Reinventing Comics: The Evolution Of An Art Form.pdf
Taichi Reilly
Illustrated folios and wooden plates have been categorized as important artistic and political devices since the early points in most civilizations. Graffiti in Roman cities were political, but also crude and funny. Illuminated manuscripts contained holy images, but also doodles that have baffled historians for centuries. Illustrating a story to make it more appealing to an audience has been at the forefront of the human mind since its early existence in caves. So, when we talk about the evolution of graphic novels and comics, we are also talking about historical events, political debates, and even fashion.
As I mentioned before, we could start reviewing the history and influence of illustrated storytelling all the way back to cave paintings, illuminated manuscripts, and Greek vases; however, as that should be the role of someone actually well versed in art history, writing a book on the subject, or, just to be honest, more qualified than myself, I decided to start from the early onset of serialized comic books as we know them today.
This era, known as the Golden age, was mostly marked by the raving political propaganda that surrounded all the World War II period. Captain America showed up in his modern form we know him as, and many other superheroes like Wonder Woman and Superman started selling in huge scales.
During the war period, comic book consumption skyrocketed, becoming not only an established past-time for young boys but also a fertile ground for the recruitment of young men into the Army. The government discovered the value of comic books as a medium: the mass production of entertainment in the follow-up to the war had a built-in market for endless storytelling showing the glorious victory of the U.S. over the Nazis. Because comic books were seen as a low-brow form of entertainment, they were ideal for the American government in disseminating patriotic and anti-Japanese and anti-Nazi ideals, without seeming too close to actual propaganda. The new world order made heroes and villains in comics the perfect recruitment technique.
Captain America was ahead of the curve in that sense. It was already being published before the U.S. entered the war, and the debate of whether the Americans should join was still in full swing. So, having Captain punching Hitler in the front cover was not uncontroversial, as there were still some mainstream Nazi sentiments among the political debates in the U.S.
This censorship frenzy and parent panic led comic book companies to cancel some of their most popular titles in genres other than superheroes. Even so, several superhero storylines were continuously censored, and production became very sparse. Storylines became less complicated and political, and gimmicks like animal superheroes and celebrity feature joined adventures across the DC and Marvel universe.
Around the late 1960s, superheroes began reinventing themselves. With the age of Aquarius and the hippie movement, kaleidoscopic art, and the Sergeant Pepper era of the Beatles, both the artwork and storylines became more complex and a bit trippy. Marvel comics became a household name when it came to innovation and artist development, and they had a fully formed and popular catalog of heroes to rival DC.
This would also lead to the preamble to what would become known as the Dark Ages, where art styles and narratives would take darker tones. Suddenly superheroes had very human problems, like alcoholism and drug addiction.
In the 1980s, another new style took over the world, the Japanese comics known to most of us now as Manga. Manga nowadays has many different styles, but the most defining characteristic is the black and white color palette and the exaggerated emotional expressions.
Manga in Japanese can literally mean comic book or comic strip, and it developed as an art form from the old woodblock illustrations that have been present throughout Japanese history. The modern manga style only gained mainstream notoriety in the 1980s when Japan became a household name in terms of international technology and entertainment.
Today you can find a manga for any taste and genre you might like. I would highly recommend you explore Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics by Frederik L. Schodt, where I got all the information regarding the rise of manga for this article. If you want a more in-depth history and artistic analyzes of Manga as an art form, this book is a great source.
In the early 1950s there was widespread concern in New Zealand aboutthe influence of comics on young readers. Inspired by anti-comics campaigns in the UnitedStates and Britain, New Zealand parents, teachers, politicians and intellectuals raisedthe issue in magazines, on the radio and even in parliament. The campaign was not limitedto conservatives; in fact, some of the most active anti-comics crusaders were socialistsand social liberals, shocked by the violence and jingoistic anti-Communism found in manyAmerican comics. A. R. D. Fairburn spoke out against comics on National Radio, while BillPearson wrote in a letter to Landfall: "The comics erode the most fundamentalhabits of humane, civilized living and they erode them in the most vulnerable element ofour society, our children…. If we ban the comics we are reducing the chances of warand preventing the further perversion of the worlds children." (2)
My intention here is not to dismiss such moral concerns, however. Itmay be perfectly true that all of these media have been responsible, over the centuries,for "eroding the most fundamental habits of humane, civilized living." Whatinterests me, however, is the tendency of contemporary commentators to dismiss all ofthese art forms as unworthy of "serious consideration on aesthetic grounds," ajudgement which has been leveled at some time at much of the work currently included inthe so-called canon of great art and literature. Perhaps when we find ourselves disturbedor bewildered by the popularity of a new genre or medium, its precisely by giving itthat "serious consideration" that we will begin to get to grips with what it isand how it works.
But how do we do this, when the new work often seems to have solittle to do with our existing aesthetic criteria? Perhaps the problem lies in the way weunthinkingly apply whatever aesthetic paradigm is our most familiar, regardless of whetherits relevant to the work were dealing with. For example, when we talk about"fiction," we generally focus on such elements as plot, characterisation,narrative structure, the use of language, and so on. When a piece of writing seems thin inthese areas, its easy to dismiss it as "weak."
But what if thats simply not where the action is, in thatparticular text? What if the "art" the craft, the pleasure and even thepurpose of the work lies elsewhere? Does this mean that work is a failure, forhaving neglected whats considered "important" in fiction? Or could itsimply be that its operating within a different aesthetic paradigm?
It seems to me that much of the "action" in narrative arttoday is going on in places that are below the radar of most criticism and theory. WhatId like to do in this paper is to explore some alternative ways of looking at theart of fiction and see if we can find some "aesthetic grounds" that willhighlight that "invisible action." Ill start with the artform I know best:comics.
For McCloud, space has become the form of comics and time thecontent. This is what McCloud means when he sometimes sums up his definition ofcomics with a simple equation: SPACE = TIME. The relationship between these two elementsis beginning to change.
"Closure" is a term McCloud has borrowed from Gestaltpsychology and applied to the way we "fill in the gaps" between panels. It iswhat he calls the "invisible art" of comics: If visual iconography is the vocabulary of comics, closure is its grammar. And since our definition of comics hinges on the arrangement of elements… then in a very real sense, comics is closure. (14)
The most important obstacle to surmount is the tendency of the readers eye to wander. On any given page, for example, there is absolutely no way in which the artist can prevent the reading of the last panel before the first. (15)
A lot of contemporary cartoonists play with this idea of comics as amatrix, or framework. This page by Chris Ware, for example, is less a straightforwardsequence and more a kind of diagram, which frequently confounds our expectations withdead-ends and detours, all of which add up to an intricate "narrative machine:"
World-building has always been a part of literature. Today weprobably associate it most with the "fantasy" genre, as exemplified by J. R. R.Tolkiens Middle Earth. In his lecture On Fairy Stories (written in 1939),Tolkien described the world-building process as "sub-creation:" What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful "sub-creator." He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is "true:" it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. (24)
Tolkien even asserted that there is no higher function for man thanthe "sub-creation" of a Secondary World. It was, in fact, a religious act: The Christian may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. (25)
For Tolkien, the border between the real world createdby God and the Secondary World of Middle Earth that he himself had "sub-created"was at times tenuous. At times he would call what he was doing "research" ratherthan "invention" as though Middle Earth were a real place and he himselflittle more than an assiduous scholar trying to get the details right. "Every writermaking a secondary world," he claimed, "wishes in some measure to be a realmaker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of thissecondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing intoit." (26)
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