Thu 28 Feb 2008
Comic books! The historical dismissal was that they were for kids — badly drawn, badly written pulp. Over time, there’s been a lot of attention paid (by readers at least) to the growth of non-superhero comics, to graphic novels and the counter-description of “sequential art”, but we’ve still got Spiderman and Superman as big ticket items, men in tights still the vanguard of the medium.
So what’s your take? Do you read comics? Did you read them growing up? Do you see comic books as a literary medium with some unavoidable legacy kids stuff, or light fare with some spikes of maturity?
Posted by Josh Millard8 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
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Comic Books: Both kid stuff and adult stuff. As an adult, I can enjoy both the kid stuff and the adult stuff, but I don’t know if a kid can or should enjoy both.
They’re not kid stuff at all, unfortunately. My five-year-old loves comics, but it’s difficult to find any that I don’t mind him reading.
We both love Calvin and Hobbes, but we’ve read them all. Peanuts and Pogo make no sense to a kid. He says Tintin is too scary. He loves Garfield, but I can take only so much. He likes Asterix, but the stereotypes are a bit much for a preschooler. All of the new, kind of alternative ones I’ve read have people being mean in them and/or romantic themes, which are just weird when you’re little. The traditional superheros are too violent (my thought) or scary (his). So we end up reading Calvin and Hobbes over and over and over… not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Corpse, do they still make disney comics? I used to read those all the time as a kid. They’d be in the actual floppy “comic book” section, versus the nicely bound “graphic novel” section, I guess? Duck Tails Adventures, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse Mysteries, Rescue Rangers… There’s probably even some anthologies out of the stuff I read. Or how about the Far Side? I loved those even when I didn’t get the jokes, because the art was so silly.
I was for a while obsessed with Manga, and still sort of keep up with which titles are currently out, if not the Mangas themselves. I spent my fangirl years trying to convince other people that no, these comics really aren’t for little kids.
And they aren’t. I mean, if you get past the shoujo/shounen crap, there are some manga that explore some pretty dark themes and do it fairly well. Good characterization, good storylines and pacing, good layout… The one that comes to mind currently is Full Metal Alchemist.
For some reason I’ve never been able to get into the North American brand of comics, be it the classic superhero stuff, Neil Gaimen’s work, or the newer adaptations from video games like Halo. I find the colour and heavy lines to be really disruptive, and there seems to be a tendency to cram a lot of text and graphics really close together. It doesn’t flow as well and it feels more like a chore than an enjoyment.
Saffron — yup, they still make Disney comics. My son was really into Donald Duck for a while, but they had some weird racial stereotypes going… maybe it was just a bad batch, though, because the latest ones we’ve been reading have been fine.
That’s a great idea about the Far Side, thanks! I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. He won’t get the jokes either, but he’ll love the pictures.
Here’s my problem with comics: so few of their creators seem to care about or know how to craft a meaningful relationship between words and pictures. Maybe this is just a quirky bee in my bonnet, but I loath redundancy. To me, anything gratuitous is the opposite of art. People talk all the time about gratuitous sex and violence, but what concerns we more are gratuitous words and pictures.
According to my aesthetic, the pictures should NEVER illustrate the words. And the words should never describe the pictures. If I read, “A lonely man with hunched shoulders walked down a dark city street” and see a picture of a lonely man with hunched shoulders walking down a dark city street, I generally don’t make it to the next panel. And I generally DON’T make it to the next panel.
It’s very hard to make each aspect add something new to the story, but that’s the job. Do it or fail. For instance (and this is just off the top of my head), show the city from the point-of-view of the lonely man. Let the words describe him; let the picture show the girl he sees sitting at the cafe, laughing with her friends (from his vantage point, way across the street — so far from her).
Years ago, I was thrilled to see find a “New Yorker” article about comics by Art Spiegelman. Finally, I thought, someone was going to help me find the real gems. But the example he used as the pinnacle of brilliant comic-book storytelling (I forget what it was) was chock full of redundant illustrating. He waxed about the layout and the poetry of the drawings, but he said little about the relationship between words and pictures (surely an important relationship with comics). He reminded me of a film buff who gets all into “cool special effects” or even “amazing cinematography” but forgets about the structure of the story as a whole.
As I say, maybe it’s just my odd quirk that I hate “illustrating” so much. Other people seem to like it, judging from all the agonizingly boring (to me) music videos on YouTube in which someone sings, “I love your lips and your eyes” and — yup — we see close ups of a pair of lips and then a pair of eyes.
I wrote a response to Spiegleman. In the height of my arrogance, I was offended that he never replied. But I got over it, locked myself back in my ivory tower, and cracked open my well-worn copy of “The Great Gatsby.”
(By the way, if someone can point me towards a graphic novel in which words and pictures each play their own unique part (well), I’d be grateful. I don’t think the medium is cursed. I just think the that most of the practitioners are hacks. I’m sure there are some non-hacks that even an old snob like me would love. By the way, it’s not a requirement, but I would love it if the example you showed me didn’t revolve around an adolescent boy fantasy world. I was a geek who didn’t get invited to the prom once, myself, but I kind of got over that years ago. And I also got tired, years, ago, of endless thinly-veiled nerd revenge (or wet dream) fantasies.)
I’d say Chris Ware and Dan Clowes are the current masters of the form, although neither one of them is perfect by any means. Still, those interested in comics as art/literature should be reading these two. There aren’t, in my estimation, all that many other comics artists working currently who measure up to them. (Maybe Joe Sacco for his nonfiction.)
In particular, Acme Novelty Library #18 is a masterpiece, containing Ware’s usual meticulous, impeccable formalism and losing a lot of the chilly, distant misanthropy that’s held his previous work back.
Clowes’s Eightball #22 (aka Ice Haven) and #23 (aka The Death Ray) are also amazing as literate, mature works that go well beyond the realm of kid’s stuff. (Caricature, the title story from its eponymous collection, is also a favorite of mine.)
Oh man, I had to come back to this thread months later just to plug Alison Bechdel’s memoir in comic form Fun Home. It’s one of the better books I’ve read in years, and I am not somebody inclined to enjoy literary memoirs at all, generally. I can’t recommend it strongly enough for anyone seeking serious comics with literary merit, and to grumblebee’s point above the art is a perfect match for the story.