“The product of art — temple, painting, statue, poem — is not the work of art. The work takes place when a human being cooperates with the product so that the outcome is an experience that is enjoyed because of its liberating and ordered properties.”
-John Dewey
There’s a post by Frankius over at comicscomics referencing something Evan Dorkin had written about the relatively minimal impact in the comics community of books like Wilson or Genesis. Santoro’s talking about how the readership of comics is more diffuse than it used to be in the eighties and nineties where everyone was pretty much on board w/r/t what the important releases were. What I remember of my own experience working at a comic shop at that time differs, though we were all probably following tcj religiously back then and felt like we were in it together, maybe. But it was a good post. The landscape of comics has changed to the point where fandom has become a smaller subset of overall readership and, therefore, less necessary. The younger readers grew up with manga, anime, alternative/indy comics, sophisticated video games, and their frames of reference are different from those of the old guard. And there’s a fresh crop of readers who aren’t so young, who have much more catholic tastes but, nonetheless, have no idea what formula Johnny Quick recited to gain super speed or what happened during the “Secret Wars.”
Lots of commenters offered their two cents on the post. My attention was caught specifically by something Andrew White had written:
“I guess I just think people have to challenge themselves more in the types of works they see as important. Like, I think it would be the greatest thing ever if Jeet or Dan or someone tried to critically engage, say, Franquin’s Spirou or even (God forbid!) Dragon Ball or something in the same way that they do stuff like Gasoline Alley and Kirby’s Fourth World.”
It brings up a good point about how arbitrary “comics history” is. It’s easy to see that positive associations, as opposed to some more objective system of value, are what impel bloggers (critics?) to write about Kirby or King more than Toriyama or Baldessari. And It all gets confused because, though these canons are very personal, there’s a great deal of overlap, and it’s hard not to want to moralize and ascribe solid good/bad pronouncements to the various creations. I don’t know whether I’d call most of it “Art,” but it is all, of course, art.
art is not about making meaning, it seems to me. It is the way we relate aesthetically to the world. “Art,” on the other hand, is worried about the concerns of art, which is a form of meaning. I was recently thinking about how art ideally escapes the manichean system of valuation that is all but unavoidable in literature, which seems to be concerned with the accuracy of sign/signified relationships. But this is another typically binary way to view culture – aesthetic vs. conceptual – beauty vs. meaning. It’s a map, but it can be restrictive.
I made this post as a way of coming to terms with the fact that I can’t escape my own goofy influences. I grew up immersed in a certain subset of the larger visual culture, and it’s useless for me to completely reject the way I, Jason Overby, respond to Spiderman’s costume, Batman’s utility belt, Toth’s page layouts, Bushmiller’s economy, Gould’s weirdness, Beto’s brushstrokes, etc. My aesthetics were formed by this random soup, but that doesn’t mean that I want “Comics” as a medium to embrace its own heritage.
I get frustrated with people wanting the “Art” establishment to take “comic art” (meaning the actual inked comics pages as objects) seriously. I look at Dan DeCarlo originals and they’re magically beautiful to me, but that’s ignoring the fact that they’re illustrating dopey stories about teenagers. There are some thorny questions about taste and objective criteria that have historically elided the concerns of “Comics” but which are part of the concerns of “Art.”
But the concerns of “Comics” are changing. The protective insularity of the eighties and nineties has given way, with the success of manga, critical acclaim, newer formats, etc. to the wide open, less-detached-from-the-cultural-zeitgeist aughts.
The most exciting thing to me about comics in the nineties, something that was on everyone’s minds, was the idea that comics, as a mode of expression, could be divorced from comics, as a cultural history. I guess we’re beginning to reap what we’ve sown.
Is that last photo Zak Smith’s Every Page from Gravity’s Rainbow installation?
Saw that when it was up the Whitney Biennial. It was awesome to b ehold. Not quite so impressive (though, still very impressive) in book form. I loved the craziness and the juxtaposition by seeing the whole thing as one huge “page” of panels.
Good eye. A non-comics artist friend told me about that show – pretty incredible to have all those drawings up in one space.
“the idea that comics, as a mode of expression, could be divorced from comics, as a cultural history”
I just want this written again because I love it so much. Comics > Cartooning.
When people say
‘this comic had minimal impact on the comics world’
they actually mean ‘oh it wasnt talked about on the 2 or 3 comics blogs i read’
The internet is not reality. And thank god for that.
WILSON is here in my the comics library here in Stockholm and its hard to check out because its so popular. Clowes did a reading at The Strand and eveyrone in the ‘comics world’ of NYC went to it. Who cares if there aren’t a lot of horrible blog reviews of it?
And, more importantly, the less consensus the better! That’s the sign of a thriving artform…vast and diverse. There are different kinds of readers now, and they dont think Seth is the best cartoonist around.
And the people that do love Seth might not relate to what these new readers like. Sounds like a wonderful situation to me.
Like Prince, I am ready for this ‘internet fad’ to finally be over!
Was there really that little discussion of Wilson? Suat did a long review here and (as he mentions) there was that extended Savage Critics roundtable. I presume the CC folks talked about it; I know Tom S. commented on the roundtable…I don’t know.
I’m speaking as somebody who really probably couldn’t care less about Wilson…but it seems like there was discussion of it.
I don’t really see that much diversity though. I get that there are a lot of “younger” cartoonists who are less concerned with comics history— and seem to want to reject any binding notions about what they’re doing, or not doing— but vast? I don’t see it. I think until those more anarchic creators really offer something that can be pinned down ( or bagged in mylar) and taken home ( something that coheres to a larger vision of the world, or an X on the map, so to speak), it’s going to remain a relatively small, insular world. Just as insular as the world of Comics, pre-respectability. And maybe that’s desirable to a certain extent, but I can’t help but feel like we’re being offered a list of reasons why no one should expect this “new”, “diverse” and “vast” interest to cohere into something or other.
Maybe this has passed me by, but I see a huge schism between the actual work and the language that is used here, and on cometscomets, to talk about that work ( or is it about the work?).
I sort of wonder if this rejection of history, or fetishization of randomness and chaos won’t get sort of boring if it doesn’t transcend it’s own set of limitations. For some, that might mean looking toward Comics, for others, it might be looking toward Art. We all desire order and meaning, after all.It’s ironic to try and order these ideas at all.It’s a new hierarchy. It’s inevitable. I say embrace it or keep treading water.
“It’s easy to see that positive associations, as opposed to some more objective system of value, are what impel bloggers (critics?) to write about Kirby or King more than Toriyama or Baldessari.”
Boy do I disagree. First of all, “objective system of value”? How does one achieve this? 500 years of art criticism and aesthetic theory haven’t managed.
Second, I think you will see critics writing about Toriyama (and his influence) more as more contemporary comics practitioners exhibit that influence. Manga in the U.S. hit a youngish readership in a big way in about 2000, and we should expect (American) artists who grew up with that as a major influence to start producing mature works at any moment. That will force us to look more at people like Toriyama and Takeuchi, etc. In other words, comics history is constantly being rewritten because of the concerns of the present. (I’m not sure how relevant Baldessari is to comics, but I’m willing to be schooled.)
For example, recently there was a discussion over at Comics Comics about the new Lynd Ward collection. There was a lot of discussion about whether Ward was “comics” that centered on formal definitions. To me, this is irrelevant. While Ward and his fellow wood-cut novelists came out of a non-comics tradition, the fact is that their work was highly influential on people like Eric Drooker, Seth Tobacman, and Peter Kuper. In other words, current artistic practice by those contemporary artists pretty much demands that we critically grapple with Lynd Ward.
“But the concerns of “Comics” are changing. The protective insularity of the eighties and nineties has given way, with the success of manga, critical acclaim, newer formats, etc. to the wide open, less-detached-from-the-cultural-zeitgeist aughts.”
This I agree with. And it’s a good thing–a positive sign of growth.
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I’m with Warren:
I think I’ll just keep copying it into comments randomly.
Innovative cartoonists, from Crumb to Panter to Chippendale, are always reconciling the comics they came up on. The american manga boom will be no different in terms of influence. You are already seeing it in artists like Mickey Z and Michael DeForge. It’s the one reason why I don’t agree with Santoro on the “experimental/genre comics are dead” thing.
As the son of a teacher/librarian, I can’t even conceive of a world in which a thing is divorced from its cultural history.
I have been having an opposite conversation with people: never be embarrassed. Comics have created some works of “Serious Art (TM),” but I personally believe that it’s a terrible mistake to be ashamed of the “low arts” or “cheap entertainment” history of comics. It’s a part of the culture and culture informs art. Nothing occurs or exists in a vacuum. We are in the middle of a stream of idea exchange that began with the first reasoning human and will end when the last intelligent being falls over dead. Art is always a conversation between the now and the then and the may-be.
“It’s easy to see that positive associations, as opposed to some more objective system of value, are what impel bloggers (critics?) to write about Kirby or King more than Toriyama or Baldessari.”
This really stuck out to me as well, and it’s very much along the lines of what I was trying to get at with my ComicsComics comment. I certainly don’t think there’s any way to be completely objective in assessing what merit a given comic might have, but I do think it’s important to recognize the types of work that you as an individual reader have some kind of predisposition towards and make an effort to overcome that bias by seeking out comics that really challenge your assumptions about and understanding of the medium.
In other words, the diversification of comics is a good thing in a lot of ways, but I think there’s a risk that something will be lost in the compartmentalization that unavoidably comes to some extent with diversification. That’s why I really would love to see ComicsComics, or this blog, or anyone else that writes compellingly about good comics to challenge themselves in the types of work they’re reading and writing about — it’s certainly something I work hard to do in my own reading.
So there’s no such thing as crap?
I get what Austin is saying, but I think there’s a distinction to be made. When the people I talk with say ‘this comic had minimal impact on the comics world’ they don’t just mean ‘oh it wasnt talked about on the 2 or 3 comics blogs i read.’ They are primarily talking about how none of the comics people they talk to in real life are talking about these books. Or, at least not talking about them in the “wow, I’m really excited about this book” sort of way. I feel like this excitement is something that is often missing when I hear conversations (real life, not just the internet) about comics like “Wilson” or “Genesis.”
Maybe this excitement (or lack thereof) is something to think about? Something to talk about? Maybe excitement is the wrong word, because strong feelings against something can also be a big motivation for change, for thought. Maybe it’s just the lack of people demonstrating strong feelings one way or another. A lot of times I feel tired of the comics scene because people just act like they’re too cool to care.
I can’t divorce myself from the creation aspect of things, seeing as that’s what I spend the majority of my time doing. But I know that for me, what I’m excited about either at the time or in my past has a lot of bearing on what I produce. Sometimes it is wanting to explore an idea. Sometimes a technique. Sometimes I am so angry I want to just make something better, something that states my view of things. But strong feelings are the reason I make art and the reason my art changes.
I remember a while back Frank talking about jazz, how he was missing the interplay in the comics world, the building off of each other. Sometimes I feel the same way. Not necessarily that we (as creators) should only play from/with the past, but maybe that we should play more off of each other as peers. Maybe we should talk more about what we’re excited about and how it’s influencing our art, whether it’s in the comics scene or not. Maybe we should not be afraid to say that we disagree something without worrying about stepping on toes.
Maybe if we talk more about our influences, our excitements, our ideas, then we can make a space for comics in the greater sphere of creativity instead of an maintaining the idea of an insular world that is only influenced by itself.
I should also add that I totally think that I agree with Darryl in that we should not be ashamed of our influences, whether “low-brow” or not. Talking about our influences, whatever they are, helps situate us in the larger cultural sphere.
maybe instead of subjective vs objective one could use vernacular vs formal language
vernacular is ‘we grew up reading these comics; let’s talk about them in the context of the comics we read and the values they espoused’
formal is ‘let’s look at these comics and our reading of them in a broader context’
vernacular = fan culture
formal = other cultures
Ha! Of course there’s such a thing as crap, and there’s always going to be a fair amount of it to sift through. What I’m trying to say is that there’s no such thing as a flipping through a comic for 10 seconds or even reading it once and declaring it crap without giving it a chance. That was my first instinct with a lot of things that I’ve later come to enjoy, from Gary Panter to CLAMP to Los Bros, and I just think trying to move beyond that initial reaction before making any kind of judgment is important.
I’m not sure it’s so much divorcing comics from their history as much as seeing that history in an expanded light and working to expand that history by bringing in influences from other arenas (arts or not).
Andrew: Your point about expanding what one reads is a good one. It is something I try to do in my own reading (comics or otherwise) and more specifically when I’m writing about comics. I’ve purposefully gone out of my way in the past to look genres and styles that I would at first hand dismiss. For me that would have been stuff like shojo (though I’ve found some series I really like, such as Nana or Aria) or superheroes (hmm, haven’t be so successful in that department, but I have a better understanding of the history at least).
Let’s be honest, even the supposedly “high-brow” material in comics might as well be low-brow. Or at least we are enjoying it in a low-brow fashion anyhow. The idea that any intellectual statement made in a comic is somehow relevant to important contemporary intellectual discourse is a fantasy. Enjoying something for the fantasy of it = low-brow. It doesn’t make it any less enjoyable, but ultimately we are enjoying on the same level that we enjoyed X-Men growing up, let’s be realistic. In this scenerio though instead of a man who can fly we have a cartoonist who can change the world.
Robert Boyd said:
“Boy do I disagree. First of all, “objective system of value”? How does one achieve this? 500 years of art criticism and aesthetic theory haven’t managed.”
I disagree, too! There is no objective system – that’s why I’m questioning the authority of what we think of as comics history.
“There was a lot of discussion about whether Ward was “comics” that centered on formal definitions. To me, this is irrelevant.”
Couldn’t agree with you more about this! It’s some misguided attempt from fans in a very particular subculture to keep their world small. That’s why I brought up Baldessari (or Pettibon or lots of other stuff I can’t think of right this second). “we” are too insular as a community.
Darryl:
“… but I personally believe that it’s a terrible mistake to be ashamed of the “low arts” or “cheap entertainment” history of comics.”
Yes – I do like and am influenced by all that stuff, and that’s ok, but that makes up such a huge percentage of what comics folks blog about. Don’t be ashamed of it, but don’t vaunt it as the pinnacle of “the medium” either.
More in a sec…
Crap is ok as compost.
Good binary, Blaise. Existence vs. essence.
Ian:
“The idea that any intellectual statement made in a comic is somehow relevant to important contemporary intellectual discourse is a fantasy.”
Yes, and this is good and bad. It’s amazing to be off away from the authority of the cultural elite, but we have to be careful we don’t limit ourselves to our humble beginnings.
L. Nichols:
I’m mostly too busy making comics to read them, but I don’t like much new stuff that I see so it’s hard for me to provide lots of positive examples.
Ian: “It doesn’t make it any less enjoyable, but ultimately we are enjoying on the same level that we enjoyed X-Men growing up, let’s be realistic.”
Disagree on this. I get a different level of enjoyable out of a lot of comics than I got from reading X-Men in as a pre-teen.
“That’s why I really would love to see ComicsComics, or this blog, or anyone else that writes compellingly about good comics to challenge themselves in the types of work they’re reading and writing about”
We get a pretty broad range of work here, I think, or at least we try to… What aren’t we covering that you’d like to see covered?
“Maybe it’s just the lack of people demonstrating strong feelings one way or another.”
If there’d been stronger feelings about the Genesis comic on this blog, we would have had fistfights.
Noah – I’m hesitant to name anything specific, because I only started reading here regularly fairly recently, and it does seem like there’s a range in the types of work being discussed. Umm…more European comics, maybe? I feel like there’s a deficiency in writing about those in English generally speaking, and if there’s anyone at HU who has the knowledge to cover that area I would welcome them doing so regularly. Although maybe there’s a huge Enki Bilal roundtable or something I just haven’t dug out of the archives yet, so feel free to correct me if you feel like you’ve got that covered.
We do a fair bit of European coverage. Domingos Isabelinho especially writes about neglected European creators frequently (you can click his column over on the sidebar.) Also, you might enjoy this.
Matthias is from Denmark (living in London), Alex is French, Domingos is from Portugal. So we have a number of European writers….
That doesn’t mean we couldn’t do more though.
“If there’d been stronger feelings about the Genesis comic on this blog, we would have had fistfights.”
Sure. But that’s just this blog, one blog, a blog with a history of people who like to get in long arguments about comics. I was more talking about people in real life. What’s the number of times I’ve heard Genesis being mentioned in real life by real life comics artists? I talk to comics people all the time and I’ve heard MAYBE one or two of them talk about Genesis. I’ve heard more non-comics people talking about it than I have any comics people I know!
I was more trying to say that people aren’t excited enough about comics to REACT to them in their work. I mean the type of excitement that wakes you up in the morning, keeps you up at night. The kind of excitement that makes you want to go draw “Exodus.” Or maybe the kind of excitement where you’re SO upset about Genesis that you just have to react some way against it in your own work. Excitement on the creation side of things.
Ah, I get you, L. That makes sense.
Noah – Well, it seems I stand corrected, which is great news.
This whole discussion reminds me of something that I think Michael Deforge said on Inkstuds once — that, to paraphrase, there are so many great comics out there that you will never run out of amazing new things to read. This is unequivocally a good thing.
“there are so many great comics out there that you will never run out of amazing new things to read”
I think this is a really good discussion to have. While it’s certainly great to talk about stuff that everyone can agree on, I think the biggest advantage to having tools like the internet and blogs is to share things that other folks might not know about. Every week I am blown away by the stuff that Brandon Graham and Jog pull up from god knows where. Any time the thought might start to form in my head that there are limits to comics’ possibilities, these new discoveries thankfully put an end to it.
So I’m in a camp with L and Darryl – if something is totally blowing your mind, regardless of what you think anyone else thinks of it, talk about it. If you can figure out how and why it’s affecting you the way it is, and if you can communicate that clearly, it can only help. It helps yourself, it helps the discourse and, ultimately, I think it helps the future of comics.
So yeah, I think there should always be a discussion of, what else is going on, what’s not being covered. Doesn’t mean everyone has to agree on it – that’s beside the point.
And I think this extends beyond the realm of comics, as L has talked about before. I like when Frank Santoro talks about jazz and other stuff, because that can only enrich the possibilities. Co-mix, right?
Austin –
Okay, so:
You’re saying you know how many websites I and “people” who, I guess, are saying such insane things, read. I say that’s ESP, which doesn’t exist, and is unreal.
You say the internet is not “reality”? Okay. This might sound crazy, but I might have to agree with you here, or at least with what I think you’re getting at. Internet reception and noise does not equal actual all-around reception and noise. Nice one, you really went out on a ledge there, but I’m with you, even if I think you needn’t have bothered hauling that in.
I never mentioned Wilson, nor had anyone else that I know of in the discussion on the Comics Comics site. So why are you bringing Wilson up?
Oh, to make this point — uh, let me get this straight — you’re saying Wilson did well in Stockholm and Clowes had a great crowd at the Strand in NYC so what Frank Santoro and I and others think about some other books being under-discussed or under-valued is incorrect–? Can I get a WTF?
Hey, wait — I wasn’t at the Clowes appearance. Does that mean I’m not a member of the NYC “Comics World”? Yes, that’s a straight line, go ahead, folks, I don’t care. But seriously, everyone was there? Arnold Roth? Etc etc? You’re like, exaggerating, aren’t you? Broad strokes, yes?
Why are you saying what we’re “looking for” are crappy blog reviews of particular books? I guess it’s stupid to hope for interesting discussions or quality reviews or a general conversation on anything. If that’s possible on the unreal web, don’t tell me, because I don’t want to know I’m living a lie. At least not the internet and comics one.
I hear Wilson is popular in Stockholm.
When was it decided that Seth was the best cartoonist ever? Many of the things you say strike me as very unreal…very “internet”. I’m beginning to see everything now…
You quoted Prince. His recordings are about as all over the place as your arguments. In my opinion, but then again, I only read two music blogs (it’s true). So what do I, and those like me, know?
I know, I’m being obnoxious, so sue me. But come on, fight fair or at least try to cheat more spectacularly. You could’ve said Carol Tyler was huge in Stockholm, I mean, I couldn’t prove you wrong. I’m a dumb American, I don’t even know what part of the U.S. Stockholm’s in.
Wilson is piss-your-pants hilarious. What more is there to talk about? C’mon now.
For the lovers:
http://cometscomets.blogspot.com/2010/03/rad-stuff-where-to-get-it.html
BTW, I saw virtually every Portland area cartoonist I know (except Dylan, maybe?) at the Clowes appearance here at Powells, for what it’s worth. It was an amazing talk. I am not a fan of Wilson, myself, but I think Clowes, Crumb, Los Bros, Buns, etc. often get ad hoc treatment as in, like, duh, everybody likes those books so they don’t need to be written about to make people aware of them. I do remember being surprised that Wilson, in particular wasn’t talked about more at the time it came out, but as time goes on there has been greater coverage. And, again, I’m not the biggest Ware fan, but I would’ve expected more folks to have written about Lint. Though, of course, the regular world is all over that stuff. But it’s not hip in the way it once was where Pavement (also now not hip) members were wearing Eightball t-shirts or whatever. What’s hip now?
To Daryl’s point: for me, “divorcing comics from its cultural history” isn’t about being embarrassed about comics’ history so much as it is recognizing that “comics history” is neither sufficient cultural context for already existing comics nor necessary cultural context for yet-to-be-created ones.
The idea that comics history is both necessary and sufficient — I could put in jargony terms and say that it feels like a caving in to historical determinism. But it’s really more that it gives me no way in.
What L. describes — she says that about creators, but I feel that as a critic too. On the whole, very few comics keep me awake at night the way literature and criticism and theory and Godard films and conceptual art do — not because those things are better than comics-history-inspired comics, but because those are the things I like, and they’re having a different conversation than comics has historically been having.
I pay attention because occasionally, a comic comes along that really intervenes in the stuff I care about (like Feuchtenberger, or the stuff Jason just linked to!) and on the occasions when that has happened, it’s been so extraordinarily worthwhile that it’s worth keeping an eye out.
But for many things, it’s hard for me to muster the enthusiasm to do a real piece of criticism, because the book just isn’t doing anything to keep me awake. No matter how cool the tricks with comics history gets, no matter how nuanced the conversation, it’s just never going to keep me awake, because I’m interested in DIFFERENT histories — pop art, experimental fiction, 20th century theories of language and representation, artistic constructions of subjectivity. I think it’s wrong to say that comics can’t become part of those histories, now, even though they’ve historically not been. (Or, to return to the jargon, how can we expect the dialectic to work without antithesis?)
I absolutely don’t mean that comics-history-inspired comics aren’t doing very interesting things with that history. I don’t mean they shouldn’t exist, or that they’re “less” in any way than other comics. It’s just that, for me, who has no history with comics, comics history can’t on its own provide a foundation for challenging, provocative, mind-changing art, so for comics to challenge me, provoke me, and change my mind, I need there to be SOME comics that deprioritize the specific history of comics in order to engage more actively with those other histories.
That’s why the strength of the term “divorce” feels right to me. Comics’ relationship to their own history often feels like a marriage where one partner’s potential is being really held back in order to protect or build up the ego of the other partner. And I like comics better than I like comics history, so I say “girlfriend, leave!” Comics > cartooning.
david copperfield once said that true magic lies not in what you just ate, but in the shit you’re about to take
but he’s dead.
Caro: Yes!
Poison the Well: Yes!
I don’t think that my reply above necessarily implies that comics history alone is enough to dissect comics art, but I’m starting to get hazy on your point. Comics history is important, and it still appears that, in the paragraph where you address my reply, that you are trying to minimize comics history’s importance to the study of comics.
I think that it’s always going to be wrongheaded to analyze an artform/medium without a wider cultural context, but it’ll always be wrongheaded to shun that artform/medium’s own history. If you take away the “family” of a piece of art, you place a lot of your own assumptions and biases onto said work and end up building your own reality on top of it, after the fact. Sort of what the “hipsters” call “irony.”
If I’m understanding your point correctly, of course.
Some level of engagement with past works of a medium are always important (and usually implied) when addressing even one work in said medium.
(in this case, comics)
If I misunderstand your point, I’m sorry.
i am so ironical / my mustache wears a monocle
i am so retro / i can pass as hetro
i am so very arty / my every thought a party
dear god free me / no one wants to be me
RIP “quotes”
Darryl, at least for me, the point is that you can build different histories for comics, or a particular comic. For instance, Dan Clowes is, it seems to me, much more closely related to David Lynch and surreal film than he is to Alex Toth and action comics. Edie Fake has more to do with performance art, feminist theory, and visual art traditions than he has to do with the underground comix. And so forth. You’re assuming that there’s a set inside and outside. But defining what history is inside and what’s outside is part of the excitement of art or criticism. Imposing assumptions and biases is part of how artists (including critics) make art; how they build their own reality, after the fact or before it. That’s part of what’s at stake when Jason calls for comics to be more than one history.
Lurk, poison well, etc., if you want to use an alias that’s fine. Please stick to one, though, or I will start deleting your posts. Thanks.
Noah
“Darryl, at least for me, the point is that you can build different histories for comics, or a particular comic. For instance, Dan Clowes is, it seems to me, much more closely related to David Lynch and surreal film than he is to Alex Toth and action comics. Edie Fake has more to do with performance art, feminist theory, and visual art traditions than he has to do with the underground comix. And so forth. ”
Cross-referencing other media is a time-tested method of aesthetic analysis. No problems with that.
“You’re assuming that there’s a set inside and outside”
Incorrect. False.
I’m just saying that there IS a comics history and everything in the medium is a part of that history. That does NOT have anything to do with whether or not one can trace artistic lineage into other media. Nothing about what I posted even walked into the neighborhood of such an implication.
hi Noah. sorry about the alias issue. it is an integral part of the conceptual comments agenda though, so it’s hard to resist. [see comets comets fag horde]
Like what you said about Dan Clowes…I think Jack Elam, Don Knotts, and Peter Lorre were possibly as important to 90s Clowes as David Lynch
Oh, for goodness sake C the e; pick something else. That people can talk to.
Peter Lorre and Don Knotts make sense.
This is going to be a painful comment, but I guess it’s this, Daryl:
Is it possible for there to be something, some art object, that counts as a comic, but that doesn’t belong to the trajectory of “comics history” up to that point? “That point” being the exact point, in the mathematical sense, at which the history that the art object does belong to, comes into contact with comics history, maybe drawing off just enough from comics history that it can “be a comic”? And then, is it possible for that point to be the ONLY point at which that thing-that-is-a-comic ever touches comics history? If it instead continues on the trajectory of whatever history it was part of before it acquired comics-ness, taking nothing but that single point’s worth of comics history, would you still consider it a comic? Or would it return in your mind to being whatever it was before it touched that point?
(I wish comments boxes were etch-a-sketches.)
For me, the idea that comics should be considered their own media with their own specific history is too limited — almost old-fashioned! We used to have novels, and there was a history of the novel, and all novels were a part of the history of the novel. Now we have “novel-ness,” and poems and essays and stories and films and yes, novels, all partake of novel-ness when it is useful and leave it behind when it is not. And novels partake of those other things. And the idea of a single “history of the novel” just doesn’t make sense anymore (although the old history still works for the old work).
Forms and genres — in contrast with specific works in those forms and genre — are ideas. Saying that the genre-as-genre has a specific determinative history that is equally and fully applicable to all instances of the genre — that’s what I’m struggling against. That makes “comics” into a material rather than letting it be both a material and an idea. And for me, it’s more powerful as an idea.
re: Dan Clowes
Sergio Leone close ups as well…
realize this attention to the rubber expressive desperation of the human face is a narrow facet of Clowes, but i think it’s a hallmark … in the way that a pop-up greeting card that you buy for your girlfriend on your 1 year anniversary one hour too late, is set. in. stone.
i feel heavenly atm, btw. :)
god bless everyone
Cough Syrup works. Let’s stick with that.
Hmm…Caro, just as there’s ‘novelness’ outside the novel, I think there’s ‘comicness’ outside of comics…I think it’s something to do with disjunctive percepts in sequence…so it could embrace a series of paintings by Hogarth or a sculpture garden…
As to European comics in HU: I’m aware more can be done, and I’ll be addressing that in the year to come.
No offense to Jason, he’s one of my faves, but do we really need another “what is comics?” discussion which ultimately descends into another “what is art?” discussion? I mean, doesn’t this start to seem like a bad reoccurring dream? When do we get down to specifics? I’m sick of the conversation always moving towards the abstract, the general. None of us are learning anything from this. This is hair splitting nonsense.
Caro, if these works exist tell us what they are and something about them. I don’ care about whether or not they conceptually exist. We aren’t waiting for Godot here, show us the goods. Let’s talk turkey.
That was why I posted that Baldesarri strip initially. It seems like it’s completely outside the trajectory of comics history. I’m sure he was aware of comics, but what he was exploring (and, I think, others in contemporary art have explored) was time, the idea of cutting it up, how false that can be. He has elsewhere explored the disjunction between sign and signified. These are both areas that good comics could be built from. The only problem, I see, with examples from “Art” is that they’re often too minimal, too conceptually tight, too medium as message. They often lack the warmth and human connection that good narratives can provide.
Caro:
again – yes! The people who make and read comics as a community are too insular. Many of them have interests outside their subculture, and they’ll engage with genuinely amazing culture in other fields but for some reason won’t let ideas from those other fields influence what comics they make. Unless they’re genre ideas or technical ideas or something else that’s fits comfortably with comics history. There’s not a lot of ambition outside of the technical. I’m generalizing, of course, and there are counterexamples, but I think this is mostly true.
And genre material from other subcultures (Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith, Deadwood) is generally so much more interesting than comics. I like culture, and I love comics as an idea, but I’m not going to read crappy comics just to be reading comics when I could be watching Boardwalk Empire instead.
Ian, no reason there can’t be both. People seem to like the abstract conversations too. This is one of the first times you’ve commented here, for example!
“We are not your enemies
We want to give you vast and strange domains
Where mystery in flower offers itself to whoever wishes to pick it
There are new fires there new colors”
– Guillaume Apollinaire
Hey Evan
Sorry for the tone of my post. I had a long day at work and was feeling exhausted, wrote something flippant. That’s no excuse, but I didn’t mean to be mean.
One minor correction. You say
‘I never mentioned Wilson, nor had anyone else that I know of in the discussion on the Comics Comics site. So why are you bringing Wilson up? ‘
I brought it up because its mentioned in the opening psot on comicscomics by Santoro:
“Meaning there definitely is more mainstream press coverage of books like Wilson or the new Joe Sacco (there was a BBC roundtable on the book for Christ’s sake), and, I think because of that, there is less of a discussion of Clowes and Sacco within comics or on the comics blogs or wherever, because those creators are well known to us and there isn’t that discovery or shock of the new anymore. ”
That’s basically what i was responding to (and Jason talks abut Wilson too). I disagree with this. I think there is plenty of discussion/interest in Wilson (the examples I noted). Just not on blogs.
I bring up Stockholm because peoples interest in this stuff in other cultures is always overlooked and never considered part of the larger discussion anyway. And that’s a loss to everyone.
Ian — you can read my post on Feuchtenberger here.
That’s about the closest I personally can come at this point.
From where I sit it’s not nearly as much a problem for comics artists as it is a problem for comics critics and for theory. It’s mostly people talking about the abstractions who refuse the notion that comics > cartooning. Artists just tend to see the point (whether or not they get it into their work.)
I can’t break down comics into its constitutive comics-ness; comics isn’t my expertise. And comics theory is pretty sparse: there’s nobody who has done for comics what Rosalind Krauss and October did for visual art, so there’s no easy academic way in (for someone with my literary background) either. Maybe in a few years, since I think academics are probably working on this as we speak! But I absolutely agree with you that it would be terrific to get to that point.
Alex, I hold out (a poststructuralist) hope that “sequence” will ultimately be less significant to comics-ness than we currently think it is. That’s why the conversation with Andrei and Derek about time got so heated, I think…
Jason:
I completely agree, and this is one of the things that originally captured my attention about comics — they have the possibility of all that warmth PLUS visual conceptual elements. It’s really remarkable.
I also just gotta say how much I love Apollinaire.
Jason: “I’m not going to read crappy comics just to be reading comics when I could be watching Boardwalk Empire instead.”
It’s funny that you mentioned _Boardwalk Empire_. If one of the greatest North American living artists can’t work in his medium of choice it means that that medium is dead, or, at least, seriously maimed (I blame stupid comics!). Thank god for HBO!
Incidentally: I agree with the above quote, of course.
has anyone brought up cartography?
Only topology.
…neglecting astrology.
I don’t get Domigo’s comments on Boardwalk Empire. Is he referring to Martin Scorcese here:
” If one of the greatest North American living artists can’t work in his medium of choice it means that that medium is dead, or, at least, seriously maimed (I blame stupid comics!). Thank god for HBO”
This makes no sense. Scorcese is churning out very personal and ambitious films nearly every year. And television is no inferior medium to film.
Please explain?
I’ll regret this:
I don’t see anything personal since the first half hour or so of _Gangs of New York_.
…but always very attentive to signs.
Well,Domingos, sometimes you have to actually make an effort, instead of being a mere passive consumer.
Try it next time you view a Scorsese film.
Funny thing is, the disjointed, quick edits of the Departed remind me so much of Poison River era Gilbert Hernandez, where the interstices aren’t easy and you do a lot of closure work on your own.
…reading palms, learning psalms.
I knew that I was gonna regret it. From now on you know that I won’t dialogue with you.
Shitting is a personal act, and that’s what Scorsese’s been doing for 20 years now.
saucy!!!
Charles:
_Casino_ is 1995, so, no, that’s not 20 years, that’s 15 years. But my point is that it’s not entirely his fault. Big budget movies have become more and more childish during those years (as I said, I blame stupid comics). In _Gangs of New York_, for instance, he did his film at the beginning when he described the Four Points, but, then, he had to pay the expensive set and the film rapidly deteriorates. As I said: thank god for HBO!…
Domingos, what HBO dramas are you interested in? We’ve been watching the Wire, which I think is great…and it seems like something that could, or should, influence serial comics narratives (I haven’t heard that it has, though maybe there’s something out there…?)
Not Domingos, but.. Noah, personally I think Deadwood (despite its lack of resolution) is the best of the HBO dramas. Though The Wire comes in a close second.
Deadwood is a great take on the Western genre (as a process of socializing/civilizing/politicizing the “wild”) and the language is just wonderfully rich.
I liked _Rome_ and _Deadwood_ (especially the lack of resolution; I also liked the fact that, in spite of his self-righteousness, the sheriff was basically another gangster – since Guido Buzzelli is one of my favorite comics artists I think that “buzzellian” should be an adjective just like “kafkian;” this aspect of the series was quite buzzellian: meaning: goodness is as dangerous, if not more, than evilness). But my favorite of the three is _The Wire_ (the fourth season especially). I’ve just watched the first episode of _Boardwalk Empire_ and I liked it a lot.
We should do a Wire roundtable! Right after the Wallace Stevens roundtable and the Reinhold Niebuhr roundtable….
I just finished the third season and am looking forward to the fourth. It’s just such well done serialized fiction. Maybe after we’re through it I’ll try Deadwood….
Domingos, I was thinking Goodfellas, not imitation Goodfellas.
Deadwood is great.
The prohibition agent, Van Alden, in Boardwalk Empire is a really good, though maybe less subtle, exploration of the fascistic, self-righteous archetype of “legitimate authority,” that the sheriff in Deadwood conforms to.
Noah- If you put together a Wire roundtable, I’d be up for it :)
I’d like to write a post that traces the history of serial fiction at some point. It’s interesting that at any given time in recent history there’s been a dominant form of serial storytelling, regardless of the dominant medium..
Depending on when, I might be too. A dug that show.
‘I’, not ‘A’, obviously…
Domingos:
“[…] since Guido Buzzelli is one of my favorite comics artists I think that “buzzellian” should be an adjective just like “kafkian;” this aspect of the series was quite buzzellian: meaning: goodness is as dangerous, if not more, than evilness)”
Jesus, Domingos. If you keep writing stuff and choosing favorite artists I agree with, we must be approaching the Apocalypse.
“I?A” – Steve Ditko