A long paper trail always followed me as I ran around my father’s store. I grabbed every piece of paper and all the pens I could find and sat on the cold concrete floor. I folded the paper in half, stuck them together and stapled it to create a book. Then, I scribbled away a story on each page. I drew every individual scene, the text bubbles and the characters to create my own comic. I created hundreds of these comics and would show them off to my parents, proud of my creation.
I like to think that my love for comics stems from my father’s love for DC Comics, especially the “Superman” ones. Because of this, I was pleasantly surprised to be confronted by a room full of comics in John Sparagana’s show, “Interference Patterns,” at The Benton Museum of Art. These images, however, are not the easily readable stories we all know and love. They are completely spliced and mixed, disrupting the text and the images of the comics.
John Sparagana is currently a professor at Rice University and has had exhibits all across the world. He is best known for his very labor-intensive process of splicing and remixing images. He prints many copies of images — whether that be comics, news images, publications or pieces from artworks of well-renowned artists — and slices them into very small pieces that he weaves together.
This technique expands the image and forms a blur-like effect. The text becomes unreadable, but we can still decipher what is happening in the image. He takes the image out of its original context, remixes it and puts it up for us to view it in a new way. So, what does it mean that we can still recognize these images?
Sparagana changes the way we interact with the images that constantly circulate in the media. Typically, we view them for a split second and move on, but Sparagana wants us to slow down.
When looking at “Superman Variations,” I couldn’t read the speech bubbles or reconfigure the scenes, but I still saw the reds, blues and yellows of Superman. Because Superman was my father’s favorite character, I knew his backstory and the stories that followed; looking at Sparagana’s piece, however, I started to wonder how Superman came about. Not Superman himself, but rather the process and reasoning behind the character’s creation. What context is Sparagana wanting to take away from this popular comic, and what does he want us to see?
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, both very successful comic artists, created the beloved hero in 1938, when the Great Depression was at its peak and tensions in Europe were on the rise. The first version of Superman was a villain, but not long after, they revised the character to be the hero that we all know and love today.
Siegel’s wife Joanne describes how she would often see Shuster use Siegel as a model to sketch Superman. Siegel’s own experiences also played a role in Superman’s story: The decision to turn Clark Kent into a reporter was inspired by Siegel’s childhood dream of becoming a reporter.
“Superman” was an instant hit because the storylines resonated with so many people. This was not just because of the character design, but also how the pair wrote relatably about current events happening in areas like Ohio, where the two were based.
The two were also children of Jewish immigrants, which inspired the decision to make Superman the defender of the hopeless and those who were unjustly mistreated. This theme became especially prominent during World War II, as news of atrocities spread all over the globe.
Siegel and Shuster directly called out Hitler, using comics to depict Superman confronting him. This caught the attention of a weekly newspaper of the SS, Das Schwarz Korps, where they claimed Siegel and Shuster were “brainwashing the children of America.” Yet, the pair did not let this deter them. They continued to talk about these ongoing issues through their comic, and Superman became the hero the people looked up to in times of dire need for hope, and one we still admire today.
Superman, and now many other heroes, make up a huge part of our popular culture. We constantly consume media related to them, whether it’s movies, books, comics, social media or songs. Throughout the history of this character, Superman has been reimagined in many different ways, often in modes that almost seem to detach the character from its history. The way our media ecosystem is designed, everything needs to be eye-catching so that we will pay attention to it for even a second. This does not encourage us to do deep dives into subjects, but rather shrinks our attention span. Before I saw this exhibition, I knew so little about the history of Superman. It was not until I saw Sparagana’s work that I wanted to know more.
As I continue to look at Sparagana’s piece, I realize it has already pushed me to slow down. Unlike my for-you page or a typical comic, I’m unable to simply skim the page and move on to the next bite-sized piece of content. It is in part because I cannot read what is going on in that specific panel of the comic that I can see Superman throughout the page. Sparagana dislodges “Superman” from its popular culture context and makes us question why he wants us to pause on it. His intricate process of splicing and mixing invites us to create new ways of seeing and thinking. He wants us to see the comic through its explosive fields of color, and he draws our focus to this by disrupting elements like the text. By causing us to pause over an icon that’s so prevalent we hardly notice it, Sparagana forces us to think more critically about the context and presentation of the media we consume.
Without seeing this work and my curiosity getting the best of me, I would have never known about the remarkable history of Superman.
Meiya Rollins PO ’29 believes, like Michelangelo, that art takes time – most of that time being snack breaks and watching “Good Mythical Morning.”
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