An Introduction to Comics

The Myth of Superman (no, not THAT "Myth of Superman")

2012-02-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

The title of this post is a reference to an essay by Umberto Eco entitled "The Myth of Superman". I write about Eco's essay here.

Like a psychoanalytic reading, a mythological or archetypal reading of a text is content-based. And like psychoanalytic readings, mythological/archetypal readings are typically preoccupied with symbolism. Rather than being concerned with psychology--with the workings of a mind--however, mythological readings are concerned with mass-psychology--with the collective imaginings of all people. And though mythological/archetypal readings have in the past made a claim to account for all people, many critics now argue that archetypes are culturally bound, so when archetypal critics talk about "all people" they often really mean "all people who share our culture". On the other hand, given the effects of globalization and the ease with which cultural/mythological/archetypal ideas spread, there's a good case to be made that all cultures have interacted with all others to at least some degree.

In any case. Mythological/archetypal readings are also reminiscent of some kinds of structuralist criticism, because both often appeal to archetypal narrative elements like "the hero". In these terms, Superman seems particularly easy to read. Superman is the hero. He is an archetypal representative of masculine strength.
Clark Kent is both an archetypal representative of the hero's weakness and also of the Jungian "persona", emphasizing that the face we show to the world is not the same as our "self".

Definitely two different selves.

This, by the way, is the answer to the commenter on the Marxist post who pointed out that Superman's boss is only a cover, that Clark is not really allied with the proletariat because his "boss" has no real authority over him. That's definitely true.

On the other hand, part of the point of Superman is that the self is divided. Debates about whether Clark or Superman (or Bruce or Batman) is the "real" identity miss the mythological resonance that makes the secret identity such a compelling narrative archetype.

Superegoman

2012-02-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

Like Marxist readings, psychoanalytic, or Freudian, readings are focused on interpreting and understanding the content of a story. There are a number of different approaches to a psychoanalytic reading of a text, and I'm just going to begin one, but I'll also suggest a possible approach to some others.

We should begin by noting that in psychoanalytic readings we differentiate between the manifest content and the latent content. In Freud's own terms, the mind is like an iceberg. What we see is the manifest 10% -- the tip of the iceberg. Everything that lies beneath the surface -- the 90% -- is latent. So a psychoanalytic reading of literature takes for granted that the apparent meaning of a text is only the tip of the iceberg, and that literature contains much more content beneath the surface.

Nope. No latent psychological meaning here.

This approach, by the way, is one that frustrates students, because it implies that there is a "secret meaning" hidden in the text. We shouldn't let that impression persist. Even within psychoanalytic readings, the latent meaning is not a "coded" or "secret" meaning that the author and the critic both understand but have hidden from the reader. Rather, it is subtext that comes from how the mind is understood to function. The author is likely no more aware of it than the reader is, and the critic is not assumed to be correctly deciphering the real meaning of the text, but to be suggesting one possible interpretation.

The three clear ways to approach a psychoanalytic reading of a text are to 1) read to psychoanalyze the characters, 2) read to psychoanalyze the author, or 3) read to discover the latent meaning of the text and describe it in the language of psychoanalysis.

Forcing the Governor to Act Morally

In the case of Superman there are, as I said, a few good approaches. Freud suggested that the mind was divided into the id, which operates on the pleasure principle, is basically pure desire, and seeks to achieve pleasure and avoid pain; the ego which is operates on the reality principle, is basically pure reason, and seeks to rationalize action; and the superego, which is basically the seat of morals, and seeks to make the person socially acceptable and therefore "good". According to this model we can see that Superman is virtually always a manifestation of the superego, acting as a moral authority to impose good. Superman's villains, who are usually criminals against property, are manifestations of the id's desire. The Superman-superego stops the criminal-ids from acting on their desire because acting on that desire would be detrimental to society.

I'll put my cards on the table here and say that I usually don't put much stock in psychoanalytic theory myself, but plenty of people do and it's worth knowing what it is and how people approach it.

Superman: Marxist.

2012-01-26T13:12:00.000-08:00

Though it is true that Superman has been portrayed as a communist in at least one story, you should not understand "Marxist" as "communist". Marx was, in Foucault's terms, the founder of a discourse. He was the first to write from a certain perspective, and everyone who writes from the same perspective--even if it is to discredit Marx--is writing within the discourse of Marxism. When we're thinking about literature, any time we focus on class, or economics, we're reading from a Marxist perspective.

That said, there are implicit class positions in Superman comics. Grant Morrison once said in an interview that "Bruce has a butler, Clark has a boss". In his earliest incarnations, Superman continually and predictably fights against the powerful on behalf of the weak; against the rich on behalf of the poor. In one of his first appearances, in Action Comics #3, Superman rescues some trapped miners, then threatens the owner until he provides better conditions and pay for the miners. In Action Comics #8, he destroys the slums of Metropolis to force the government to rebuild them. I wrote each of these stories in a previous blog post, and I bring them up again now to stress that Superman, in his original inception, was explicitly concerned with class.

The Superman of the Silver Age (see this post for more on the "ages"), as Eco points out in his essay "The Myth of Superman", fought mostly for the protection of property. Superman, whose power in the Silver Age was such that he could (and did) easily crush coal into diamonds, and search the bottom of the sea to find sunken treasure. In other words, he was removed from the need for capital, but protected the capital of others. In contrast to Action Comics #8, the Superman of the Silver Age does nothing to change society, but instead works carefully to uphold it.

We can read any individual Superman comic through a Marxist lens, and find that the subtext changes dramatically depending on the writer and on the editor, on the political atmosphere of the time. I think that if we read Superman in general, however--if we focus on the parts of Superman that remain the same and on the impetus for the character--we'll find what in theological terms we call "a preferential option for the poor". I think Superman is fundamentally a conflicted character. He does uphold the status quo despite the fact that he has the power to change it. But Clark Kent doesn't have a butler, he has a boss.

10 Non-Fiction Comics Worth Your Time

2012-01-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

I've spent a lot of time on this blog so far talking about mainstream superheroes. And superheroes and the mainstream comics world is worth paying attention too--at least in my judgement. But it's far from all that's out there. In the interests of giving a wider picture, then, here are 10 non-fiction comics I think are especially worth your time. Apologies for the comics that pop up here and on other lists I've made. What can I say? I just want to recommend what I've loved reading. Also, don't place too much importance on the order these books are presented in. Another day I might order them differently.

Honourable mentions: Not actually non-fiction

Blankets - Craig Thompson

Craig Thompson's Blankets is classified as a novel, but it is clearly at least semi-autobiographical. In this book Thompson displays great talent weaving together themes, symbols, and images. He is an excellent writer. But it is as an artist that he is simply outstanding, and this book is worth buying just so you can take your time looking at it.

Hark! A Vagrant - Kate Beaton

Kate Beaton's webcomic Hark! A Vagrant is one of the best webcomics ever made. In this book she collects her historical and literary comics, and adds some commentary. Some, like the "Sexy Batman" series are clearly and straightforwardly fiction. Others, however, represent historical figures in a parodic context that I have to conclude counts as non-fiction. Virtually anyone will end this well-researched book more informed than they began it.

Okay here are the really-non-fiction books

10. Book of Genesis - Illustrated by R. Crumb

Robert Crumb is the founder and central figure of "underground comics". He's a satirist and a critic, a wit and an innovator. Crumb has said that he originally intended this book to be a satirical send-up of the book of Genesis, but he was swept away by the language of the Bible, and in the end he presents the text of Genesis unaltered. His illustrations are neither satirical nor psychedelic. This is simply an illustrated graphic-novel version of the book of Genesis, with all the beauty and all the humour and all the horror of the Bible maintained.

9. You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons - Mo Willems

I've written about this book before. It's a cartoon-a-day travel journal by a young Mo Willems, written before he began a career as a writer for sesame street and then as a popular and successful children's book author. This book is a great read, and provides the reader with a glimpse of life around the globe, as it was in the early 90s.

8. The Plot - Will Eisner

Will Eisner was a major innovator in the comics world. His Contract With God is usually credited as the first graphic novel, and was certainly the first book to be marketed as such. In The Plot, Eisner recounts the history of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Part history, part polemic, The Plot is a powerful piece of anti-anti-semite writing.

7. Logicomix - Apostolos Doxiadis

Logicomix is essentially a biography of Bertrand Russell. As it tells his life story, however, it also explains Russell's life's work, and the importance of logic to Russell and to 20th century mathematics and philosophy. Well worth reading.

6. Palestine - Joe Sacco

I could probably replace this with any of Joe Sacco's books. Palestine is a fantastic piece of comics-journalism--and is the first book that could claim that title at all. In it, Sacco tours Palestine, talking to the people he meets about their day-to-day lives and about the conflict with Israel. Though Sacco generally presents these conversations without much comment, his sympathy is clearly with the Palestinians and it's difficult to read this book without sharing that sympathy.

5. American Splendor: From off the Streets Of Cleveland - Harvey Pekar

American Splendor is a series, not a single comic. There are any number of non-fiction books by Harvey Pekar that are worth your time. In addition to this book, I'd especially recommend Our Cancer Year, which is a single-narrative comic about a year relating the story of the year Pekar discovered he had testicular cancer, or American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, Pekar's first anthology (which I couldn't find on amazon). Pekar's writing is often typified as "slice of life", and if you don't understand what that means, check out these two pages for a taste of American Splendor.

4. Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography - Chester Brown

Chester Brown has gotten a fair bit of press lately for his memoir Paying for It, in which he recounts his experiences as a John. I haven't read that, so I can't say whether it's worth your time. Louis Riel, however, definitely is. Riel is one of the most colourful characters of Canadian history, and Brown writes an energetic and gripping account of Riel's conflicts with the Canadian government. Both his writing and his art are deceptively simple, which increases a kind of unconscious sense that he is presenting you with the simple facts. One of the simple but great things about this book is the endnotes, in which Brown comments on panels which may give a false impression of the history, and corrects that false impression; things like "McDougall arrived in Pembina by ox-cart, not stage-coach. I'm not sure why I drew stage-coaches -- there is a note in my script specifying ox-cart" (246).

3. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi's memoir Persepolis and its sequel Persepolis 2 are gripping accounts of life in Iran before, during, and after Islamic Revolution. One of the things that makes this book so engaging is how unfamiliar the story is to most Westerners. This, in addition to the compelling specificity of Satrapi's life, the details of a person that we seem to really get to know, make for a great read. Unlike Maus, which is written by Art Spiegelman about his father and therefore has the benefit of hindsight, Persepolis ends with very little resolution, which is both a weakness and a strength--the lack of a narrativized ending only makes the narrative seem more real.

2. Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud

I've written about Understanding Comics before. It is one of the most popular non-fiction comics ever written, and certainly the most popular non-narrative comic ever written, and deservedly so. In Understanding Comics, McCloud dissects the medium of comics in both historical and especially in theoretical terms, and attempts to explain how comics work. He does so in an entertaining and engaging way that is well worth reading by anyone who enjoys the medium of comics.

1. Maus - Art Spiegelman

Before he wrote Maus, Art Spiegelman was known by comics fans for his experimental--sometimes radically so--art. In comparison with some of his other work, Maus is deceptively simple and straightforward. It is the story of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, a Polish Jew, during and after WWII. Spiegelman couches the story as an animal fable, drawing the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Americans as dogs, etc. The only comic book ever to have won a Pulitzer Prize, this is both an outstanding comic book and an outstanding holocaust narrative.

And there you have it. This list isn't to say that there aren't plenty of other non-fiction comics which are also worth your time of course. Feel free to suggest more in the comments!

Man and Superman

2012-01-19T13:06:00.000-08:00

Formalism and structuralism both focus on the work of art as an object independent from the people or the world that created them. But plenty of kinds of criticism does care about things outside the work of art as an artifact. The biography of the authors, the historical moment out of which the work arose, the influences upon the work and its influences on other works, all of these focus outside the work itself.

Superman arose out of a specific historical moment.

As you may know, Superman was created by artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel. In 1938, when the first Superman comic was published in Action Comics #1, Siegel and Shuster were both 24 years old, and they'd been working together on Superman for at least five years. Their first published Superman work was their short story "The Reign of the Superman", published in a 1933 fanzine. That original story featured a bald "Superman" bent on world domination: recognizable now as an early version of the Ultra-Humanite, who was himself an early version of Lex Luthor.

The origin of the name "Superman" is up for debate, but in the 1930s there was another historical movement using the same term. Adolph Hitler (who became chancellor of Germany in 1933) was strongly influenced by his reading of Nietzsche and by the idea of the Ubermensch, which in English translations of the day was given as "Superman". Hitler considered himself to be the Superman, who by strength of will could, and SHOULD, overcome lesser men and exert his power. Hitler, of course, applied Nietzsche's ideas along racial lines, and considered the Arians to be a race of Supermen, who would use their will to dominate lesser races.

Siegel and Shuster, Harry Donenfeld, Jack S. Liebowitz, Sheldon Mayer, (not to mention Bob Kane, Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee) were all Jewish. Though Siegel has said that he never read Nietzsche and he wasn't thinking of Hitler, in 1938 a Jewish-American community created and published a story about a dark-haired alien* Superman who used his power not to dominate but to protect the weak, and who exerted his power on behalf of so-called "lesser men". Superman's first acts in the comics include saving a woman wrongly accused of murder, stopping a man from beating his wife. Whether his creators intended him to be such or not, then, Superman is a direct refutation of the Nazi idea of the Ubermensch.

*We should understand "alien" not only as a science-fiction designation, but as a racial one. Superman is defined as an outsider. He's not an Arian, but he's not Jewish either, exactly. He's a stranger in a strange land--though that is itself a designation that has often historically been adopted by or thrust upon Jewish people.

Hello?

2012-01-11T19:14:00.000-08:00

Is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me.

I really disappeared, didn't I? But I'm back and I'm going to try again.

Stay tuned.

Oops

2011-03-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

So those last 2 posts were accidentally published a little sooner than I really intended them to be. I know I could always just delete and republish them, but that seems kinda silly. It does mean that there's going to be a short lull here for a week or two, though while I'm away from this blog for a while writing papers for classes. Instead of spacing out my pre-written posts to fill that lull, I've prematurely shot my load and ended up with something of a mess on my hands.

When I get back, I'm going back to approaches to Superman, then we'll move on to other superheroes, including a bit of a historical picture of how Marvel came to be the second comic book company, and why the rivalry between the two companies is disingenuous.

I've also got reviews of a few great comics lined up, and a few other lists to sprinkle in there.

In the mean time, take a look through the archives, and ask questions, correct me, disagree with me, or tell me how great I am in the comments.

It's the Bat-Man!

2011-03-05T04:53:00.000-08:00

In a previous post I argued that all superheroes are variations on the theme established by Superman. I made this point, in passing, to a professor friend who despite being a very intelligent woman answered me by asking: "Even Batman?"

Perhaps no superhero is as straightforwardly defined by Superman as Batman is.

Batman is dark because Superman is light. Batman has no powers because Superman does. They each reside in the same city: since Metropolis and Gotham are both transparent analogues for New York City. Symbolically, Superman is a transcendent figure of divine intervention and Batman is a figure of the moral imperative to work out that salvation ourselves.

Batman was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and debuted in Detective Comics, in May 1939. Superman's appearance in Action Comics #1 was just under one year earlier, in June of 1938. Both Detective Comics and Action Comics were published by a publication company called National Allied Publications, which would eventually change its name in honour of the comic starring Batman: DC Comics would become one of what people in the comics industry call "The Big Two" (the other being Marvel). Because Batman is rather conspicuously an anti-Superman, as well as a Superman clone, he represents the capability of replication in the genre of superheroes. The success of Batman showed that superheroes were repeatable. In this sense, Batman, just as much as Superman, is the reason why people kept making superhero comics.

Ten Comics for People who Love Comics

2011-03-03T14:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, if you love comics, chances are you are already familiar with most of these. Still, I wanted a counterpoint to my previous post about comics for people who don't like comics, and here it is. I haven't repeated anything from the other list, though obviously some of those could work well here too.

Some of these are self-referential or rife with in-jokes, some are just plain great reading. This is a list, in no specific order, of my choices for the best comics for people who already love comics.

10. Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross

Kurt Busiek is a favourite of mine, a writer who manages to be both realistic and mythic at once, and Alex Ross is a remarkable comic artist whose realistic painting style is usually too much for a whole comic but works perfectly here. In Marvels, Busiek and Ross retell the origin of some of the major superheroes in the Marvel universe, all from the perspective of an everyman who is often confused and overwhelmed by what he sees. It's great fun for anyone, but especially for people who are already familiar with the Marvel universe.

9. Supreme: The Return by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse

Supreme is one of Alan Moore's most underrated works. Depending on how you want to see it, Supreme is either Moore doing the same kind of thing he did in Miracleman, or doing the exact opposite. Moore takes a previously dull Superman analogue, and turns him into a metatextual tribute to the Silver Age Superman, and to superhero comics in general. It's well worth reading, especially if you aren't a fan of Moore's grittier work in stuff like Watchmen and V for Vendetta.

8. Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man

Ever since I started reading comics I heard people rave about Grant Morrison's writing, and to be honest I didn't see it. His run on Doom Patrol was very bizarre and very fun, and his run on X-Men had a lot of high points, but the twist ending of both bugged the heck out of me. He felt too studiously strange and carefully clever. I just didn't see what the fuss was about. And then I read his run on Animal Man. Animal Man is perfectly executed, and deeply compelling. In it, Morrison treats the same themes as Moore did in Supreme, but does an even better job of it.

7. The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

I'm going to put my cards on the table here and say that I think Frank Miller is a fascist. His treatment of power and violence in books like 300 and Sin City goes beyond idealism and glorification into idolization and worship. But that said, The Dark Knight Returns is a central text in superhero comics, and it has earned its place. Usually described as a "deconstruction" of Superheroes (and I hope to address that in a future post) , it's most simply described as a superhero comic without its tongue in its cheek. Writers since (including Miller himself) have occasionally gone overboard but The Dark Knight Returns was one of the first comics in a long time to take superheroes seriously, and to do it well.

6.Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing

Alan Moore is a seriously weird looking dude, and a hell of a comics writer. His run on Swamp Thing is by turns beautiful and chilling. He reinterprets a fairly uninspired hero/monster as the modern embodiment of a plant elemental. Moore makes Swamp Thing into the Green Man, and then uses him to explore the nature of the relationship between humanity and nature, and of nature to itself. It's a fantastic series.

5. All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

If you like Superman, you'll like this book. If you don't like Superman, this book might change your mind.

4. Sandman by Neil Gaiman

With The Dark Knight Returns and Watchman, Neil Gaiman's Sandman is often credited with bringing comics into serious, adult, legitimacy as an art form. In it, Gaiman reinterprets the mediocre superhero "Sandman" as the incarnation of Dream. He strays far away from superheroes, into legend and mythology. Sandman is an epic, and of everything on this list is probably the most likely to be studied in a literature course. It beautifully showcases how sweeping, epic, and fantastic a comic book can be.

3. James Robinson's run on Starman

Like some of the other books on this list, Starman is an updating and re-interpretation of an old character. Robinson juggles a lot of balls in this run--reinterpreting Golden Age superheroics, retconning and amalgamating all of the characters who've ever been called "Starman", and telling a great sprawling superhero story of his own at the same time.

2. Superman: For All Seasons by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

At the risk of repeating myself from a previous post: Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's retelling of Superman's early days through a metaphor of the four seasons is a beautifully drawn, wonderfully written book that captures what I take to be core of Superman.

1. Batman: Year One by Frank Miller

For my money, Batman: Year One is a better comic book than The Dark Knight Returns. It's Miller's retelling of Batman's origins, and I think it's Miller at his best. Serious and realistic without descending to the unintentional self-parody of so many lesser "gritty" comics, Batman: Year One is the obvious inspiration for Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, and for much of the tone of The Dark Knight. In short, it's just a great Batman book.

Honourable Mention:

1602

Watchmen

V for Vendetta

Structuralist Superman Strikes Again!

2011-03-02T05:03:00.000-08:00

One of the tendencies of structuralism that I didn't represent last time is the tendency to diagram and analyse. Structuralism aims toward a more "scientific" approach to literary analysis, and so it sometimes expresses the structure of a story in terms of an algebra of story elements. For example, we could say B means "male protagonist" and G means "female protagonist", + is for a meeting, # is for a conflict * is for a resolution, and (M) is for a marriage. Then if we write

B+G(B#GB*GB(M)G

We are describing an awful lot of stories, and we can clearly see how the structure is the same.

We can do that with Action Comics 1.

First we make an key of algebraic substitutions.

0=Origin Story
R=Superman rescues someone
T=Superman threatens someone
t=someone threatens Superman
c=Superman as Clark Kent
w=Clark feigns weakness
l=Lois snubs Clark

Then Action Comics 1 is:

OTtTRcTtRcwlTRclT

Presented like this we can see patterns (for example, the Rc pattern that means Superman appears as Clark Kent right after rescuing somone, or the prominence of T showing that Superman threatens more than he either is threatened or rescues). I we were so inclined we could also compare this story with others, and by changing the characters' names into generic terms (like hero) we could compare this structure with any other story.

Superstructure*

2011-02-27T16:55:00.000-08:00

Unlike the formalist reading, a structuralist reading really can be of Superman in general, not just of one specific comic. Structuralism, as the name suggests, looks at the structure of ... whatever. You can do structuralist readings of single texts or of entire genres, of language or of culture. Anything that is organized or patterned is fair game for structuralism.

Let's start by looking at the central characters. Superman is a hero, Lois Lane is a princess (the object of the hero's desire), Lex Luthor/Brainiac/Metallo/Etc is a villain, Jor-El is a mentor. All of these characters fit their structural roles in a usually uncomplicated way. A structuralist reading would suggest that these are roles or functions filled in every narrative.

Superman stories have not followed the same structure throughout the existence of the character, but there are in general three kinds of Superman stories:

1) Superman intervenes to prevent some threat upon another character. Superman is rarely under any direct threat in this kind of story. The tension comes from the possibility that Superman will fail in his purpose, rather than the possibility that he will suffer any physical harm. This is partly a threat of identity, because if he fails then he is not the hero. This kind of story is typical of the Golden Age.
2) Superman's secret identity is in jeopardy. Again, Superman is rarely in physical danger, but the tension here is more personally connected to the character, since his identity is in danger. This kind of story is also a threat to the continued narrative. Part of the tension comes from the threat that Superman's identity will be exposed and that therefore there will be no more stories. This kind of story is typical of the Silver Age.
3) Superman is under some direct threat. Again the tension comes partly from the threat of conclusion--the threat that this will be the last Superman story. This kind of story is typical of the Bronze Age, where the drastic reduction of Superman's powers meant that he could be seriously threatened.

There's a lot more to do with structuralism--a lot of what gets said about superheroes is structuralist in its slant--but I'm going to let it rest here because I've been heard some feedback saying that my posts tend to be to long. I'll do another structuralist post next, and then move on to ... I'm not sure yet. Poststructuralism? Deconstruction?

*Superstructure is a term from Marxist theory, but this post is actually about structuralism. In Superman. It's a pun, get it?

A Formalist Reading of Superman

2011-02-19T16:52:00.000-08:00

For the next few posts I'm going to be talking about Superman using some of the major schools of literary theory from the past century or so. I'm not going to be doing anything in depth, just a little taste. Hopefully this will be both interesting as a few different ways of looking at Superman, and also as primer on literary theory for those of you who care about such things. First up: formalism.

Formalist analysis, as the name implies, is centrally concerned with form. The form of the art is the important part. This means disregarding the historical context, the stated intention of the author, the emotional response of the reader. The meaning of a text is equivalent to its form; as we describe and analyse its form we are also describing its meaning.

Strict literary formalism would object immediately to an attempt to do a formalist reading of a comic book, because its form is not the same as literature, and from a formalist perspective that is crucial. Formalism is a type of criticism that might be concerned with distinguishing literary writing from other writing, and also with literary genres. But I'm not going to be strict.

On one hand, it doesn't really make sense to talk about a formalist reading of Superman. Formalism stresses close reading, and emphasizes the text as a complete, internally coherent, hermetically sealed package. So a formalist reading of Superman would require that we read every Superman comic ever written, and consider it as a single work of art. Strangely, then, though a formalist reading doesn't really make sense on one hand, it is what many fans and also many editors of comics try to do. It's a formalist impulse that makes retcons necessary, because it is a formalist impulse that tries to read Superman comics as a single coherent, continuous narrative.

For all these literary theory posts, my go-to text will be Siegel and Schuster's Action Comics #1--mostly because the different ways of reading will be more interesting if I keep going back to the same story.

So let's a few sections of Action Comics #1:

Aside from a full-page backstory establishing who Superman is and what exactly his powers are, this is the beginning of Superman as a character. In plot terms, then, this is the beginning, and beginnings are important both in that they set the tone for what follows, and in that they are memorable. The first line of this story: "A tireless figure races thru the night. Seconds count ... delay means forfeiture of an innocent life." This establishes the stakes of the action of the tireless figure, as well as establishing mystery about that figure. The text also immediately makes certain establishing notes about the character of the tireless figure. He is motivated by the need to save an innocent life. He holds a bound woman, and we might infer, even from this first panel, that he intends her some kind of harm. Since the introductory page tells us beforehand that the figure is Superman and that he is beneficent, we might deduce that he is bringing the woman to be punished for a crime (and in fact we later learn that she is a murderer), but the caption tells us that his motivation is not the punishing of the guilty but the defense of the innocent.

The fact that the opening happens at night, as well as the fact that Superman is not named in this panel (or at all on the first two pages) and finally the fact that he is carrying a bound and gagged woman establishes him as both mysterious and threatening, even as the caption establishes his motivation as benevolent. So there is some tension suggested here between the direct and the indirect characterization.

In terms of plot, there is virtually no exposition given here. The page that precedes this one is expository in that it gives a background of Superman's powers and origin, but it does not tie in at all to the blond woman. The storyline begins in media res, and we're never given the full backstory. This is in keeping with the breathless, frenetic pace of the story, and the pacing of the plot is parallel to the emotional state of the central character.

A few panels later, on the same page, we have this interaction:

There are three separate conflicts being developed in this first page: the race against time is a conflict between Superman and himself, in that he must be fast enough to succeed. The conflict presented here explicitly is a conflict between Superman and the governor's butler. Finally, the Butler's remark that this is illegal entry sets up a conflict between Superman and society. He is working within the law in that he is bringing information to the governor in hopes of securing a pardon rather than simply breaking the innocent woman free by force--but he is also established as working outside the law, not just in the sense that he is not officially mandated, but in that he shows an active disregard for certain laws.

I think that's enough for now. I could go on, but I think what I've already done gives an idea of how a formalist reading helps to understand the characterization of Superman and the themes initially suggested. Next: Structuralism

Batman and the Aristocratic Hero

2011-02-15T09:45:00.000-08:00

Steven Padnick argues that Batman is the ultimate aristocratic hero.

I don't have too much to add here except to wonder whether the model of vigilatism is necessarily aristocratic, as Padnick suggests it is. It seems to me that it does necessarily involve an assumption of superiority, and it would be interesting to examine different superhero narratives and explore the reasoning behind the assumption of superiority, and the implied ideology behind that assumption.

Maybe for another post.

Best Superman Movie of the Decade ...

2011-02-14T17:43:00.000-08:00

... and it's less than a minute long.

It's not a comic, but I wanted to share anyway.

Yikes.

2011-02-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

Okay. I want to keep writing this blog, but for some reason I didn't anticipate how much work it would be to move across the country, start a PhD program, and have a second child. Who could possibly have predicted, right?

I have five separate posts in states of semi-completion right now, though. So I'm going to try to finish them and dole them out bit by bit, in case anyone is still out there. Check back soon, and there will be new stuff here, I promise.

Must-Read Superman: Golden Age Edition

2010-09-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I gave a list of 10 must-read Superman stories. A commenter complained that my list was too heavily weighted toward the '80s and later, and I promised to make ammends. With that in mind, I have decided to make a list of must-read Golden Age Superman. For a more in-depth explanation of the "ages", see my post here, but for now let's suffice to say that "Golden Age Superman" means pre-1956. In fact, the comics I'm talking about here are from an even more limited time frame -- all of them are from Superman's first year, in from June 1938 to June 1939, as Siegel and Shuster were still finding their feet and defining their character. If you want to know Superman, it's good to know where he's come from.

1. Action Comics #1: "Superman, Champion of the Oppressed!"

The first appearance of Superman, written by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by Joe Shuster. This story would be mostly re-printed in the summer of 1939 in Superman #1, with slightly less abridgement of Siegel's original script (and therefore a slightly more comprehensible beginning). The first appearance of Superman is almost frenetic in its energy, as Superman runs from one situation to another, rescuing a woman wrongly accused of murder, threatening a wife-beater ("you're not fighting a woman NOW!") rescuing Lois from a spurned suiter-turned-kidnapper, and exposing a corrupt senator, all within 10 pages of story. This story sets the tone for Superman, and for superhero comics in general. The Superman of Action Comics 1 is never in any personal danger, but instead races about protecting the weak.

2 and 3. Action Comics #3 and Action Comics #4: "The Blakely Mine Disaster" and "Superman Plays Football"

In addition to reprinting (and concluding) the story from Action Comics #1, Superman #1 includes two other stories, originally printed as Action Comics #3 and Action Comics #4. Though they are separate issues, I'm going to talk about them together because both are unusual for future Superman stories in that they feature Superman adopting a disguise other than Clark Kent -- and using his super powers while in disguise. In the first story, Superman disguises himself as a miner to rescue some miner trapped by a cave-in, then strong-arms the mine owner into having a better safety and worker's compensation policy. The second story features Superman in disguise as a football player, to even-up a rigged game. These stories are wonderful firstly for their oddness, but secondly for establishing the character of the Golden Age Superman. This Superman stands for the kind of justice that means mine owners pay to take care of their injured employees, and the kind of truth that means embarrassing a cheating football coach.

4. Action Comics #8: "Superman in the Slums"

Action Comics #8 represents an (impermanent) change in Superman's M.O. Superman becomes convinced that a group of juvenile delinquents in Metropolis are the product of their environment, and proceeds to destroy the slum neighbourhoods so that the government will rebuild them. Superman always was and always will be at least partly an exercise in wish-fulfilment, but in this issue those wishes are suddenly redirected from a wish for an invulnerability to a wish for a better society. It is (as almost all of Jerry Siegel's early work is) fast-paced to the point of thoughtlessness, but filled with both pathos and energy. The story would be followed immediately by several more stories in which Superman acts not as a grand upholder of the status-quo nor as a single vigilante but as a violent champion for social change. In future stories he destroys cars to help the city's traffic problems and works for prison reform. Whether you agree with Siegel and Shuster's politics or not, this comic is well worth reading as the beginning of a political Superman.

5. Action Comics #13: "Superman Vs. The Cab Protective League"
Action Comics 13, written by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by Joe Shuster, features the first appearance of a supervillain for Superman -- the Ultra-Humanite, who is conceived as Superman's diametric opposite. The Ultra-Humanite is a physically crippled genius bent on world-domination, and in retrospect is clearly a prototype for Lex Luthor, by whom he was soon replaced as Superman's arch-nemesis. The appearance of the Ultra-Humanite in Action Comics 13 represents another impermanent shift in Superman comics, and Superman stories have continued to shift to and from a focus on supervillains.

If you're looking to read these comics, or other Golden Age Superman, the Superman Archives series or the Superman Chronicles series are good places to start.

I'm still here

2010-09-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

Just a short note to let you know that I'm still here, and this blog is still functional. I dropped off the face of the earth for a while while I wrapped up my M.A. and started my PhD, but I have a few posts in the works, and you should expect new content here by next week.

Paul

Continuity Continued

2010-07-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

One of the comments on my last post was that, though the title of the blog says "introduction" that post was more like a 3rd year course. I'm going to try not to do that, but feel free to ask questions in the comments if something I've said doesn't make sense. It's just as likely that I'm just plain not making sense as it is that it's going over your head.

In my previous post about comics continuity I talked about Umberto Eco and especially his suggestion that Superman can only work as a character if the timeline is unclear. The character must be timeless but the stories are necessarily timely.

The mechanisms that make comic continuity so confusing -- like alternate histories, flashbacks, tangents, and retcons -- are also the mechanisms that allow the story to continue to be told. If the continuity were simple or straightforward then comic book characters would need to die eventually. But a comic like Superman can't be stuck in an eternal present the way for example a gag-a-day comic like Hagar the Horrible is, because a Superman story requires some kind of threat or obstacle, which Superman overcomes. When he overcomes an obstacle, he changes his world and himself, which means that time has passed. As long as the character is mortal, time passing means movement towards death, or simply the end of the story.

To me, the complicated chronologies and continuities of comics seem like an oral tradition more than they do like a conventional literary tradition. Many people have written about literacy and orality, most notably Walter Ong in Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word , and I'm not going to summarize Ong here except to say that conventional wisdom is that literate people think differently than do non-literate people. And by "literate people" and "non-literate people" I don't mean individuals who can or can't read, I mean cultures that have the technology of reading and writing. Even illiterate people withing Canadian (or American, or German, or whatever) think like literate people because the technology of literacy is all around them. And one of the most obvious impacts of the technology of literacy is the immutability of the past. Once something has been written down you can check it later. In an oral culture, stories literally exist in memory, so storytelling techniques are (unconsciously) designed to lodge the story firmly within memory. That's why there is so much repetition of tropes in fairy tales that come from an oral tradition. That's why folk stories often exist as rhymes or songs. That's why if you read The Iliad (for example) you'll find that every time anyone has a sacrifice the scene is described in the exact same words. The Iliad is taken from an oral tradition.

Part of what that oral tradition means is that the story seems (and is) fresh every time. The teller can edit the details, embellish on the story, continue past what had previously been the ending. Although Eco is right to point out that someone like Hercules came with an already-completed-past-tense-story, it is also the case that oral traditions by their nature constitute an open tradition. Hercules's story is over, but in an oral tradition the teller can change what that story was.

Comics, paradoxically, often function as if they were oral, although in practice of course they are not. That is part of the paradox of retcons. The current story can tell me that what I've heard about Superman's origin story is wrong. A new book can tell me that Superman's parents are alive and well and living in Smallville, even though the first Superman story -- in which both of Superman's earth-parents are dead by the time he moves to Metropolis -- is still available for me to check. In practice retcons pretend that I don't have the ability to check what has already been written. They pretend that they are a part of an oral rather than a literary tradition.

Partly that is because the disposability of comics (especially at first) meant that a writer could not count on his (and at first it was all "he") readers checking with what has been written already, but there's more to it than that. We'll talk more about comics continuity in a future post, but for now let's just leave it here: comics continuity often acts as though it is functioning within an oral tradition, even though it isn't. Very strange.

Eco, Continuity and Comics

2010-07-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

In his essay "The Myth of Superman", Umberto Eco gives a careful, thoughtful, considered account of the nature of serialized publication, particularly in the case of Superman. Eco's essay focuses primarily on the dual identity of Superman/Clark Kent and on the so-called "Imaginary Tales" of DC.

Eco begins by pointing out that in contrast to traditional mythological characters like Hercules, whose story is complete and in the past, the "mythological character of comic strips" (110) does not come complete with a finished story. Superman must be recognizable -- archetypal -- but his story is both episodic and ongoing. In order to be mythological and archetypal he has to be consistent, but in order to make sense in the story he has to change. The story requires growth of character, but the archetype requires an already complete character.

According to Eco, once Superman has accomplished something he has "made a gesture which is inscribed in his past and which weighs on his future. He has taken a step towards death" (111). And Superman must be mortal. These steps must be towards death, or else "the public's identification with his double identity would fall by the wayside" (111). Clark Kent is not merely a disguise, but is a mechanism by which Superman can be a figure of identification and not only of aspiration. We identify with Clark Kent and admire Superman. But if Superman is really immortal then the secret identity becomes useless as a mythological device.

In Eco's terms, "Superman comes off as a myth only if the reader loses control of the temporal relationships and renounces the need to reason on their basis, thereby giving himself up to the uncontrollable flux of the stories which are accessible to him and, at the same time, holding on to the illusion of the continuous present" (116). The writers (unconsciously) employ a number of mechanisms for confusing the chronology and therefore the temporarily of the stories. Although theoretically Superman as written in the most recent issue of "Superman" comics is the same character as the Superman of Action Comics 1, and therefore should be at least 72 years old, in practice the publication of the stories as built in mechanisms to prevent the reader from reaching that conclusion.

Each "Superman" comic does not directly follow the previous one. The chronology of Superman comics is not unidirectional. In the first place, any number of Superman comics throughout the 72 years of publication have been flashbacks. The existence of characters like "Superboy" -- who as originally conceived was Superman when he was a boy -- mean that not all Superman stories are intended to take place in the "present" of the comic, but even discounting that, comics frequently feature flashbacks of alternate futures, tangents, time travel. Furthermore, it is both unclear and inconsistent what the "real-time" equivalent of an individual Superman story is. Some stories take place over the course of months or even years, others over the course of minutes. Beyond this is the existence of alternate or non-canon stories. Stories, such as the popular Silver Age "imaginary stories" that answer "What if?" questions (what if Superman were president?), that are explicitly stated to be outside the continuity of the ongoing story can nevertheless have an influence on readers's conception of the character. They confuse and obscure the timeline.

Eco, of course, was writing prior to the 1986 reboot of Superman, or the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths that precipitated the reboot. Both of these events, and especially the Crisis (and its sequels, Infinite Crisis) cast a new light on the continuity of Superman and readers's perception of that continuity (I hope to write a blog post about the Crises that will explain that claim further). In brief, both the Crisis on Infinite Earths and the reboot of Superman were intended to simplify the history of Superman. Officially, the history of the character extends back only to 1986, not all the way to the 1938 Action Comics 1. Yet thought the goal was to simplify the history -- so that new readers would not feel compelled to read decades of back issues in order to understand current comics -- in practice this kind of simplification may not be possible. Only a reader who is sufficiently in the know -- who is sufficiently versed in comics history -- will understand that the history is supposed to begin in 1986. So in practice the older comics do affect the readers's perspective of the continuity of Superman as a character. And the character's history exists within the mind of the reader more than it exists in the official canon.

That last statement may be contentious, but while I think it is true for any fictional character, it is even more demonstrably true for a character like Superman. The readers of today are the writers of tomorrow, who create the canonical version based on their own perspective as readers.

One way that comic writers create the canonical version of the character -- and sometimes do so out of sych with what had previously been the canonical version -- is through retroactive continuity, or "retcon". Retcons are reinterpetations or explanations of past events in ways not intended by the original writers. "Retroactive continuity" as term had never been applied to fiction when Eco wrote his 1979 essay. What retcons really do is further complicate and muddy the continuity -- since, once again, only attentive readers are familiar with the (dis)continuities.

Citations of Eco are taken from The role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts

The Ages of Superman

2010-07-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

People familiar with superhero comics often make reference to the Golden Age or the Silver Age, and less frequently to the Bronze Age. It is not obvious to a newcomer what exactly these terms refer to -- and that is partly because the people who use them don't always use them in the same way or with the same connotations. So let's look at the Ages of superhero, and shed some light on what is the jargon.

The language of ages comes to comics by way of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and to a lesser extent Hesiod's Works and Days, upon which Ovid's ideas were based. For both Hesiod and even more for Ovid, these were mythological ages of humanity. The Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic (Hesiod only) and Iron ages represent the decline from peace and unity with the gods into the state of depravity that we find ourselves in now.

The specifics of the classical Ages of Men aren't especially pertinent, except in two ways. Firstly that they are mythological rather than historical ages, which does not necessarily mean that they were not believed to have literally happened, but rather means that they are instructive and enlightening about the nature of the world we live in now. Secondly that with the exception of Hesiod's "Heroic Age", the ages represent a continual state of decline or entropy. The use of Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron as metaphors for the ages is a deliberate value judgement. For Ovid the Golden Age was the best age, and the Iron Age is the worst.

In Comics the ages are not clearly defined, and become more obscure and contentious as we come closer to contemporary comics. Two things worth noting, however, are that in contrast to the meaning of the ages in Classical mythology, the ages of comics 1) Refer primarily to publishing rather than mythology, and therefore have chronological dates attached to them, and 2) Do not necessarily involve value judgements. The first point is important to remember because since the ages -- especially Golden and Silver -- are chronologically defined, and based on sales rather than on any artistic or mythic vision, there is not necessarily a thematic or artistic unity within an age. With regard to the second point, we should remember that it is not universally recognized to be the case that the Golden Age was better than the Silver Age, even by people who use the terminology of the Ages. In fact, the Silver Age is arguably the version of most superheroes that is taken to be the standard, and for which modern writers demonstrate the most nostalgia. We should also note that the ages do not necessarily follow directly upon each other. The Golden and Silver ages, in particular, were originally conceived of and are still often thought of as two highpoints separated by a lull. The Silver Age was perceived at the time as a renaissance, harkening back to the Golden Age rather than a shift away from it.

The Ages are essentially a hallmark of superhero comics rather than any other genre, and as such the Golden Age begins with the 1938 publication of Action Comics 1, and the first appearance of Superman. The Golden Age featured the introduction of some of comics' most enduring and iconic superheroes, most notably Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, Captain Marvel, and Captain America. Note that of these all but Captain Marvel and Captain America were published by DC or its earlier incarnations. Captain America was published by Timely Comics, the predecessor of Marvel, and Captain Marvel was published by Fawcett Comics, and was eventually acquired by DC. It is not too much of a stretch to say that in the Golden Age, superhero comics were dominated by DC, especially in retrospect.

The beginning of the Silver Age is generally agreed to coincide with the1956 first appearance of the newly imagined and redesigned Flash. DC had decided to reimagine some of their classic superheroes, and the Flash was their first -- and successful -- attempt. Following the success of the new Flash, DC published new versions of Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom, and the Justice League. While Green Lantern and the Flash underwent the most extreme transformations, other characters were re-imagined with changes to their backstory, motivations, powers, or character traits.

The Silver Age had different effects on different characters, but the general trend was away from magic or mysticism and toward science-fiction. So Golden Age Green Lantern had a magic lantern, but Silver Age Green Lantern had an alien power battery.

The Silver Age marked a dramatic increase in sales and popularity of superhero comics, including superheroes who had not been explicitly re-imagined. What this meant for comics publishers was that superheroes seemed once again like a viable market. At Marvel Comics the team of writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby responded to this newly rejuvenated market by creating such superheroes as the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and Lee with artist Steve Ditko created Spider-Man. If the Golden Age was dominated by DC, the Silver Age marks the rise of Marvel.

The Bronze Age has a less clearly defined beginning than do the Golden or Silver ages, but it begins in roughly 1970, the year Jack Kirby left Marvel for DC, and long-time Superman editor Mort Weisinger retired, to be replaced by Julie Schwartz. Additionally, the early 70s saw Green Arrow's sidekick "Speedy" developing a drug addiction in 1971, and the death of Spider-Man's girlfriend Gwen Stacy in 1973. Finally, in 1971 the comics' self-regulating body, the "Comics Code"--an analogue of the MPAA--relaxed its rules against horror elements such as vampires and werewolves. All of this together led to an impression of a shift both within the fictional universes of DC and Marvel, and in the publishing and editorial practices of superhero comics. The Bronze Age is characterized by increased darkness, seriousness, and more attempts at social relevance than had been in the Silver Age.

There is little consensus about when -- if ever -- the Bronze Age ended, or about what succeeded it. In accordance with Ovid's ages, the Iron Age should reasonably come next, and some would argue that the 1986 John Bryne reboot of Superman constitutes the beginning of an Iron Age of Superman at least. By the same token, the DC universe of comics was substantially re-imagined in the wake of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the recognized authority for collectors, includes a Copper Age and a Modern Age, both following the Bronze Age, though Overstreet does not explicitly name the dates for these categories. The implication of Overstreet's categorization, however, is that the Bronze Age ends in the early 80s, and the Copper Age ends in the early 90s.

So roughly then, the Golden Age is 1940s and 50s, the Silver Age is the 60s, the Bronze Age is the 70s, the Iron/Copper Age is the 80s and the Modern Age is now.

No love for old Superman?

2010-07-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

In my post about 10 must read Superman comics I included only three comics from prior to 1986. Since Superman was first published in 1938, that means that I focussed on one third of the publication history to the near-exclusion of the other two-thirds. Why is that? Do I think the most recent comics are simply better? Even if I do, I said that what I was providing was a list of must-read Superman comics, not a list of the best. How can I make that claim while skewing so heavily to the most recent comics?

There are a few good answers to these questions -- one of which is simply that there are, as Chuck pointed out in the comments of that post, thousands of back issues of Action Comics, Superman, Adventures of Superman, Man of Steel, Man of Tomorrow, JLA, Superman/Batman, World's Finest, etc. I haven't read them all. I'm working on it, but I'm not done yet. So I speak only from my own experience, about books or stories I've read myself.

More importantly, for a long time the trend in Superman comics (and in DC comics in general) was for each issue to be essentially a stand-alone story. There were continuing themes, recurring characters, and occasionally ongoing plots, but in general each issue stood alone. This has two ramifications to a reader in 2010. Firstly, the earlier comics didn't have the space or the time to develop an easily consumable story the way they do in the most memorable stories now -- the stories that get republished as trade paperbacks. That doesn't necessarily mean that the stories then didn't have the pathos or narrative weight that more recent stories have, but it means that they are easier to think of as either smaller or larger units. Many earlier comics are more like episodes than stories. So I can say "read the original Siegel and Shuster Superman" but even choosing Action Comics 1 seems like it is selling the story short. Action Comics 1 ends on a cliffhanger.

The second ramification for a reader in 2010 is the result of the first. The way early Superman comics were written and were originally published affects the way they are republished today. If I want to read the first Superman comics -- the first stories, as written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Joe Shuster -- I have a few options. I can read it online, by hunting for the comics one by one and hoping to find them all; or I can buy Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told, Superman Archives, Volume 1, Superman Chronicles, Vol. 1, Superman in the Forties, and probably some others I don't know about. Though any and all of these are worth buying, they're all anthologies rather than stories the way something like Superman for All Seasons is. They're more like collections of short stories than they are like novels or short stories themselves. And that is fine, but it means that for a 21st century reader comics from the late 80s and after are more likely to be packaged as a single easily digestible story.

All of that said, I think I did shortchange earlier comics in my previous list and I'll do my best to rectify that shortly. Also coming up soon, and explanation of the "ages" (Golden, Silver, etc.) of comics, and a reflection on continuity in comics and its relation to Orality and Literacy. Stay tuned.

10 Must-Read Superman Stories

2010-07-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

I suggested in an earlier post that Superman is where we should start to talk about superheroes. But where should we start with Superman? I will be writing about Superman for the next few posts, but what primary sources should we go to? Here I present my pick of 10 must-read Superman stories, some of which are chosen for their representative or historic nature rather than their high quality. So these aren't the best Superman stories necessarily. They're the stories that I think define the character. So here we go, in chronological order.

10. Action Comics #1 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

The first appearance of Superman, written by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by Joe Shuster. This isn't necessarily Shuster and Siegel's best work (the story starts abruptly and confusingly), but it is a fast-paced and funny introduction to the iconic hero. The Golden Age Superman is missing a lot of what we think of as iconic now -- he can't fly, and he's a reckless vigilante -- but he's still a Superman who fights for the little guy and hates bullies. Most importantly, this is where it all started.

9. "The Lady and the Lion" (Action Comics Aug.No.243) by Otto Binder and Wayne Boring

The Silver Age saw Superman with vastly expanded powers, and virtually no threats. Most of this era features Superman trying to protect his secret identity and evade Lois' feminine wiles. This era also features complete off-the-wall wackiness, as in this story where Circe (yes, the one from the Odyssey) turns Superman into a half-lion. Will Lois love him even when he has the head of a lion? Yes. Yes she will.

8. "Kryptonite No More" (Superman #233) by Denny O'Neil, Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson

This story is the first part of an eventual attempt by Denny O'Neil to scale back Superman's powers -- an attempt that would be soon undone by the next writers. In this story Clark Kent becomes a tv anchorman, and develops an immunity to kryptonite. The Bronze Age Superman may not have been quite as wacky as the Silver Age, but Superman taunting a would-be robber by eating a chunk of kryptonite is a strange and wonderful event.

7. Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

In 1986 the powers-that-be decided to revamp Superman. They ended Superman comics, to begin again as if from the beginning. Writer Alan Moore famously (and possibly apocrophally) grabbed editor Julie Shwartz by the throat, threw him up against a wall and told him he would kill him if he gave the writing job to anyone else. The resulting comic is a beautiful send-off for the Silver/Bronze Age Superman, one in which all of Superman's villains finally do the horrible things they've always threatened to do, and kill Superman. Or do they? *wink*

6. Superman: The Man of Steel By John Byrne

Following Moore's ending, John Byrne had the job of beginning again. His run on Superman features a much less powerful Superman and a much more powerful Clark Kent. After the excess and clutter of the Silver Age, Byrne's Superman feels like a breath of fresh air. There's no Superboy, no Krypto the Wonder Dog, and no red kryptonite or gold kryptonite. This simplicity, however, comes at the expense of a lot of the humour, fun, and fantasy of the earlier eras.

5. The Death And Return of Superman by Dan Jurgens and others

The Death of Superman is a mess. The art is almost unreadably cluttered, and the lack of fun that began with Byrne has by this time become overwrought melodrama. It is, however, a momentous event in comics history, culminating in the ill-advised but fascinating Superman Blue/Superman Red. I consider this to be one of the most interesting eras of Superman, because it demonstrates the disconnect between the official control of the character and the existence of the character in oral tradition. But I digress.

4. Superman: For All Seasons by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale are a very talented comics team, and this is some of their best work. Examining Superman's early days through a metephor of the four seasons, this is a beautifully drawn, wonderfully written book that captures what I take to be core of Superman.

3. Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid, Leinil Francis Yu and Gerry Analguilan

Written by Mark Waid, with pencils by Leinil Fracis Yu and inks by Gerry Analguilan, Superman: Birthright is one of dozens of retellings of Superman's origin story, and it stands out. Beautifully drafted and illustrated, it is an unironic and idealistic portrayal of the flying strongman.

2. "Angels" (Superman #659) by Kurt Busiek, Fabien Niceza, Peter Vale and Jesus Merino

Collected in the trade paperback Superman Redemption, which has low- as well as high-points, "Angels" is a great modern example of a single-issue. Kurt Busiek's run on Superman was a favourite of mine, and "Angels" is his attempt to address the problem of pain in the DC universe. If Superman is so powerful, why does anyone in the DC universe suffer? If Superman can see us and hear us and protect us from evil, how is he not God, or at least an angel? This issue, written by Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza, pencilled by Peter Vale and inked by Jesus Merino is a great example of how good a single issue of a Superman comic can be.

1. All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

This two-volume story written by Grant Morrison is frequently lauded as the best Superman story ever told. Like Moore's Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? Morrison's All-Star Superman is essentially a story about the death of the Silver Age Superman, but it is now told with the perspective that allows Morrison to celebrate the best parts of the Silver Age while quietly ignoring the worst. Morrison's Superman is supremely powerful, unerringly good, and a lot of fun.

No more ads, and other News

2010-07-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, I decided that the ads were stupid and distracting. Plus they're not making me any money. But if you want to make me some money you can always click on one of the Amazon links and buy a book. I'll get a cut!

I've also been adjusting the design of this blog to try to make it look a little better. Let me know in the comments if you like or don't like what I've done with the place.

Wherefore art thou Superman?

2010-07-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

I'm back, and I'm going to talk about Superman now. Okay go.

In an earlier post I made the contestable claim that comics "did not begin to come into their own until the advent of Superman". There's a historical argument to be made in support of this claim--particularly if we are talking about comics as an industry, but even if we are talking about a socio-cultural artifact.

Maybe in some future post I'll give a more robust history of Superman and his place in the early comic book industry, but suffice for now to say that Superman is the prototype of superhero comics.

I'll suggest that what we call "comics" can be generally divided into four categories: mainstream comic books; indie, or underground, "comix"; comic strips; and web comics. What all of these have in common is their employment of juxtaposed art, but from a cultural and especially a commercial/industry perspective, the four categories are quite different from one another. Mainstream comic books, of which DC and Marvel are the two main publishers, have been and continue to be dominated by the genre of superheroes, of which Superman was the first. Superman is the reason why comics and superheroes are associated with one another.

Though fans of superheroes may (and do) argue with each other about who is the "best", and Superman is often dismissed as boring, Superman is the standard against which all other superheroes deviate. This is true partly because Superman was literally the first superhero, and many of the first superheroes are or were blatant imitations, but also because Superman's popularity and longevity mean that he is deeply iconic. Although his character is almost as old and his legacy as established as Superman's Batman is a non-standard superhero to the degree that he deviates from the type as established by Superman. A dark hero without superpowers is perceived as unusual despite the number of Batman imitations that exits only because is it different from Superman, who is the rule. This is why Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns imagines Superman upholding the status-quo. Not because Superman as a character necessarily upholds the political status-quo but because Superman is the embodiment of the standard of superheroes against which Miller wants to define his Batman.

So when Alan Moore writes a deconstruction of superheroes, in Watchmen or in The Saga of the Swamp Thing or in the less well-known-but-worth-reading Supreme, he is deconstructing Superman -- writing Dr. Manhattan or Supereme or Miracleman (for which I have no link since it is out of print) as a counterpoint to and a commentary upon Superman. The same is true of Grant Morrison's classic run on Animal Man, or of Mark Waid's Irredeemable and Incorruptible, or of Robert Kirkman's Invincible. All of these are meditations on superherodom, and therefore they are meditations on Superman. The same is true of Spider-Man, of Batman, of the X-Men, of Wonder Woman, of every superhero dark or idealistic, male or female, earnest or ironic.

So whether Superman is an particular reader's cup of superhero flavoured tea, (and incidently I do like Superman) he is the standard against which all other superheroes -- implicitly or explicitly -- are judged; both by readers and by writers. If that is true, then for any kind of systematic or rigourous examination of superheroes as a genre we must begin with Superman.

Bad Timing

2010-05-30T18:36:00.001-07:00

There will be a brief hiatus on this blog while I finish my Master's degree. Expect regular posts to return by August at the latest.

Indie Review Day: American Born Chinese

2010-05-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese is an Eisner Award winner for a reason. It is funny, engaging, and surprising. The story consists of three seemingly unconnected stories in three different narrative styles, that end by connected unexpectedly.

The first story is a retelling of the folk tale of the Monkey King. While Yang adapts some details for the most part the Monkey King story is a faithful retelling of a Chinese folk tale.

The second story is a realist story Jin Wang, a contemporary first generation Chinese-American boy, struggling to fit in in his junior high school.

The third story is about "Chin-Kee" a personification of a number of extreme negative Asian stereotypes. Chin-Kee visits his (apparently white) cousin Danny, and continually embarrasses him. The Chin-Kee sections are played as a parody of the "fish out of water" sitcom, complete with laugh-track.

The three stories are connected by themes of identity. Each in their own way, The Monkey King, Jin Wang, and Danny wrestle to find the balance between a limiting essentialism and a rootless self-invention. The Monkey King, after being denied entry into a dinner party in heaven: "You may be a king -- you may even be a deity -- but you are still a monkey." (15) dedicates himself to the study of kung-fu, including the discipline of "shape-shift", and renames himself "The Great Sage: Equal of Heaven". He is confronted by "Tze-Yo-Tzuh" (he who is) a figure invented by Yang who is an analogue of both the Buddha and of the Christian God. Tze-Yo-Tzuh tells the Monkey King "I created you. I say that you are a monkey. Therefore, you are a monkey" (69). The implied moral, "be yourself", is complicated by the realist section of Jin Wang, who struggles with bullies and ignorant teachers, but especially with being true to himself when he doesn't really know who the real him is.

Humour and pathos combine here to make a really good book. My only caveat is that I was left a little unsatisfied by the open ending, which -- after the mythological elements of the earlier book -- seemed a little anti-climactic to me, but the subtlety was definitely deliberate, and my dissatisfaction is purely a matter of personal taste.

On the whole, I highly recommend this book for anyone from about Jr. High up.

Understanding McCloud: Defining The Medium of Comics

2010-05-11T09:59:00.000-07:00

Because comics as a medium remains somewhat undefined, and because -- in the English speaking world especially -- comics scholarship is still in its infancy, theoretical approaches to comics analysis in practice usually adopt techniques from other disciplines and other media. One of the distinguishing -- though by no means a necessary or defining -- features of comics is the presence of both image and text. As a result, comics are often approached as a field from one of three perspectives: comics as literature, comics as art, and comics as a medium of its own.

A great starting point for comics theory is Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. McCloud makes a few theoretical assumptions and assertions that we don't necessarily need to agree with, but with which we should be familiar.

McCloud's theoretical agenda is to establish and analyse comics as a medium. He is deeply invested in establishing comics as a medium in the popular understanding, and in separating the medium of comics from the content. The medium has been slighted, says McCloud, because of its association in many people's minds with superhero stories for kids. For McCloud, disconnecting the content from the form is a crucial first step. In McCloud's words: "I realized that comic books were usually crude, poorly drawn, semiliterate, cheap, disposable, kiddie fare ... but ... they don't have to be." (McCloud 3) In Understanding Comics McCloud attempts to give a coherent account of the medium, often separating it from much of the actual history of comics as they have been published.

For the moment we'll earmark the question of what constitutes a medium (and the related issues regarding differences between an artistic medium and a language, an artistic form, a genre within a medium) and just accept McCloud's assertion that "comics" is in fact a distinct medium. Accepting that assertion, however, does not mean that we need to accept McCloud's definition of or assumptions about the medium. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll return to some problems with McCloud's conception of the medium once we've actually addressed what that conception is.

McCloud begins Understanding Comics by calling for a definition of comics--a definition that is broadenough to encompass the ""huge and varied" (4) types within the "world of comics", but not "so broad as to include anything which is clearly not comics." (4) The definition that McCloud settles on, derived from Will Eisner's definition of comics as "sequential art", is "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence" (9). This definition has its virtues, and it allows McCloud to consider Egyptian painting "comics", and also to imagine the future of comics very differently from the present. McCloud elaborates his ideas on the future of comics in his follow up to Understanding Comics, the less successful Reinventing Comics.

From McCloud's perspective his formalist definition of the medium of comics is valuable because "no generes are listed in our definition, no types of subject matter, no styles of prose or poetry. Nothing is said about paper and ink. No printing process is mentioned ... no materials are ruled out ... no tools are prohibited ... no schools of art are banished by our definition, no philosophies, no movements, no ways of seeing are out of bounds" (22).

In addition to an attempted formal definition, McCloud also provides a pragmatic definition of comics through the rest of the book. His choice of what to focus on suggests what comics in practice are--at least to McCloud. The chapters of Understanding Comics are "The Vocabulary of Comics", which is largely about cartoons, "Blood in the Gutter", which introduces McCloud's concept of closure, "Time Frames", in which he posits that in comics time=space, "Living in Line", which is largely about the emotive potential of artistic style, "Show and Tell", about the relationship between words and pictures, "The Six Steps", which is an examination of the art in general and "A Word About Color", which is about colour. There is also an introductory and a concluding chapter.

As we can see from his choice of chapters--especially the section on colour--McCloud recognizes that comics as a medium is a socio-cultural artifact, not only a theoretical formal construction. Though he wants to distinguish the medium from its historical incarnation, largely because of what he perceives as stigma attached to that history, he can't really do that. The section on the cartoon, the section on colour, even the emphasis McCloud places on the gutter, all highlight that what McCloud is really talking about for most of Understanding Comics is not a theoretical formal medium but a socio-cultural artifact.

And that brings me to one of the major problems of McCloud's definition. A medium is simply not a straightforwardly understood concept. McCloud argues that "at one time or another virtually all the great media have received critical examination in and of themselves" (6) and he lists examples: "written word, music, video, theatre, visual art, film" (6). Yet in what way are film and video separate media? And doesn't the medium of film often include music? And isn't it created in the first place as written word? And if I bring a camcorder to a play and tape it, is what I have in the end theater or film?

McCloud defines comics as a medium, but are printed comics part of the medium of print? If comics are displayed on a tv screen do they become the medium of film? If a comic is framed and put in an art gallery does it become the medium of visual art?

The point of all these rhetorical questions is to stress that "medium" is far from a clearcut concept. Neil Cohn wants to separate what he calls "visual language" from the socio-cultural construct of comics, while McCloud does not. In a future post we will look some more at a few of McCloud's central ideas, including his concept of "closure", but for now, what do you think about attempts to define comics? Do you agree with McCloud's definition? What are some of its strengths? What are its weaknesses?

Are Comics Literature?

2010-05-06T19:33:00.000-07:00

My own academic background is in literature, and my particular interest in comics is in comics as literature. Though comics distinguish themselves from literary forms by the necessary inclusion of images, advocates of comics as literature make two main, complementary, points. Firstly, much of what we take to be literary analysis or literary theory or literary criticism is in fact narrative analysis or theory or criticism. This is already evident in that literature scholars often study drama, and sometimes study film. Secondly, the study of comics as literature emphasizes the position that education in literature is more about teaching skills than about teaching a body of knowledge. Literature students should develop the skills to read anything well, not only develop familiarity with works that have historically been considered great.

That last statement may invoke an objection from some readers. Who says that comics are not great? Who says that comics aren't worth reading for their own sake, to be absorbed into the canon? After all, there are certainly comics that have had a profound impact on culture There are two responses to this objection. The first and simplest is that this is a case when the difference of medium becomes relevant. There are great comics, but even the greatest comics are not great novels. Just as there are canonical and great films, but the great films do not necessarily belong in the canon of literature, so perhaps the great comics do not belong in the canon of literature, but rather in the canon of comics. The second reason is that comics have not existed for long enough to objectively establish any specific comic within the canon of literature. The only criteria by which a work can be objectively placed within the canon is historical. Though the "great" works of literature are worth studying, worth reading, on their own terms, so are minor works not considered great within the standard canon of literature. The placement of works within a canon serves two purposes; the first is to highlight influential or often alluded-to works so that other, later works can be better understood -- so for example Tennyson's Idylls of the King are made richer through familiarity with Malory's Le Morte Darthur --and the second is to recommend works that a consensus of readers historically have considered to be excellent. If I don't appreciate a canonically great book it is likely that I am missing something in it. That does not mean, however, that books that are not canonically "great" are not worth reading, or that they are not worthy of being recognized as great. But we can only recognize new books as great -- if that is our goal -- by reading books not already so considered. In short, there is no need to (falsely) insist that Alan Moore's Watchmen is the equivalent of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. It isn't, but it doesn't need to be.

This isn't intended to undermine the status of comics as literature. On the contrary, it is intended to argue that even comics that aren't the canonically great works of the medium are still worthy of being read and studied as literature, and that studying comics as literature helps hone the analytical skills of literature scholars, and helps expand our collective understanding of comic narratives and of narrative in general. The third purpose of somehow legitimizing comic studies is either impossible or redundant, depending on the sympathies of the audience, and is ultimately unnecessary anyway.

Ten Comics for People who don't like Comics

2010-05-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of lists of the best comics ever out there. This isn't one of those, although many of the comics included here are among the best comics ever, at least for what they are trying to do.

This is a list of comics for people who don't like comics. It might be considered as an introduction--books to recommend to your friends to convince them to read comics--or as a few possible starting points for people who want to read comics but don't know where to start. But I'm hoping that there's something here for people who actually dislike comics--depending on what it is they dislike.

10. Bill Waterson's Calvin and Hobbes:
For a complete comic novice, who has somehow avoided reading any comics at all, I think a comic strip is a good place to start. It's a simple and easy way to familiarize yourself with some of the conventions of the medium, and to get used to how comics look and feel, in bite-sized pieces. And among comic strips, Bill Waterson's Calvin and Hobbes is hard to beat. It's intelligent and thoughtful but still accessible and funny, it's very sharply written, the art is among the best comic strips have to offer, and in the collections he always includes a multi-page story or two that reads more like a comic book than like a conventional strip. Waterson also likes to play with the medium, but does so in ways that will not alienate a complete newcomer to comics. Any of the books or collections is highly recommended.

9. Jeff Smith's Bone:
If what you don't like about comics is the violence, or the sexuality, then Jeff Smith's Bone is the perfect thing. This is a comic that Fredric Wertham could not have objected to, yet at the same time it is creative, funny, and smart enough to make anyone happy. It's all-ages appropriate without being juvenile, and silly without being dumb. I would recommend Bone with equal enthusiasm to a 10 year old or to a 40 year old. It is, however, very much a comic book fantasy epic, clearly influenced by Mickey Mouse, which is why it's so far down on this list. It's a great comic book, but people who hate comics might hate this just as much.

8.   Brian K. Vaughn's Y the Last Man
If what you don't like about comics is the superheroes, Y the Last Man is a great choice. A ten volume self-contained story, it takes some commitment, but no preparation. You can pick up the first volume having never read a comic book before, and be perfectly informed. The story is a dystopian fable about a world in which all male mammals are suddenly killed by a mysterious virus--all except the story's protagonist and his pet monkey. The book ranges from social critique and satire to magical realism, and it's a nice read, at turns thought-provoking and simply entertaining. Like Bone, it might be slightly less appealing to people who dislike comics, and especially people who have trouble with the mix of sci-fi and fantasy that is so common in comic books.

7. Neil Gaiman's Dream Hunters
If what you don't like about comics is all those pesky word-balloons, Neil Gaiman's Dream Hunters is a fantastic choice.  Neil Gaiman is one of the big names of comics, and his epic Sandman is, with Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen, one of the comics credited with revolutionizing the comics industry in the 1980s. Dream Hunters features the protagonist of Sandman, but is a self-contained story that requires no previous knowledge of Gaiman or his work. It is beautifully illustrated, with a single image each page, fully separated from the text, which means that it is not a comic according to everyone's definition. If it had no other virtues to recommend it--and it does--that alone would be enough to earn it a place on this list.

6. Mo Willems's You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons
Mo Willems' You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons is another book that might not fit everyone's definition of a comic. The book consists of 365 individual cartoons, one-per-page, chronicling Willems' year long trip around the world. Full of humour, wit, and pathos, it's simply a great non-fiction travel narrative that also happens to be a comic. After writing this book,Willems went on to be a writer for Sesame Street, and is now a successful and popular children's book writer. You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons showcases the humour that would later serve Willems in good stead, but is a great read for grown-ups.

5.  Kurt Busiek's Astro City: Life in the Big City
I debated including this book on this list. Astro City is in its way such a loving tribute to superhero comics that I worried it might not be a good choice in this context. But although the "tribute" dimension makes Astro City a great recommendation for people who love comics already, it is also a great introduction to superheroes for people who've never seen what all the fuss is about. Astro City is a self-contained "universe", which means that no prior knowledge of superheroes is required to make sense of the plots. The book I'm particularly recommending, Life in the Big City contains some foreshadowing, that doesn't get resolved within the book itself, but you never feel like you're not in the in crowd. Astro City is about why superhero comics are good, and it manages to be iconic and heroic and emotionally resonant even without all the history of Superman or Batman to back that up.  If Astro City doesn't turn you on to superheroes, I doubt anything will.

4. Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is, among other things, an exercise in comics evangelism. A theoretical examination of the medium of comics, produced in the form it advocates, Understanding Comics brought comics theory to the mainstream in a whole new way. If what you don't like about comics is that you feel that fiction is not intellectually rigourous enough, Understanding Comics is a great choice, both for its argument about what comics can be, and as an example of that.

3. Craig Thompson's Blankets
A beautifully drawn, intricately plotted story of coming of age and of lost love, Craig Thompson's Blankets is simply a great graphic novel. Though Thompson classifies it as a "novel", it has the feel of a thematically tight and imaginatively rich  memoir. It has nothing to do with superheroes or fantasy or science fiction, and is one of the best examples of indivisibility words and art I know of--by which I mean that the words would not be comprehensible without the pictures, and the pictures would not be comprehensible without the words. As such, it showcases the medium of comics wonderfully.

2. Will Eisner's Contract with God
Will Eisner's Contract with God is the book the popularized the term "graphic novel". The book is a collection of four short stories, connected by theme and by the fact that they are all set in the same New York tenements. Sometimes flippant, sometimes grotesque, A Contract with God is a work worth reading by anyone's standards.

1. Art Spiegelman's Maus
In his Pulitzer Prize winning Maus: A Survivor's Tale,  Art Spiegelman retells his father's experience as a holocaust survivor. Maus is deceptively simple in its illustration--Jews are depicted as mice, Nazis as cats, and Americans are dogs--it is both mythically resonant and deeply personal, both specific and generalizable. Maus is one of the great works of holocaust narrative, and a masterful comic book.

Do you object to things on this list? Do you think I've made an unforgivable omission? I haven't included anything by Alan Moore, who is regarded by many as the world's foremost comics creator. If you think I should have, or if you have other works you'd add or take away, please say so in the comments.

Comics as Art: Style and Palaeography

2010-05-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

Neil Cohn's theory of visual linguistics suggests that the images of comics constitute a language, with its own grammar and conventions. If we accept this theory, then the artist's style in a comic is like handwriting more than it is like the style of a single, unique, discreet work of art. This is especially true within a particular genre of comic - just as paleographical comparisons are more easily made within a single language. We can think of the difference in style and in convention between a mainstream American superhero comic and an independent comic is like the difference between Latin script and Greek. The comparison is possible to make, and someone familiar with both Roman letters and Greek can identify the difference immediately, but the two use different alphabets, and expertise in one does not necessarily imply expertise in the other. Like all analogies, this way of thinking about mainstream and independent comics is imperfect, but it may be helpful as a starting point.

If the difference between mainstream and independent comics is tantamount to a difference of alphabet, then differences of convention within what we call "mainstream" are still substantial. Superhero comic books, newspaper comic strips, self-contained graphic novels, each approach the medium differently, with different linguistic and paleographical conventions.

Though individual artists have distinct and often recognizable styles, comic books also have style conventions based on when and where they were made. Unlike scripts, through which it is easier to date than to locate a manuscript, conventions of place are easier to determine than are conventions of time, but it is often possible to use the evidence to deduce the date as well as the location of a comic's production.

More than as a method of dating the work -- which in comics is largely unnecessary, since unlike manuscripts the date and location of a comic is rarely in serious question -- thinking of comic style in palaeographic terms allows us three advantages. Firstly, it emphasizes and explains the collaborative, community-based nature of style in comic books. Though usually, even within mainstream comics, an artist's individual style is something to be celebrated, thinking in palaeographical terms allows us to also celebrate, and more significantly to intelligently theorize the common stylistic elements within a given context. Secondly, a palaeographical perspective on comic book style encourages us to approach comic books as a historical continuity. So changes in the way Superman is drawn reflect not only changes of continuity - of the ongoing plot, such as it is - they also reflect changes in the script in which comics are written. Tracking those changes helps us to understand the development of the "language" of comics, as well as to locate any given comic within a continuous but fluid tradition.

As paleographers focus primarily on letter-forms, so a description of comic book style can focus on any of a number of elements. The underlying question is "what is the basic unit of a comic book? In the same way that we may imagine the basic unit of a manuscript to be the quire, or the folio, or the page, or the paragraph, or the line, or the word, or the letter, based on our focus and our purpose, so the basic unit of a comic book may be the story or the page or the panel or the active entity or line based on our particular focus. For the purpose of this page we will suggest two different ways of thinking about a comic book palaographically - firstly with the cell or panel as the basic unit, and secondly with what Neil Cohn refers to as the "active entity".

If we take the panel as the basic unit of a comic, then we can apply any number of descriptive techniques to characterize style. Some are very helpful for dating and locating a comic, even if it is a comic that is previously unknown, and some are helpful mostly to describe and classify comics whose origin is already known.

Ken Parille identifies six elements with which to describe the style of a comic: line, texture, panel density, gestures of face and body, body proportions, and density of character detail. We may wish to add to this list a seventh element which Parille probably overlooks because it seems to him too obvious to be worth mentioning: colour, and an eighth: backgrounds.

Parille's context is informal and pedegogical - he is not writing a formal analysis of comic style, he is writing a blog post about teaching comic style. Still, his distinctions are very helpful, especially as a starting point.

So we may note that, for example, Herge's Tintin, Goscinny and Uderzo's Asterix', and Morris's Lucky Luke, all Franco-Belgian comics but with different artists, each exhibit a smooth, tight, thin line, little texture, relatively sparse panel density, unrealistic face and body gestures, unrealistic body proportions, relative sparsity of character detail, extensive and subtle use of colour, and detailed or realistic backgrounds.

Compare this with a page from the first appearance of Superman, where the style features smooth, tight, thick line, texture in the form of hatching for shading, comparatively dense panel density, realistic body gestures, realistic body proportions, relative sparsity of character detail the use of a simple four-colour system, and unrealistic or highly stylized backgrounds.

We should perhaps digress for a moment to note also that all of these observations are matters of judgement. It is up for debate whether Superman has realistic body proportions--there's a good case to be made that usually he doesn't. But while the degree of success is a matter for debate, it seems to me that in contrast to Asterix, Shuster's Superman here is aiming at an idealized realism that Asterix simply isn't.

This approach to describing comic book style is especially helpful in dealing with the wider range of global comics, both mainstream and independent. The weaknesses of this approach are firstly that it is highly subjective, and secondly that the number of relevant criteria are very debatable. So someone may consider Siegel and Shuster's Superman to be realistic in its body proportions, and may consider that to be the most important distinction between Superman and Asterix in terms of style, but another critic may consider Superman to be unrealistic in body proportions, but find the realism of body proportion to be irrelevant. Our imaginary second critic may think that the placement and shape of word-balloons, which I haven't addressed at all, is the crucial element for describing, categorizing and identifying comics.

Focus on the active entity as a basic unit is a less versatile approach, but may be more fruitful within its limits. This approach requires prior familiarity with the active entity, and so it is most useful with mainstream comics. By "active entity", we mean the person, animal or thing within a panel that performs the action. So there are four active entities of the cover of Action Comics 1: Superman, and the three men who are afraid of him.

As paleography places more interpretive weight on certain letters than on others so in a palaeography of comics we can place more interpretive weight on some active entities than on others, and the interpretive weight is directly proportional to the number of appearances of that character. We can place much more interpretive weight on the details of Superman's representation in a given appearance than we can put on one of the unnamed extras who never appears again.

There are, within mainstream superhero comics, any number of heroes whose design has changed dramatically, but when those changes take place within the narrative, and are perceptible by other characters within the fictional context, we will consider that to be a separate phenomenon to the kind of palaeographic style changes that are of interest for the purpose of this argument.

The top image on the left, taken from a 1959 Superman comic, is notable as a product of its period for the large stylized pentagon "s" shield (compared with the "S" of the 1938 Superman, as seen above), Superman's shorter cape, the less defined musculature, and the lack of detail in the face. It is recognizable as a bulk reprint because it is in black and white. The second image on the left, from 1971, features a much more (indeed, overly) muscled Superman, though it is still an attempt at realism rather than an overt stylization or caricature. The flatness of the colour provides evidence that it was made before the 1990s. The top image on the right is a 2010 reprint of a 1979 cover. The increased realism, especially the inclusion of a real-world character, suggests that this comic is from near the early 80s, but the colour, especially the blue of Superman's costume, is includes more subtle shading than was typical of comics prior to the 2000s. Compare with the original.The second image on the right is from a 2005 comic, and is notable for the increasingly nuanced but unrealistic shading and colour provided by digitized colouring process and less exaggerated musculature of Superman. Individual artists do have their own styles, of course, but the general tendency of how a publisher depicts its characters, especially its most iconic and recognizable characters, provides a wealth of material for identifying, catagorizing, dating and locating comics.

The image below to the left is from the 1990s, but is an example of a character design change that constitutes a narrative point rather than a shift in style. Note, however, the change in style of Superman's "s" shield, which corresponded also to a change in the design of the title of the comic.

A Bibliography of Comics Theory

2010-04-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a suggested bibliography for comics theory. There's more to read, of course, but these will give you a few major touchstones in comics scholarship. I would especially recommend Understanding Comics as a popular (rather than rigorously scholarly) central text.

Form, Medium, and Genre: Defining Some Terms

2010-04-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

One of the difficulties that a serious approach to comics faces is that despite the definitional work of a handful of theorists -- most popularly notable among them Scott McCloud -- "comics" remains a fairly ambivalent term.

How we define "comics" will depend firstly on the context and secondly on our theoretical position with regard to art in ontology. Is a work of art defined by its production or its consumption? Is a poem a different medium from a novel, or only a different form? Is television a different medium from film?

If we understand "Comics" as a medium, then there is a difference between “comics”, “comic books” and “comic strips”. Though all three share characteristics in common, the distinction between them is important to note. “Comic strips” are a form consisting of juxtaposed images, published in a newspaper. In this sense, comic strips are defined by their context. Material produced for newspaper publication is a comic strip. Even after this material has been collected and re-published in book form, it is still a comic strip. A book collection of comic strips is not a comic book any more than a series of short stories published in book form is a novel. In contemporary culture, most comic strips are necessarily short and self-contained, since there can be no assurance of a reader having access to the rest of the story. Comic strips are usually humorous (or constitute an attempt at humour), but this is not necessary, and within the form of “comic strips” exist the genres of adventure strips, gag strips, soap opera strips, superhero strips, etc.

“Comic books” are produced and published in book or magazine form, independently of newspapers. Although by far the majority of comic books historically have been superhero comics, there are of course no inherent restrictions in terms of content or subject matter. Like comic strips, many comic books are published as periodicals, with serial stories. There is, however, no inherent limit on space, and longer “graphic novels”—or, in the words of Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus, “comic books that need bookmarks”(quoted in Versaci 1)—are gaining popularity.

“Comics”, as defined by comics theorist Scott McCloud are “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence” (McCloud 9). McCloud argues that the term “comics” refers to “the artform—the medium ... [which is] a vessel which can hold any number of ideas and images” (6), and he wishes to define that medium as broadly as possible, “while not being so broad as to include anything which is clearly not comics” (4). He points out that Will Eisner's older definition of “sequential art” applies equally to animation, and even to film, but that those images are not spatially juxtaposed—that “space does for comics what time does for film” (7). McCloud's clunky “pictorial and other” is intended to acknowledge that “letters are static images ... [but] when they are arranged in a deliberate sequence, placed next to each other, we call them words.” (8) McCloud also differentiates between comics and cartoons. For McCloud, although “there is a long-standing relationship between comics and cartoons .. they are not the same thing! One is an approach to picture making—a style, if you like-while the other is a medium which often employs that approach” (McCloud 21). As McCloud, and those influenced by him, uses the term, “comics” is a a plural noun without a singular—like “pants”.

McCloud's definition is helpful, but it is unclear if or why, by his definition children's picture books are not considered comics. Also unclear is what the proportion of text to image (or “pictorial” to “other”) is required for something to be considered “comics”. A text book with illuminating figures or diagrams, in which the diagrams are essential to the understanding of the text, might be considered “comics” by McCloud's definition, so long as the diagrams are juxtaposed in deliberate sequence—as they often are. Finally, by McCloud's definition of the term, it is almost absurd to discuss the history of comics. It seems likely that people have been making use of juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence for as long as people have been attempting to communicate with one another. Certainly they have been doing so for all of recorded history. Comics pre-date writing, at least by McCloud's definition of comics. For McCloud, this is part of the virtue of the definition. But comics exist as a medium defined historically and culturally, and expanding the definition too broadly makes historical-cultural perspectives on the formation of comics as a medium seem deceptively unimportant.

While theoretical definitions have their place, and though it is helpful include theoretical definitions of “comics” here in order that the historical, pragmatic and functional definitions may have a context and may not be assumed to be exhaustive, those functional definitions are eventually necessary. The most valuable of functional definitions may be the traditional definition, since it allows us to join a dialogue with the past on its own terms. Traditionally, then, the first “comic” has been considered Outcault's Yellow Kid, in 1896 (Robinson 12). And though this is usually granted to have been the first comic strip, it is also traditionally accepted that comics did not begin to come into their own until the advent of Superman, superhero comics, and comic books.

Sources
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
Robinson, Jerry. The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art
Versaci, Rocco. This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics As Literature

Statement of Purpose

2010-04-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

The purpose of this website is twofold.

1. It is a place for me to try out my ideas, hopefully with some feedback from you.

2. It is imagined as an online introduction to comics studies course, with the intention of both introducing literary people to comics and introducing comics people to literary ways of thinking about comics.

With that in mind, and though this will likely evolve as the year progresses, I imagine four kinds of posts: Comics Theory, Central Works, Major Authors, and Reviews, and these are not necessarily mutually exclusive. With the exception of Reviews, the intention is to avoid unnecessary qualitative judgement.

I will likely end up contradicting myself somewhat, as I use this blog to help my ideas evolve. Please feel free to object in the comments when what I'm saying doesn't make any sense.