I Am Bart Beaty!

So readers may have noticed that we’ve had quite a number of posts on Bart Beaty’s recent book Comics vs. Art. It’s a good book, but you may well wonder why we’ve (and especially I’ve) decided to spend quite so much time on it.

The answer is simple. Beaty stole all his ideas from me.

Consider.

— In his second chapter, “Defining a Comics Art World,” Beaty argues that comics should be defined in social terms — that is, in terms of a comics world — rather than in formalist terms. I made this argument on HU two years ago.

—Beaty has a lengthy discussion of the way in which art comics has presented Charles Schulz as a depressive genius and avatar of masculine frustration and self-pity in order to establish his high arts bona fides. I made this argument in the Comics Journal more than four years ago.

—Beaty identifies nostalgia as the central endemic feature of comics, and specifically argues that it permeates and defines not just superhero fanzines, but art comics as well. This has been one of the central critical argument of this site. Here’s just one example.

— Beaty spends a whole chapter focusing on Chris Ware’s performance of masculine self-pity, anchored in particular by a look at Chris Ware’s comics about high art. Again, I was making similar arguments, focused on some of the exact same pieces that Beaty discusses, a good while back.

I’m pretty sure I could find other instances too. (This blog has had a lot of discussion of the original art market for comics, for example, which Beaty talks about in some detail.) Reading Comics vs. Art was, therefore, kind of a bizarre experience. On the one hand, I kept turning pages and saying, “ha! I was right all along! See, a real academic says so!” On the other hand, I kept thinking…”Hey! I thought of that first! I even said it in the Comics Journal! Why don’t I get a shout out…or, you know, at least a citation?”

Of course, I’m sure the reason Beaty doesn’t cite me is that he didn’t get the ideas from me. I think most of these ideas (like, the importance of nostalgia in comics) are true — and since they’re true, of course all intelligent independent inquiry will naturally confirm them.

Still, it’s amusing that Beaty can be seen as in some ways enacting the same highbrow/lowbrow performance that is so central to his discussion. Just as Lichtenstein took the work of “lesser” artists and either elevated or stole it, depending on your perspective, so Beaty can be seen (with a little squinting) as taking the work of (ahem) lesser thinkers and elevating them, or swiping them outright. I am Irv Novick!

Again, I’m sure Beaty isn’t actually using my ideas. But it is kind of interesting that in his discussion of comics vs. art, and in his analysis of the critical conversation around these issues, he virtually never discusses the internet at all. The only time he really talks about the web, I think, is when he analyzes the effect ebay has had on the comics back issue market. But other than that, the ballooning online discussion of comics — the discussion that these days shapes the way that most people in the comics world think about comics on a day to day basis — is simply absent. Tom Spurgeon, for example, doesn’t show up in the index — though CR’s appreciation of a broad range of comics is hugely important in shaping the relationship between comics and art, or comics as art. Similarly, Dan Nadel pops up as an anthologist, but his seminal work with Tim Hodler at Comics Comics (leading to their editorship of tcj.com, isn’t mentioned.

Of course, you can’t talk about everything — but, as Beaty would be the first to acknowledge I think, what you choose not to talk about can be as important as what you decide to discuss. Beaty certainly knows about the blogosphere — he wrote regularly for CR for years. So the decision not to talk about the web and its place in comics criticism seems like it has to be a deliberate one. The discussion of comics vs. art is, for Beaty, one that is best approached through established institutions, and writers who have the imprimatur of established institutions, whether those be publishers or the academy — or fanzines, of course, which have longstanding status in comics. The web may shape practices (via ebay), but it doesn’t have anything in particular to say for itself. Or when it does have something to say, the voice Beaty cites is from Salon or the Electronic Book Review or the New York Times, rather than from the comics blogosphere.

The point here isn’t to indict Beaty (whose book I like a lot), but rather to point out the odd disconnect which remains between sholarly discussion of comics and internet discussion of comics. I call this disconnect “bizarre” because it seems to persist despite the fact that scholars (like Beaty) are all over the web. Charles Hatfield and Craig Fischer, for example, are longtime bloggers, and both have written for the Comics Journal (Craig has a column…as does Ken Parille.) There are a couple of specifically academic sites as well, such as the Comics Grid. And for that matter, my own blogging has given me the opportunity to write a book for an academic press. So obviously there is commerce between the two worlds. And yet, at the same time, there remains a cautious distance — such that Bart Beaty can write a whole book essentially about comics criticism without so much as nodding to the place where, at least in terms of sheer bytes, most of that criticism is occurring.

The reason to leave out the internet is fairly obvious; it’s for the most part not especially scholarly. This is a problem if you’re working on a scholarly project, because it’s hard to evaluate importance and worth when there are no credentials, because many people on the web are not speaking in a way that is of help or interest to scholars, and, last but not least, because it brings down the tone.

Tone is particularly interesting, because I think it’s one of the major differences between Beaty’s book and HU, and because that difference turns out to be surprisingly significant. Comics vs. Art is a confrontational book in many ways — but only to a point. Beaty slyly undermines the cult of Chris Ware, or the line between art comics and superhero fandom, or comics’ definitional project. But those jabs are always jabs rather than roundhouses, and they’re always from the scholarly stance of “this is an interesting phenomenon,” rather than from a more polemical vantage. Beaty’s arguments walk up to the line of saying, “people, you are acting like idiots, and you need to cut it out,” — but he never does cross that line. Which is why, when I paraphrase his arguments, adding a really-not-that-much-more-forthright polemical gloss, people tend to engage forcefully in comments — whereas, my sense is, Beaty’s own arguments themselves largely pass unnoticed.

In part this is just an aspect of the internets’ instant response mechanisms, and in part it’s probably because I’m not as credentialed as Beaty so people feel more comfortable (perhaps rightly!) in telling me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. In part, though, I think it’s because Beaty is deliberately working to be low-key. No doubt some will admire him for that, and there’s certainly pleasure to be found in his wicked gift of understatement. At the same time, though, his unwillingness to come out and take stand can make it difficult to figure out exactly why he’s bothering. What does Comics vs. Art hope to accomplish? Why is it worth pushing on the relationship between comics and art? If Beaty had his druthers, how might comics change?

I think Beaty’s answers to those questions would be similar to mine — that is, comics should be less neurotic and status-conscious, less inward-turned, more feminist, more adventurous, and more able to see itself as part of the arts, broadly defined, rather than as a defensive subculture which has to protect its own. Again, I think that’s what Beaty would say, but I don’t really know for sure. Maybe next time out he’ll tell us — whether or not he cites me while doing so.
 

photo
Illustration of Bart Beaty by Martin Tom Dieck from Beaty’s staff page at The University of Calgary.

 
 

58 thoughts on “I Am Bart Beaty!

  1. “But those jabs are always jabs rather than roundhouses”

    I often found myself, in reading Comics Vs. Art, wondering if I was reading certain criticism into Beaty’s text (one’s that confirmed my own feelings/thought) or if they were just really subtle/downplayed by him.

  2. Marc Singer’s book on Grant Morrison uses the web and cites it copiously. My book of Alan Moore interviews uses several that originated on the web. Charles Hatfield’s Kirby book cites online discussions too I think (can’t recall off the top of my head). Plenty of academics citing/using online materials… One thing to take into account is the lengthy lag time between actually writing something and when it appears in academic print. This can be, on the short side, a year…but is often more like 2-3 years (sometimes more), by the time the review and revision process is fully completed. So…often the more or most recent online sources are not cited simply because the book was written first, or simultaneously. Wait a few years and I’m sure your genius will be acknowledged in academic print.

  3. “…comics should be less neurotic and status-conscious, less inward-turned, more feminist, more adventurous, and more able to see itself as part of the arts, broadly defined, rather than as a defensive subculture which has to protect its own.”

    I like this Utopia you speak of. But whereas making Art into Product happens rather easily, it’s a less-travelled road to make what was originally intended to be Product into an Art. Comics is it’s baggage, and here we are. But it’s fun and kind of exciting, right?

    Maybe I’ve had too much fresh fruit this morning…

  4. The lag time on the pieces that are four years old or more is long enough, surely?

    Taking interviews from the web isn’t exactly the sort of thing I was talking about — anything Alan Moore does is obviously going to be of scholarly interest.

    I haven’t seen Marc’s book, and only just looked at Charles’ — though, as I said, there is commerce between them often (and both Marc and Charles have written extensively on the web.) I do think there can be an uncertainty about how to integrate the two in some cases (which I think Beaty’s book demonstrates.)

  5. Yeah, I know that…but I think you’re a little odd, Charles. For the most part, commenters have stuck to saying that I’m full of shit, either because they’re not familiar with Beaty’s writing, or because they think he’s less full of shit than I am, or some combination of the two.

  6. Well, I’m gonna quote you at an international iconology conference in Budapest, though you have to wait till May. Hope it’s not a problem. :P :P :P

  7. Well…my first book definitely took somewhere in the four-year range from submission to press to publication. It was 8 years from when my dissertation was finished…and when most of the research was done. So…four years is no guarantee of anything, so in most cases, it’s enough time.

  8. Eric…just to be clear, I wasn’t really saying he should have cited me in particular; just pointing out/thinking about the fact that he’s doing a kind of meta-critical commentary in which the major online voices (like CR or comics comics) don’t really exist — which is odd/interesting.

  9. If one were to make a précis of the general academic critique of blogs, one might point to the commonly held perception that blogs often traffic in unsubstantiated attacks and deliberately inflammatory rhetoric. As someone who has written for the best comics blog on the internet – ComicsReporter.com – for the better part of a decade (though, admittedly, not as often as I would like since I changed jobs in 2011), this is a point of view that I would reject out of hand.

    Except that it has happened so clearly here.

    Berlatsky’s outrageous claims that I have plagiarized his work are, as they say in the blogosphere, just so much bullshit. I’m accused here of being a time-traveling idea thief, stealing Berlatsky’s ideas from 2010 in articles that I published in 2004 and lectures I delivered in 2005! It would be comical, but I have a feeling that he actually means it.

    Berlatsky wonders why I don’t cite more bloggers. The fact is, other than Tom Spurgeon, I don’t read any comics bloggers. I’ve never read any of the posts and comments that Berlatsky cites above, and was only alerted to them when he emailed me yesterday morning inviting me to respond.

  10. For fuck’s sake. I say over and over in the piece that you *have not* plagiarized my work. Of course you haven’t. Did you read the whole piece? I say repeatedly that you almost certainly didn’t read my work.

    Here; in case you couldn’t find it above:

    “Of course, I’m sure the reason Beaty doesn’t cite me is that he didn’t get the ideas from me. I think most of these ideas (like, the importance of nostalgia in comics) are true — and since they’re true, of course all intelligent independent inquiry will naturally confirm them. ”

    How much clearer could I be?

    The criticism is that you don’t think about blogs, though blogs are really important to how people think about comics on the web.

    Your outraged response pretty exactly duplicates the kind of status anxiety you critique — which is in line with my point in the piece. I’d sort of expected better from you, honestly — but I guess it is what it is.

  11. And how do you know that Tom’s the best blogger on the web is you don’t read blogs? CR is really important and centrally vital, but there are a lot of people out there. And…what do you mean by “best” anyway? Isn’t that the sort of question that your book asks us to think through, rather than simply reflexively positing?

  12. And finally…I suspect you have left the building, but if not, you should feel free to call me “Noah.” Everybody does here; blogs are informal that way.

  13. The Internet at its best, ladies and gentleman! Do we get a round?…

    (I’m kidding, natch, but I’m the last one in the house who can throw a stone. Sigh!)

    Seriously though: if Bart wrote some or most or all of his book in 2004 and 2005 a simple note saying where the book’s chapters appeared for the first time would be enough to set the record straight. Also: one doesn’t need to read any blogs regularly to cite bloggers. One just needs to google our topic and see what’s out there about it. I sincerely don’t believe that there are many writers not doing so these days.

  14. Just looking quickly, the acknowledgements do say that several of the chapters appeared earlier, though not the precise years (and not the precise material.) Though it’s somewhat (ahem) academic, since I didn’t actually think he got the ideas from me…and wasn’t necessarily even contending that I’d thought of them first (I mean, my guess is that they were floating around before either Bart or I wrote about them — ideas are like that.)

  15. I guess I also find it somewhat depressing that a scholar whose work focuses in large part on how comics constitutes itself as a community and a field, as well as on overturning hierarchies of taste, would (proudly?) admit that he doesn’t read any blogs except the best one. That just seems like a giant methodological problem to me.

  16. Anyway…I guess Bart now more or less despises me, but notwithstanding my various differences with him, I just want to reiterate that Comics vs. Art is really worthwhile and stimulating and thought provoking, and people should read it. I’m going to go back and try to read his earlier stuff as well.

  17. I’m inclined to believe he doesn’t read blog posts given that he clearly didn’t read the one.
    The fact is, I like Beaty’s scholarship and his blog posts, but his comment seems way off base given what Noah wrote.

  18. It looks to me like Noah is going for a Glenn Beck, “Now I’m not saying [what I’m obviously saying]” tactic in this piece.

  19. I’ve never watched Glenn Beck. But no, I don’t think Bart Beaty ever read this blog, or that he got any ideas from me.

    I think the fact that he didn’t, and the he doesn’t read blogs, and that that is acceptable given his scholarly project, is interesting, though.

  20. “Beaty stole all his ideas from me. Consider… [dated example, dated example, example, example.]”

    “I kept thinking…’Hey! I thought of that first! I even said it in the Comics Journal! Why don’t I get a shout out…or, you know, at least a citation?'”

    “Of course, I’m sure the reason Beaty doesn’t cite me is that he didn’t get the ideas from me.”

    “Still, it’s amusing that Beaty can be seen as in some ways enacting the same highbrow/lowbrow performance that is so central to his discussion. Just as Lichtenstein took the work of “lesser” artists and either elevated or stole it, depending on your perspective, so Beaty can be seen (with a little squinting) as taking the work of (ahem) lesser thinkers and elevating them, or swiping them outright. I am Irv Novick!”

    “Again, I’m sure Beaty isn’t actually using my ideas. But it is kind of interesting that… he virtually never discusses the internet at all.”

    “Beaty certainly knows about the blogosphere — he wrote regularly for CR for years. So the decision not to talk about the web and its place in comics criticism seems like it has to be a deliberate one.”

    “The reason to leave out the internet is fairly obvious; it’s for the most part not especially scholarly… it’s hard to evaluate importance and worth when there are no credentials, because many people on the web are not speaking in a way that is of help or interest to scholars, and, last but not least, because it brings down the tone. Tone is particularly interesting, because I think it’s one of the major differences between Beaty’s book and HU…”

    “I think Beaty’s answers to those questions would be similar to mine… but I don’t really know for sure. Maybe next time out he’ll tell us — whether or not he cites me while doing so.”

  21. I guess in some sense I should anticipate that there are going to be readers with a grudge, or readers who aren’t paying attention, or readers who have trouble picking up on cues for whatever reason, who are going to be unable to follow a post like this where I’m being a little playful, and where you need to be maybe slightly more attentive than usual to figure out where the argument is going. Maybe I shouldn’t write posts like this; maybe I should just always cover my ass and always think about what the least generous, most distracted, least perceptive reader is going to come away with.

    I just can’t hack it though. That’s a dreary way to approach writing, or life for that matter. So if you want to think I’m Glenn Beck, deelish, you go ahead. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to write for Glenn Beck’s audience.

  22. We can’t be sure, that’s why Noah is being ambiguous. It happened to me too in Bart’s book (re. Maus‘s page layouts) and also here from page 13 on.

    What Noah calls “interesting” can be summed up in a few words: it’s as if the academia regards the blogosphere as an orchard where they can go in all coolness to pick up vegetables without warning the owner. Imagine a Shakesperean academic saying something like: I didn’t quote you because I don’t read books about Shakespeare.

  23. And just to second what Domingo says…it’s not the not being cited so much as the sense that you can’t possibly be part of the conversation. That’s why it’s similar to the comics/art binary Beaty discusses, where comics can sometimes be material, but can’t really be talked to.

    Of course, wanting to be part of the conversation is also kind of ridiculous/desperate — thus the hyperbolic whining/outrage of the first part of the piece.

  24. I would say that the comparison is quite apt: to want to be quoted in an academic book may be seen as a call to intellectual honesty, but, on the other hand, it may also be interpreted as a symptom of status anxiety.

  25. Right…and the animosity/status anxiety gets expressed through charges of intellectual malfeasance (which really is not germane either for Beaty or for Lichtenstein) rather than through the much more apropos but less clearly adjudicateable issues of snobbery or myopia.

    It’s not a perfect fit, obviously — Lichtenstein clearly had seen comics panels and thought about them, while Beaty for the most part isn’t paying attention to blogs or the internet at all. But it’s not clear to whose credit those differences redound, exactly….

  26. Heh. I think possibly…though feminized male might be more accurate. The boy who wants to be the man, right? Begging for daddy’s attention and getting spit on.

    That’s why folks find the charge of intellectual malfeasance more congenial, I think. From that perspective, you’re the authentic power center being pilfered, rather than some runt begging for recognition.

  27. Did Beaty actually read the post? He mentions being asked for comment about it by T. Spurgeon. Doesn’t say he sat down and read the thing. I bet he saw the bullet items at the top and that was it, he had to fire back.

  28. Email Spurgeon and ask him to get word to the guy. Silly to have a misunderstanding like this floating around.

  29. Ohhh…I see. No, you’re confused by the pronouns in Beaty’s response. It wasn’t Tom who emailed him for comment. It was me; I thought Beaty like to respond, since I’d written multiple mostly laudatory posts about his book. But,as you can see, it didn’t quite work out….

  30. Yeah, I had pronoun trouble.

    Still, he does write for Tom Spurgeon’s blog. You could email Mr. Spurgeon and ask him to get in touch w/ the guy.

    What gave me the idea is Oliver Stone’s Nixon, where Nixon gets in touch w/ Lyndon Johnson so he can get an invite to the Kennedy funeral. You’d be Nixon in this, Spurgeon would be LBJ, and Beaty would be the entire Kennedy family. Your role isn’t feminized per se, but Nixon is enough like “a runt begging for recognition.”

  31. I like the idea of being Nixon…but I don’t necessarily think involving third parties is a good idea. I’m sure Bart will return if he thinks it matters; otherwise it’s probably not a big enough deal to bother with.

  32. But to return to one of your original questions, Noah – since you’ve got me thinking now about the places where academic and online scholarship overlap – I find that, for better or worse, I generally treat blog posts like book reviews or op-eds. I’ve seen other academic publications engage them in this manner too (including a few essays in the collection I edited), often because blog posts are not always sourced or peer reviewed, though some undergo this kind of evaluation in the comment section. Other blogs seem to me to be closer to works-in-progress and I’m a little anxious about scrutinizing an argument that is unfinished or is intended more as an informal musing.

    Having said all that, a lot has changed in the last 5-10 years and there is really engaging critical work being published online (HU included!). Posts on the Comics Grid that you mentioned go through a submission process (if I’m not mistaken) and include citations, but seems to keep the brevity, accessibility, and informality of a conventional blog in place. I think things are moving more in this direction and I’m genuinely glad about it.

  33. Yeah…the Comics Grid is definitely quite academic; it looks more like a journal than like a blog in a lot of ways.

    Your concerns about blogs in terms of citation, peer review, etc., all make sense. I have to admit, I’m somwhat skeptical about peer review as a validating process in the humanities for various reasons…but that’s probably another discussion (and one which I don’t know that I’ve entirely thought through, either.)

  34. Charles Reese writes: “So, are you the woman here?”

    If this was meant as a joke it isn’t funny; it is tiresome how many idiots use the idea of something being “feminized” as a negative quality.

  35. Haha, we arrogant, repressive, destructive and bullying male apes are so tiresome as we indulge our “masculine” hootseries. Hey, I do it too, but at least I’m embarrassed by it.

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