BANG! & POW! @ The British Library

 I’ve always loved comics, both in an artistic way, but also in a nerdy way too. Comics can relate to so many things in our lives, or can offer us an alternative reality. As the British Library quoted in their latest exhibition, comics have become a “playground for the imagination.” Their new ‘Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK’ is the UK’s largest ever exhibition in comics. So, of course, I had to go...

The Library offered a history, with choice material, of different elements of comics: from mischief, heroes, and the supernatural, to politics, self image and sex. I don’t know what image springs to mind when you think of comics, but for me it’s Superman and his fellow cape-wearing, slogan-shouting, jaw-jutting mates. This exhibition reminded me how much more fits into this huge industry.

Dotted around the exhibition were loads of mannequins, dressed in hoodies, and wearing the face of Guy Fawkes. They represent the protestors that are part of the group Occupy. They took the face from the comic ‘V for Vendetta’, and turned it into a political and social symbol. This was a clever tool to use. In the first issue of the comic, V successfully brought down government, sending out the message that “people should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of their people.” It is fascinating how history was adapted for a comic, and then borrowed to make new history. 

There was also an interesting amount of comics relating to women. With a copy of the first real feminist comic: Heroine that first came out in 1978, a suffragette comic, and a poster entitled ‘What a Woman May Be’, there was a lot to impress my feminist side.

Other interesting historical and political documents ranged from comics about Dick Turpin (“Knight of the Road), to one mimicking the union of Tony Blair and George Bush (“Tony & Me by Georg Bush”).

Of course there was also a lot about modern comics that I know and love, like Watchmen and Kickass, and a pop-art filled gift shop to fill my house with explosive merchandise. The exhibition also went right up to the new age of webcomics, which are described as creating an "infinite canvas"... But those are the parts of the industry that I have always thought of when I hear the word ‘comic’.
It took this exhibition, with the huge range supplied by the British Library, for me to see other elements of this arty world I want to be part of. It is strange but true that until this exhibition, I had never really realised a major fact about this form of art: Comics are so much more than just Bang! and Pow!