Comics still flying high: a mix of art and literature with worldwide appeal
Mike Yared
THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washingtontimes.com/culture/
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Seated at a restaurant table, Nate Baxter
arranges stacks of brightly colored comic books by nationality: India,
Hungary, France, Thailand, Germany, Malaysia, Japan and Croatia.
A passing waitress came to a quick stop, her widening eyes
scanning the colorful spreads. One features red-caped Chinese
superhero Mark Chen; another cover features Mindy, a zoologist
surrounded by Southeast Asian elephants, alligators and monkeys; a
third shows a Canadian Indian using his lassoing abilities to save an
endangered boat; and a fourth shows a gangsterlike personage with the
words "The Fool" in Japanese emblazoned on the front.
"Comics are the most widely read literature in the world," says
Mr. Baxter, a New Mexico cartoonist and founder of Rox35 Media Inc.
"Every time the Chinese government wants to reach their people, they
use comics. When they wanted to discredit the Falun Gong, they used
comics. Mao used comics to propagandize in the '40s.
"Now they have a comic-book character, Soccer Boy, who combats
Western influences and promotes patriotism."
What started in June 1938, when Action Comics published a 13-page
book about a superhero named Superman, has evolved into a mix of art
and literature with worldwide appeal. The United States alone has 375
new comic book titles a month, according to the New York City Comic
Book Museum.
The 3,500 comic-book shops in the United States generate annual
sales of $260 million. The average cost is $2.60, the average reader
age is 24, and 95 percent of all comic-book readers are male.
Yet interest in the States is puny compared with Japan, where an
entire populace consumes the art form.
"Whereas we produced hundreds of thousands of comics in this
country, Japan publishes millions," says David Gabriel, executive
director for the Comic Book Museum. "They use them for everything:
teaching, subway reading, you name it."
In fact, the "manga" style of Japanese animation, where
characters come equipped with spiky hair and larger-than-life eyes
— somewhat like Precious Moments figurines — has taken
over much of the world comic style, Mr. Baxter says. He uses comics
for missionary purposes and such an art form, he adds, is the only way
to reach the Christianity-resistant Japanese.
"Japan has probably more foreign missionaries per capita than any
other Asian country, but the lowest rate of return," says Mr. Baxter,
holding up a popular inch-thick Japanese comic called "Shownen,"
meaning "young boy." Mr. Baxter travels the world, training foreign
artists how to preach the Gospel through comic-book art and word
balloons in their own languages.
"The idea is to reach people with what they are already reading,
rather than reinventing the wheel," he says. "Forty percent of all
printed material in Japan is comics."
Comic books started out as an American art form, rapidly gaining
popularity during World War II, when soldiers took them overseas. In
fact, they first caught on in the Philippines because of the discarded
copies left by American GIs.
"At first, comics were superhero genre and escapist fantasy,"
says Lee Dawson of Dark Horse Comics, a Milwaukie, Ore.-based
publisher. "Then came romance and Westerns, but the superhero genre
still dominates. It's a populist medium. Words and images together
have a much more resounding impact."
However, readership is dwindling in the United States, he
reports, and the number of mom-and-pop comic shops is fading.
"The reason is competition," he says. "Kids don't want to spend
money and go to the shop when they could be on the Internet, renting
videos or watching TV. Comic books are $2.50 to $3.50 for 22 pages.
When the 'Batman' movie came out, there was a huge surge in
popularity. The new 'Spiderman' movie, which comes out this summer,
has the potential to spike interest in comics again."
But the long-term industry trends, he reports, are "graphic
novels," or book-length comics. J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Fellowship of
the Rings" and the book-movie combo "Left Behind" have been
transformed into such. Since last fall, 358,000 copies of parts one
through three of the "Left Behind" series have been sold to retailers,
says publicist Beverly Rykerd.
Recent true-life events have the capacity to be transformed into
comic-book art, as evidenced by "Heroes Among Us: A Comic Book Art
Exhibit in Celebration of the Heroes of 9-11" at the New York City
Fire Museum in the Soho district. The exhibit, which runs through Feb.
16, features 100 panels, including artist Igor Kordey's depiction of
the frenzied last minutes of the doomed United Airlines Flight 93.
"The only way to know what really went on in that plane was
through someone's imagination," Mr. Gabriel says. "We all think about
that scene. Our first thought is we don't want to see a movie of this;
it's too much to think about. But when you see it in comic book
format, it's easier to swallow that pill.
"When people just hear the word 'comic book,' you think of an
Archie comic you read as a kid. Someone once said that comic books are
the closest art form to the fountain of youth, because it brings you
back to how you felt back then."
Peter Rothenberg, curator of the fire museum, says the exhibit
has attracted crowds. Other panels show superheroes such as the
Incredible Hulk or Superman involved in the rescues or looking forlorn
from afar. One shows Superman flying over a ruined World Trade Center
with the title "If Only."
"It's been one of our more popular exhibits," he says. "Comics
are a friendly medium that appeals."
Mr. Baxter says nearly everyone is sold on the value of comics
except for churchgoers.
"A lot of them say the medium is not worth the message, that
people won't take a comic book Gospel seriously," he says. "They also
say comics are used for pornography and the occult, so we can't use
it. But how about movies? They get used for pornographic and occult
purposes, too, yet we make the 'Jesus film,'" referring to a popular
movie filmed by Campus Crusade for Christ.
"Even airline-safety brochures use cartoons to communicate
life-and-death information," he says. "I tell people in the church we
have the most important life-and-death information possible. Why don't
we use comics to spread that?"
Part of the problem, Mr. Dawson says, is comics' lowbrow
reputation.
"In America, there's a huge cultural bias against comic books,"
he says. "People tend to think of them as a genre, not a medium. Or
they think comics are just superheroes and tight costumes on
large-breasted women.
"But comics are just a means of delivering a story. They are
really art and writing put together. Like TV, they can be about
anything."