(Comic Books) Modern comics fans tend to split between genre and art-comics factions. I've written about this split before, but for those just joining us: art comics have spent the last fifteen-to-twenty years as unwelcome houseguests in a distribution network catering mainly to superhero-comics fans. This in turn has led to resentment on both sides, with art-comics fans objecting to the ghettoization of their works by a market that wouldn't know what to do with a reader who didn't share their narrow obsessions save shoo them from the shop, and genre-comics fans resenting the distainful elitism of an art-comics crowd that wasted no opportunity to sneer down its nose at them. The result is an endless series of arguments in which aesthetic differences are treated with the kind of outraged viciousness usually reserved for gang warfare.
Throw the words The Comics Journal into the mix, and the result is inevitable bedlam. The reasons for this involve a bit of history. The Journal originally started out as a standard comic book fanzine, but a desire to elevate the medium quickly turned the magazine's first ten years of existence into something of a crusade to shame the mainstream comic book industry into producing better comic books. A more quixotic mission simply couldn't be found. For comic book creators in the late Seventies and early Eighties, the magazine must have looked like an invading horde of howler monkeys -- every month the industry would produce its usual allotment of subliterate clichés, and every month the Journal would call them on it in page after page of bone-crunching detail. Eventually a new breed of independently-produced works did arise, attempting to create a new standard of comics-as-literature, and the Journal gradually began to turn away from the mainstream to focus on works it liked rather than those it detested. Even then, the magazine never failed to shine a spotlight on genre comics which it felt rose above the dross and proved themselves worthy of reading (Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, Frank Miller's Daredevil, Watchmen, the first Dark Knight, Sandman, The Invisibles, Preacher, 100 Bullets and most recently Grant Morrison's New X-Men have all gotten the green light, among other titles), but the reputation for mean-spirited savagery never left the Journal in the eyes of superhero comics fans. Take any argument between two such fans, throw in The Comics Journal, and the discussion will quickly turn into a referrendum on the magazine.
A handy example of this phenomenon in action presented itself recently; since it's a Sunday, and hence a slow news day, I thought you might get a kick out of it.
It began when, writing in his November 1 column, mainstream comics reviewer Augie De Blieck Jr. stumbled across the re-issue of Eric Drooker's classic graphic album Flood, and no sir, he didn't like it one bit:
"By some definitions, I am a 'critic.' I've read so many comics that I should be cynical and callous. I've seen every trick in the book, so there's nothing new to me, and every comic is a parody of the one before it, in terms of originality. It is only the small books that receive no attention and seem anti-commercial that I should enjoy, leaving the full color superheroic antics to lesser minds. It is the artiste and the auteur that should spark me to think again.
"Nope, that's not me. If it was, I'm sure I would have enjoyed FLOOD!, a new graphic novel by Eric Drooker that's published by Dark Horse. It's a silent story done in black and white of a man living in New York City. He's lonely and desperate and beat upon by nature. He seeks a better condition for himself, but the world is against him. Blah blah blah
"Forget for the moment that it's bleak and surreal. It breaks the cardinal rule for me of not being boring. It's the kind of thing you have to work for THE COMICS JOURNAL to find fascinating. (Oh, and there's a quote in praise from them on the back cover.)"
As we all know, bleak and surreal visions of New York City are only acceptable if the phrase "post-Apocalyptic" appears somewhere in the book -- clearly Drooker's work was missing the requisite number of half-man/half gun-toting robots. In any event, these words didn't settle well with Alan David Doane, who took exception thusly:
"This rising tide of celebrating ignorance and stupidity, of mocking an intellegent magazine like the Journal to prove you're some sort of populist über-doofus, I don't know what the fuck that is. It's ignorant and pathetic, it's shameful and embarassing. And these yahoos are exactly the sort of 'commentators' that keep self-satisfied fanboys lining up for retarded swill from mainstream crap-mongers every month instead of pointing them at something worthwhile and enduring. Instead of suggesting that readers seek out intelligent voices, they seek to marginalize those voices, in the hope that the world will be made safe for more Chuck Dixon comics."
This little exchange took place on the internet, so it should go without saying that the clusterfuck had yet to begin. Enter one Franklin Harris, defender of every thirty-year-old's right to read Thundercats without the indignity of overheard snickering from the Peanut Gallery. Harris (if that is his real name) cried havoc and let loose against the enemy of the people:
"Like those at The Comics Journal, Doane conflates elitism and intelligence and assumes people (like me) dislike TCJ for the latter rather than the former.
"The problem with TCJ is that its elitism trumps its intelligence. Had it existed in the 1940s, TCJ would have lambasted C.C. Beck's Captain Marvel comics. Only time -- and Beck's subsequent reputation -- allows TCJ to see Beck's Captain Marvel as the great work it is.
"But what do I know? I'm just a 'populist über-doofus' who tried to read Chris Ware's award-winning Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth but had to stop before I slit my wrists. (Besides, it isn't a patch on Craig Thompson's Good-bye Chunky Rice.)"
Now we're cooking with gas. Memo to Harris: the reason us cruel elitists at The Comics Journal like C.C. Beck's work (and ran the artist's "Crusty Curmudgeon" column for years until his death) is that it was unpretentious, whimsical, wonderful comics for kids by a skilled artist who wrote responsibly to his audience -- it featured imaginative and playful storytelling rather than badly-drawn balloon titties and sadistic ultra-violence. In short, it wasn't the retarded and indefensible hackwork that still passes for children's comics to this day. M'kay? Thanks for playing.
Not wanting to be left out of the fray, NeilAlien climbed into his weblog perch and threw down his two cents worth:
"ADD has a problem with those people who populistically mock a passionate champion of comics like The Comics Journal and marginalize intelligent comics voices. Unfortunately for his point, the real problem is that those people could never marginalize The Comics Journal as much as it has marginalized itself- proudly, happily and pretentiously- but to the detriment of its noble greater mission. Another thing ADD seems to miss is how his defense of intelligent voices is totally undermined by his vitriol."
Neil manages to make his point without being an asshole, so allow me to respond in kind. Neil, the Journal "marginalized" itself within mainstream comics because it wouldn't give lip-service to crappy comics when its writers and reviewers knew that better works were possible. Curiously enough, it's also managed to survive for twenty-six years and counting, outlasting a heaping stack of competitors and going on to be the premiere voice of the new breed of comics to the outside world. The Journal has always managed to not only pay its way but even turn a small profit -- a neat trick, as anyone experienced in magazine publishing will tell you. Now that we have proper access to bookstores, the coffee-table editions we've been publishing have given us greater visability than ever. Pardon my saying so, but we just aren't feeling all that marginalized right now.
Anyway, where were we? Oh yes -- in the latest episodes of The Augie & Alan Show, Alan has taken to fisking Augie's column. (For those of you not familiar with weblogger lingo, a "fisking" is when you reprint someone else's column and take it apart line by line, exposing its presumed stupidity as you go.) Augie, meanwhile, has finally noticed Alan's activities, and is not amused. Further episodes are presumably forthcoming, assuming the Arbitron numbers hold up.
Throw three Love and Rockets fans and three Spawn fans in a room together, and the results will invariably look like this. Like I said -- slow news day. See you tomorrow, when there should be some actual comics information and commentary to throw your way.
