Exhibition review: Going West!

After having been shown in Basel, Troisdorf, Backnang and Dortmund, the exhibition “Going West! Der Blick des Comics Richtung Westen” (“comics look West”) can now be seen in Hannover until February 21, 2016. After that it will travel on to Wadgassen (April-June 2016).

The American West is understood broadly here, meaning not only ‘cowboys and Indians’ stories, but also settings like the giant trees of Yosemite (exemplified by a Katzenjammer Kids page by Rudolph Dirks from 1909) or the Arizona desert landscapes of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. That being said, the exhibition tells the history of Western comics from both sides of the Atlantic from the early to the late 20th century.

All of the comics exhibits are either original drawings or original publications, i.e. fortunately there are no enlarged reproductions as in some other comics shows. I was particularly fond of some pages from Bob Powell’s story “Vigilante Hideout” from 1951, of which both original drawings and the original comic book are on display. Another highlight is a huge Sunday page of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant from 1965 (in which Prince Arn returns to America).

While there is an impressive amount of early newspaper strips and other old comics to see, the exhibition stops short with a section on avant-garde/underground “post-western” comics such as Kyle Baker’s Cowboy Wally Show. It would have been interesting to look at more ‘traditional’ or ‘mainstream’ contemporary Western comics, e.g. the All-Star Western relaunch from The New 52, and examine why there doesn’t seem to be any more demand for them.

Generally I felt the exhibition could have done more to discuss the intricate temporal dynamics of Western comics (and Western fiction in general), which are set in diverse levels of time: distant past (e.g. Prince Valiant, Oumpah-pah), the relatively recent past of the classic “Old West” (i.e. ca. 1850-1900), the present (Tintin, Greg’s Rock Derby)* and even the future (Hermann’s Jeremiah). In film, for instance, there’s a discourse around the problematic term “Spätwestern” (“late Western”), which may or may not be identical with what Wikipedia calls “Revisionist Western“. How do these concepts work in comics?

All things considered, though, this is the most enjoyable comics exhibition I have seen in a long time.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

*Sadly, Derib’s Red Road is not on display in the exhibition, but it is featured in the (massive) catalogue.

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