On staging the first chapter of ULYSSES

Well, now that Mike's rolling along with the commentary, I figure this might be a good time to add some reflections about the staging of this first chapter.

Comics and cartooning have a language uniquely there own of course, but adaptation of material from another art form, in this case a prose novel, into that language of comics sets up a different kind of challenge. Particularly when dealing with original material that is so visually rich as Joyce's ULYSSES. The goal here is not to just make static illustrations of the moments shown in the novel but to "see" it in the language of comics.

Adaptation of the novel into comics means imaging it, particularly in this first chapter, a little closer to the stage than to a film. At least in my mind. The dialogue and repartee here in these opening sequences really showcases the charm of language Joyce uses to invigorate all the later verbal exchanges between Stephen, Buck and all the other intriguing characters of that Dublin day. Language is Joyce's toy as a writer and my goal as a cartoonist is to move that to the forefront of the experience in reading this first chapter of the adaptation. So, since I personally feel stage plays are the great and weather-worn bastion for experiencing the richness of dialogue, I tried to see this chapter as a play and draw it accordingly.

There are things you can do as a comic artist that you could never accomplish in film or on the stage. But there are great lessons to be found in thinking of your entire environment with the clarity and specificity of an actor. When you think about it, the whole environment of this chapter, and certainly this scene, can be reduced to very few props and very few details. They,Stephen and Buck, are standing at the edge of the world (the world being Dublin), divided by sea and sky on the tower which jutting up like a phallus (or omphalos). There is a bowl, a razor and a mirror for the actors to handle. There is a flagpole (existent on the tower at the time, though not mentioned by Joyce) and, painted in Ireland's kelly green, it divides the two characters now and again. The walls of their encounter, Mike talks about them like the ring of a bull-fighter's arena, are round; no hard-edged architecture to establish them. The actors exist in relation to each other and, occasionally, that flagpole, the thing that separates them. The stage, the environment of left to right, is plastic except for sea and sky while the up-and-down is determined through perspective (father=up, mother=down) or some symbolic relationship to country. A malleable stage to maximize and accentuate the dialogue between the two men, the two actors. We'll see more of this plasticity again in the next two scenes of this chapter, but for now its about these two men on a nebulous and rounded playing field divide by the hash horizontals of sea and sky and the harsh vertical, though yet un-decorated, flagpole of country. How do those small props, a razor, a bowl and a mirror, fit into the relationship of these giant and determining environments?

One of the things that makes this novel so inviting to me as a cartoonist is the idea that each of the chapters (and even some of the very sentences) have such varying viewpoints. Mike touched on this before with his comments on the "Uncle Charles Principle." The expressionistic theatre moments I'd like to exploit in this first chapter that allow the environment of Martello Tower to seem so fluid will be completely missing from chapter two. If I'm thinking about plays for illustrating these chapters, if I'm thinking about Samuel Beckett in chapter one, then chapter two is all Noel Coward.

-Rob