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ways of creating this entrance point are used in the ccomics examined above. They are similar methods, utilising opposite means, and are based on a distinction between the verbal text and the artwork. Many grades of variation exist between these two poles. If the story is conventional, the artwork can be less so, and vice versa. The skill lies in maintaining a balance, and thus a mean of intelligibility. 'The magic of the strip is not so much in what it says, but in how it says it." (Watterson, 1990, p.2) Yet, however interesting and important these comics are to the people who produce them and the people who have "never seen anything like this before", they remain irrelevant to the commercial publishers of comics. For all the bluster about challenging mainstream mores and redefining categories of art, South African undergrounds are still teenage indulgences. If, in twenty years' time, one of the artists is producing graphic novels, or if the great South African comic emerges from these beginnings, other significances can be attributed, with hindsight, to these publications. The challenge to these artists is to retain a memory of their stubborn beginnings as they become more adept at producing mainstream comics. Substitute "comics" for "samplers" in the following quotation: "So often, the cry goes up that 'everybody' is 'out there' fooling around with their cheap samplers, thus constituting a 'groundswell'; But even if they are, so what? Are the pavements cracking? Is a state of collapse iminent? Samplers will certainly not be suppressed by the music industry." (Reynolds, 1990, p. 171) The importance, if any, of these comics lies in their possibilities. Reynolds expresses the intentions of the artists succinctly: "With the music [or comics] we like, it doesn't matter if it doesn't 158
'breakthrough', if it doesn't 'happen' - because, by being created, it's happening. It's there as a choice, a reproach, and its remoteness from the secular pop world is a sign of its success." (p.107) 159
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A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SOUTH AFRICA
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dialect differs from the language o
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"Does he paint? He fain would write
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1. INTRODUCTION What I am attemptin
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existence ... until food gets short
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is making comics respectable in the
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Most of these comics are produced a
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2. DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY The
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In addition, extraverbal sounds, or
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The decision as to whether visual l
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For the first two decades of the tw
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Wertham's book The Seduction of the
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Undergrounds were amoral, sexual, s
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coalesced into comics intended for
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3. ANALYSIS Four different groups o
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incomprehensible passages are incom
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positive shapes, even or especially
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3.2. KOMIKSOC The confessional aspe
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,0 ::l£~) \e B . f"'CM P'!~t .....
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Figure 2 Franklin After the Plagues
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Sididis's Tripping uses comic conve
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example of how the appearance of a
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M\..I.A i H !lVIE ou~ rut", """" ""
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The artist only solves this problem
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text. Yet the frames function in su
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of the text, which is the reason fo
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omb) are lost in an attempt at pers
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a single emotion, depicting various
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Figure 19 Breytenbach Eddie Jumped
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Content is sometimes allowed to esc
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Sorfa's technique saves, lives up t
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Figure 23 Casey Showcase: Item 1 pI
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Two people, a scriptwriter and an a
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Sorfa's collaboration with scriptwr
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Casey's understanding of blacks and
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From the whimsical, poetic scripts
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This same regularity forces pace to
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In previous comics, my 'visual writ
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The comic was drawn full-size on A4
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Text shifts between narrative, spee
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Teo iNTE.N5E · Figure 38 Sorfa Spi
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' .. Figure 1 T. Begg The Battle of
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The text of Bone Staircase, by Freu
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of solid blacks and a subjective vi
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Rue, by Sididis, begins well. The f
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completely resolved. Possibly his p
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seems to pick out elements, without
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The awkwardness of this comic is a
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3.4. BI'ITERKOMIX Bitterkomix start
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From Case No. 308, the story of Tom
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Figure 3 Botes, Dog The Tommy Saga:
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'Tj ~. (1) ..,. tj o OQ ;l ,(1) VEI
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etween form and content, but also p
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Another example is figure 8, from A
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structured. Familiar sources, conte
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Some verbal comic conventions are m
Page 114 and 115: Both artists make use of a great va
Page 116 and 117: character, Chico D, into a martyr a
Page 118 and 119: Figure 17 Van Zyl Die Besoek p5 112
Page 120 and 121: The transitions between panels are
Page 122 and 123: simply by its silence and inexplica
Page 124 and 125: Figure 22 Botes Die Mens 118
Page 126 and 127: Verdwaalde Harte [fig 23J, also by
Page 128 and 129: Figure 27 Dog, Winterbach Rewerie p
Page 130 and 131: In Die Hero van die Bitch [fig 29],
Page 132 and 133: draws the reader's attention to the
Page 134 and 135: Figure 32 Bates Siembamba 128
Page 136 and 137: The Proverbs are selected and reint
Page 138 and 139: In Klapmuts Polisie Slaan Toe, Bote
Page 140 and 141: Ina van Zyl is more concerned with
Page 142 and 143: I ROSIE is NUUT deur Ina van ;Zyl I
Page 144 and 145: M y DEliO !r1OTHER H I..4NG UP I LE
Page 146 and 147: Botes is very good at acidic social
Page 148 and 149: The second episode of Missileman, b
Page 150 and 151: In Kanker Botes' subject is again t
Page 152 and 153: coincides with the appearance of th
Page 154 and 155: closeup, then pulls away to explain
Page 156 and 157: stories in issue 1 are in English,
Page 158 and 159: 4. CONCLUSION The comics are all pr
Page 160 and 161: The most common genres (my definiti
Page 162 and 163: the first generation whose world is
Page 166 and 167: S. BIBLIOGRAPHY BARKER, M. 1989. Co
Page 168: Thames and Hudson. NEAL, C. 1987. T
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