was quite a value (cost me around $11 US). One can read through these books very quickly, or one can take their time and get absorbed in the images, sort of like a hot tub for the eyes. I would highly recommend them to anyone who is interested in seeing what the comics medium can accomplish. In this amazingly powerful series, Geist has recognized where his strengths lie as an artist and has pushed those strengths, and the comics medium to their very limits. Think of it as a 30 page Rorschach test, but infinitely more exciting and interesting.

To bring us up to this current date though, I would be remiss not to mention that Geist has very recently begun his campaign to release issues 3 and 4. As continuation of the brilliant books I just received, I would be equally remiss not to invest in these myself, and offer up the opportunity for you, Dear Reader, to do the same. If I have enticed you to do so, you can find and invest in Geist’s holy task here.

Geist describes his work as “a different kind of comic,” which indeed it is. In my personal and intermittently but not presently humble opinion, he is doing much more than that. In much the same way that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons deconstructed the notion of the modern superhero in their now legendary Watchmen, Geist’s deconstruction of the medium is precisely what each reader makes of it. Purchasing this book you are not buying a comic book. No. Rather, you are purchasing a pry bar that will rip open the seams of your perception and interweave your own story into the crafted imagery. As the late great Hunter S. Thompson once said: "“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

Further information on the above mentioned thesis as well as issues 3 & 4 of The Tourist will be available here at a later date. In the meantime, please visit Geist’s Kickstarter page and get a better sense of what this extraordinary series is really about. I was not paid a cent to say any of this. Truly, this is groundbreaking stuff.

Support

I just finished listening to an interview with Glynnes Pruett, owner and proprietor of Comicbook Hideout, in Fullerton, CA, really just a five or so minute drive from where I now sit in the lab at Cal State Fullerton, typing up this post on one of the thirty or so Mac Pro towers inhabiting this space. It’s been a good day. Nice, windy Autumn weather, I don’t have to make an appearance of any kind at my “day job,” and on my way in, I even stopped by another local comic shop I admire, Ryan’s Comics, in Murrieta, CA (really, less than a mile from my house) and snagged the last copy of Murder Falcon.

It all sort of got me thinking about the nature of how we acquire comics these days, and the support necessary from us to keep printed comics as the available resource they currently are. Now, I don’t and won’t pretend to know a lot. I don’t have facts, figures, or numbers at my fingertips, but turning off the sophisticated navigational equipment for a second, I would like to venture out into that territory where thought and feeling collide to form something most of us would probably describe as instinct.

I love comic books. To a fault, even. You wouldn’t have to talk to my wife very long to determine that my proclivity for purchasing 5-8 titles a week is, or has been a major bone of contention in our relationship. It isn’t as physically harmful as say, smoking or alcoholism, but it is close to as expensive, and the stacks of comics building up in our bedroom, in our guest bedroom is not doing much to help my case. And I buy comics to read them, but at the same time, I do it as a way of supporting artists and creators I admire, albeit in this very small way. What it comes down to is support, and what that looks like. For those who have enough spare cash to keep lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills (I recently had to switch to using twenties, like a peasant) perhaps this won’t make as much sense. For the rest of us, especially those who have dabbled in comic creation enough to have rubbed elbows with some of our heroes on social media, it may mean looking at the artist and writer credits in the corners of the cover rather than the title space. If I see a book with the name “Sebela” on it, I f*cking buy that comic book. Ditto David Aja, Joshua Hixson, Cullen Bunn and a number of others. Murder Falcon was what I would describe as premeditated impulse. Someone I respect gave it a solid review on Twitter, and so a part of my brain decided I needed it. I missed it this past Wednesday, but fortunately, there was still a copy left for me at Ryan’s.

But here’s the problem:

As many books as there are out there, there are also a number of different comic shops, each with their own regulars and social dynamics. I would argue that even so, there is a sort of common denominator at play that is similar to visiting a Walmart or an In & Out Burger out of town, where both places tend to look and feel the same everywhere you go; comic book stores, by and large, all have a similar feel by dint of carrying a unified product base. Ryan’s Comics has been receiving my unreserved support since around 2009, when I first started shopping there and was blown away by Ryan’s forward thinking programs and position within the community, not to mention an ethic of customer service I associate more closely with bigger corporations like Apple or Nordstroms. More recently, however, I’ve hit a measure of conflict in that I have received similar service and camaraderie from SoCal Games & Comics, a fairly recent addition to the smallish lineup of comic shops in the Inland Empire. SCGC is remarkably close to my “day job,” so much so that I’ve been known to pop in there on my fifteen minute break, particularly on New Comic Book Day, and still make it back with a minute or two to spare. Rachel, the manager there, takes an active interest in every customer who comes through that door, something that Glynnes Pruett mentions doing in her interview on Gutter Talk. That goes a long way with a guy like me. Having a comic shop take note of and act proactively on my interests isn’t something I’m entirely used to in my LCS experience, but all the same, I’m learning fast. The problem lies in where to spend my money, whether to distribute equally amongst the two (right now, my budget leans more heavily toward SCGC, as their selection of variant covers at cover price is quite extensive), plus I have a regular pull that did not require my leaving a credit card number of roughly six books a month, and I don’t believe in not buying from the pull. It is tough though, and adding even further to that was this uncontrollable urge to take a slight detour on my drive to school this afternoon to go give Glynnes and Comicbook Hideout some of my hard earned money purely because I liked and appreciated what she had to say and want to support it in any way I can, even if it only means dropping $4 on a comic I haven’t purchased yet.

I didn’t end up visiting today as I did have things to do, not the least of which was dropping off a gallery wrapped canvas print of a piece I did for a combined Frankenstein/Authors of Cal State Fullerton art show coming up on Halloween. The piece looks great, and I’ll likely be adding it to the Covers session on this site, likely right after I finish writing this entry. I also need to get a start on my Inktober piece for today. For anyone who hasn’t been following along on Twitter or Instagram, I have embarked upon a series of spot illustrations of major figures and events from Norse Mythology. The whole thing actually culminated in a “Like” from none other than Neil Gaiman himself the other night. That little blip nearly caused me to purge all the data entries in my brain related to potty training and bodily waste retention. They’ve been a lot of fun to make, and small as it was, that little bit of effort from one I have admired for so long was validation at a very intense level for me.

Okay. If I had a point, I think it was this: Comic book stores need your support. Supporting one, exclusively, means perhaps robbing others of support, and so I encourage, tentatively, that those of us who care to see printed words and pictures make it into the next decade for our own children to pick up and read, exercise a level of impulsive loyalty. I wouldn’t suggest this in one’s romantic relationships, but every comic purchased from one shop means it’s not being purchased from another. Okay, that’s about enough out of me.

J. Paul Schiek

PS: I am going to endeavor to make this blog at least—at LEAST—a weekly affair from now on. There are things I want to say that don’t fit on Twitter or Instagram, and these days, I wouldn’t touch Facebook with a ten foot wiener.