In "Reason to Get Excited," I spotlight things from modern comics that I think are worth getting excited about. I mean stuff more specific than "this comic is good," ya know? More like a specific bit from a writer or artist that impressed me.
Today, we take a look at R. Sikoryak's illustrated version of the United States Constitution, where Sikoryak uses the styles of famous comic book artists to depict the various parts of the Constitution, and in doing so, does a nice piece of subversion in the process.
In 1979, the National Public Radio morning show, Morning Edition, launched. In its first year on the air, it established, according to NPR itself, "what has become an Independence Day tradition: hosts, reporters, newscasters and commentators reading the Declaration of Independence.
As noted, this was a tradition that had been going on for DECADES and yet, when the show did its yearly tradition on the Fourth of July in 2017, the first Independence Day during the Trump administration, the yearly tradition was met in a different fashion than normal. You see, along with the reading on the air, NPR tweeted out the Declaration of Independence a few lines at a time.
Now, were some of those tweets from people pretending to be offended as a joke? Probably, but clearly not all of them, and a number of them later apologized when people pointed out to them that NPR was literally just tweeting out the text of the Declaration of Independence. However, it speaks to how simply restating the documents that our country is founded upon can, in and of itself, work in a subversive way, since you could argue that you are using it to call attention to how those documents are not being followed by everyone today.
In the case of Constitution Illustrated, R. Sikoryak goes a step further and includes ALL of the United States Constitution, even the parts that have been removed, to show some of the sketchy parts of the history of the United States while yes, at the same time, showing the importance of the rules put forth by the country hundreds of years ago (well, some of the amendments were a lot more recent than that. Heck, the Dean of my Law School when I was in school, who is still alive, wrote the text for one of the Amendments in the Constitution, so some parts of the Constitution have been written by still living people!).
Sikoryak just also uses the art styles of over a hundred different notable comic artists, from all different points in history, to depict the sections. Sometimes, this is just as straightforward as using the idea of the Constitution granting "powers" to be depicted in the style of Carmine Infantino and his famous two Flashes cover...
However, there were other instances where Sikoryak had a specific character (or characters) in mind for a particular section, as he explained to Betsy Bird in a great interview Bird did with him about the project:
Bird: Let’s talk about your decision process a bit. Some of these pairings feel like no-brainers. Heck, if you hadn’t made a 40s era Wonder Woman introduce the 19th amendment I imagine there would have been a great rending of garments from the reading public. Other choices make you really sit down, read the Amendment, and think about why you chose that particular comic to accompany it. Were there any pairings that you instantly knew you had to include?
Sikoryak: Yes, definitely. I drew the first 10 or so (not sequential) pages based on ideas or characters that I knew I had to use. Drawing Wonder Woman for the 19th amendment was a natural. And using the Peanuts characters for the 1st amendment seemed obvious. I always think of Lucy shouting her opinions and Linus musing on religious matters. Plus I remembered the characters would often carry protest signs in the 1960’s.
In an interview with AJ Frost at The Beat, Sikoryak spoke more directly about how showing the Constitution can be subversive:
Well, I wanted to speak to the political moment, but I didn’t want to do anything so topical and urgent that it might be irrelevant by the time it was published. Also, my last book, The Unquotable Trump, was focused on the President, and I didn’t feel like I had anything especially new to say about him. Plus I couldn’t bear to draw him anymore!
So, I went back to my usual way of working, which is to adapt classic or famous texts that people (including me) feel they “ought” to read. And we often hear, from one pundit or another, that the Constitution is under attack, regardless of who is President. I’m certainly sensitive to that, and it definitely feels true to me now. So illustrating the Constitution seemed like a natural project. And the process really made me look deeply at the text for the first time.
However, while it is certainly meant to be a little bit subversive, I think it is also intended to be educational, and Sikoryak went out of his way to choose a number of modern cartoonists who are popular with young readers to give the book an all-ages appeal and he also tried to be as diverse as possible, even though he also cleverly has the characters wearing outfits that match the era in which that part of the Constitution was written, so most of it has people in outfits from the end of the 18th Century, but there are obviously a lot more Amendments throughout history, so the styles change as the book goes along...
Sikoryak manages to be subversive while also being educational, all while sharing mini-tributes to over a century of excellent comic book art. It's a delightful tome.