A little bit back, Peter Sattler noted that Dan Clowes’ career in comics often seems like a long, bitter struggle against comics. As Peter says:
[Clowes’] work goes out of its way to thematize the artist’s and/or the story’s struggle against comics themselves – against a form that, as Clowes presents it, seems unable to encompass interior states, unable to escape its own theatricality and artificiality, unable to circumvent its own closed system of beginnings and endings, set-ups and punch-lines. Clowes dramatizes his contest with these limits, transforming that contest into the content of his graphic novels.
Peter talks about this mainly in terms of formal limits…but to me it seems like it’s a cultural issue as well. Comics seem unable to encompass interior states, and unable to move beyond largely bone-headed gags, because comics are for kids. As I discuss here, Clowes in comics like Velvet Glove and Wilson seems to compulsively assert his distance from a form, and from influences, which he views as both infantile and inescapable. Much of the adult/edgy content, misanthropy, and violence against women in his books comes across as a kind of desperate signaling that he is not (like say Charles Schulz) writing for children. His comics can be seen as a long insistence that he is too grown up — an insistence which is (as he is certainly aware) infantile. From this perspective, Enid’s obsession with older men is not (just) a kind of self-flattering, but is a displaced expression of Clowes’ own obsessions. He’s an older guy who is fascinated with the idea, and the impossibility, of being an older guy.
The Death Ray is pretty much in the same mold. It’s a super-hero parody whose protagonist, Andy, gains super-strength by smoking cigarettes — an obvious reference to wanting to look and be older. The rest of the story is built around exploring what super-hero stories would really be like, as Clowes, familiarly, uses the genre to underline his own adult distance from it. Andy wanders around looking for criminals to beat up, but nobody attacks him. He punishes people who don’t particularly deserve it at the behest of his best-friend, Louie, and then feels bad about it. As Aaron Leitko wrote at the Washington Post “The Death-Ray employs the core super-hero conventions — the origin story, the costume and the sidekick — in the most banal ways possible.” That banality (like the banality in Wilson, or in alt comics more generally) is the validating boredom; the sign that we are not children, but adults, who understand (to paraphrase Ambrose Bierce) that realism is the world as it is actually seen by toads.
So Clowes is doing his usual thing. But…his usual thing, in this context, isn’t nearly as irritating as it usually is. The main reason for that, I think, is that, in this case, Clowes’ agonized relationship with his material doesn’t come across as condescending or wearisomely anxious. It just comes across as another superhero comic. After all, the main reference here seems to be to the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man — and how different is Andy from Peter Parker, really? Not very. Like Andy, Peter is a nerdy, angry, unhappy, orphaned kid; like Andy, Peter uses his powers for self-aggrandizement; like Andy, Peter’s powers make things worse for him, not better; like Andy, Peter makes his own kind of doofy looking costume.
And, like Andy, Peter, and the comic he’s in, is obsessed with growing up. As Chris Gavaler pointed out here last week, the whole Spider-Man story is basically a metaphor for puberty, with radioactive spider bite standing in for surging hormones. Clowes changes the spider bite to a cigarette, which makes the metaphor more pointed, but it doesn’t really change it’s nature. The Death Ray, almost despite itself, is extending its source material — the anxiety and angst that Clowes’ taps is the same in essence as Lee/Ditko’s angst. That’s very different from Wilson, for example, where Charles Schulz’s whimsy and weird humor are replaced with jokes about shit and ass rape (and not with funny jokes about shit and ass rape, either.)
All of which perhaps helps to explain in part why parody has always been so central to the super-hero genre. From Plastic Man and Captain Marvel to Superduperman to the 60s Batman television show to the Watchmen, superhero parodies have always been both critically lauded and extremely popular. On the one hand, you could argue that this is because superheroes are really stupid, and no halfway intelligent creator is going to take them seriously. And I certainly think there’s a lot to that argument.
But Death Ray also suggests that parodies are the best superhero narratives not only because they undermine the stupidity of superhero narratives, but because they fulfill them. Superhero stories are, as everybody knows, adolescent power fantasies; they’re a way for children of all ages to pretend to have ascended to the prerogatives and super-strength of adulthood. And what is more adult than parodying the silly fantasies of youth? Clowes is (fairly amusingly) sneering at the stupid dreams of fanboys of all ages who want to be grown up — but he’s also providing those fanboys with the exact same dream. Andy takes a hit from his cigarette; Clowes’ readers take a hit of The Death Ray. It’s Clowes’ best comic because, almost despite himself, it’s the one in which he’s able to provide the genre pleasures that obsess him without compulsively assuring his readers and himself that he’s too good for them.
Being a self-conscious teenager in the 90s the discovery of Eightball meant a lot to me, since Clowes seemed to address all the issues that were relevant to me when I grew out of reading old copies of MAD. Later on I pretty much lost my interest in Clowes as well with the last few issues of Eightball, and I haven’t read Death Ray since it was first published. Your article made me dig out my copy and sadly, re-reading it now was quite disappointing again. I think basically Clowes is best when he’s observing people, writing about everyday life, relationships etc. (like the first half of Mr Wonderful for instance), but whenever he starts making up things like superheroes, fist fights or plots I’m just getting bored. I’m not sure why he does it, looking at Death Ray maybe he was just trying to be more interesting visually with costumes and all that – something else I disliked about it, the colour design and layout seems so overworked and formalistic that it didn’t read very well … Could be the influence of Chris Ware maybe?
Anyway, I didn’t quite get the “comics are unable to encompass interior states” part. How exactly does this show in Clowes’ work? Maybe you could give a specific example? I read all the linked articles but it could be I just didn’t understand it (English isn’t my first language so it’s always a bit difficult when it gets more complex than average comic book dialogue … sorry).
The other thing is, I don’t think Death Ray is actually a parody because it doesn’t seem Clowes is trying to say anything about the superhero genre at all. As you wrote, he’s just using the metaphor, and the reference to Ditko’s Spider-Man is obvious, but I don’t think this is the point of the book really?
Hey Tim. Peter’s point about interior states is I think in reference to Wilson, which is a book which seems to be about inability to emphathize, or which often switches from emotional revelation to dumb joke. I think other Clowes books do that as well.
Death Ray seems a lot about deflating superhero tropes to me; I think it’s a supehero parody, though it can be other things certainly.
Thanks for the reply Noah. Hm … of course I can see how both Death Ray and Wilson can be read as commentary on superheroes and sunday funnies respectively. I’m aware of the satirical aspect, but I felt it’s something in the background, not anywhere near the focus of the work. I mean to me it’s a bit like saying MAUS was a parody of Tom & Jerry or Krazy Kat, to make a bit of a daring comparison here. And I don’t get how the reference to some other specific genres makes Clowes’ work a statement about the limits of the artform itself … but maybe I just should take a closer look at Peter Sattler’s argument again. It’s just if Clowes is the genius who wrote and drew this one page …
http://iconsequential.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/noreplymcmaster-ca_20120315_164417_003.jpg
… how can anyone say it was all about comics’ inability “to encompass interior states”?
The claim that Clowes presents comics as being unable to encompass interior states doesn’t deal with his innovative use of comics-specific devices to do exactly that in his work from Ice Haven on, or his use of traditional devices like narration to do that in earlier stories like Immortal, Invisible or pretty much any story in the Caricature collection.
Calling The Death Ray either a superhero parody or a meat-and-potatoes superhero comic isn’t sufficient for a work that treats the basic givens of the genre with moral seriousness.
I would say Watchmen is a superhero parody an a meat and potatoes superhero comic and a work that treats the basic givens of the genre with moral seriousness.
I’d kind of say that about the Adam West Batman too.
I like Adam West Batman and Watchmen more than the Death Ray, but that’s kind of neither here nor there; I object to the idea that parodies aren’t morally serious, and for that matter to the idea that meat and potatoes superhero comics can’t be worthwhile.
I don’t think Ice Haven manages to encompass interior states especially effectively. Anyway, the very title suggests that the book is about emotional disconnection and alienation (like most of Clowes other work.) I don’t think it’s a refutation of Peter’s argument.
Anyway, I did like Death Ray. Can there be a truce? Or does it not count because I didn’t like it enough, or in the right way?
You could argue that realism has its roots in parody, but The Death Ray doesn’t invite derision at the foolishness of genre tropes, it takes them seriously in a work that overwhelmingly inclines toward horror and sadness. The judgment of its being just another superhero comic is not very convincing because it provides no traditional genre pleasures or catharsis and employs its stylizations only in a limited way. Andy isn’t victimized by bullies, he and his friend deliberately antagonize them. His heroic deeds are all pointless revenges inflicted on the powerless. The only visual payoffs are fantasies with undermining dialogue. You say, “like Spider-Man, his powers are more trouble than they’re worth” but we don’t see Andy’s problems dramatized in that big, juicy way; the theme is of vanishing, creeping loss of identity, people present only in photographs, and his exercises of power are if anything too easy, not complicating his life so much as making it a wasteland. There’s a lot in Watchmen that will give fans their superhero action just the way they like it, but I wouldn’t recommend The Death Ray for that.
I thought Ice Haven really effectively conveyed the way childhood can be experienced as a rich landscape of thought and feeling beyond the ability to communicate. The inner monologues of all the characters were a major presence and a cutting, nimble counterpoint to the action in a way they wouldn’t be in other media. Themes of disconnection and alienation sit very comfortably with interior states. Clowes’ many portrayals of interiority would have to fail quite ostentatiously for a reasonable person to conclude that his theme was the inadequacy of the medium.
Saying The Death Ray is Clowes’ best comic because it delivers standard superhero genre pleasures is hard to take seriously, and strikes me as another backhanded compliment like praising an attack on internet critics as a work of self-criticism while you respond to his real self-criticisms by throwing them back at him.
My praise of the Death Ray is something of a back handed compliment…but you’re not really engaging with my argument, as far as I can tell. I talk specifically about why the Death Ray does deliver genre pleasures. It delivers the pleasure of feeling adult, which I argue is the defining trope of superhero comics, and of superhero comics parodies.
I don’t think Clowes would have to fail in portraying interior states for him to be presenting comics as inadequate for portraying interior states. Those two things just aren’t at all mutually exclusive. His assessment of his work could be less charitable than yours. I’d think it would almost have to be; creators rarely are as enthusiastic as their most dedicated fans.
Arguing that Clowes is capable of self-criticism and self-awareness, and suggesting that he’s playing complicated post-modern games rather than just writing a manifesto — that’s really not a back-handed compliment. It’s just a compliment.
The pleasure of feeling adult is not an exclusive or a defining characteristic of the superhero genre. Other kinds of work can provide that without appropriating superheroic traits. The Death Ray only delivers such a pleasure to the extent of any work that aspires to seriousness and psychological realism. It doesn’t make ostentatious use of R-rated or literary trappings like a Vertigo or Marvel MAX title. Business like the cigarette smoking and attempts to lose one’s virginity are themes of adolescence, and including them doesn’t make the work an appeal to an adolescent sensibility.
Clowes would have to present the attempt to portray interior states in comics as a failure in order to present comics as inadequate to the portrayal of interior states. My praise has not been so extravagant as to place me among his most dedicated fans or to make him unlikely to be in broad agreement.
Your attempts to turn Clowes’ self-criticisms against him, and I can provide examples again, don’t attribute complex self-consciousness to his work but treat the self-criticisms as camouflage for an expression of evil that characterizes the work.
I”d hate to meet the fans who are even more enthusiastic!
You’ve simply asserted that supehero comics are what you say they are. You haven’t engaged with the argument, as far as I can tell.
I think my take on Clowes both finds his comics unpleasant and morally problematic, and attributes complex self-consciousness to him. I don’t know why those things have to be exclusive.
“You’ve simply asserted that supehero comics are what you say they are. You haven’t engaged with the argument, as far as I can tell.”
I’ve been engaging with your argument. If The Death Ray functions as another piece of superhero escapism, and if superhero comics are a fantasy for adulthood, then The Death Ray should portray an alluring, escapist fantasy of adulthood. Making a cigarette the mechanism for Andy’s powers identifies the fantasy with a teenager’s desire for adulthood, but it doesn’t constitute such a fantasy itself unless for readers who fantasize about smoking cigarettes. Is the scene where Andy begs his aunt to send him the package containing the death ray, pleading that he can’t wait until he’s 18, a satisfying fantasy of attaining adulthood? If a serious treatment of a popular fantasy genre can only fulfill the genre, what form of critique is possible?
“I think my take on Clowes both finds his comics unpleasant and morally problematic, and attributes complex self-consciousness to him. I don’t know why those things have to be exclusive.”
Taking Clowes’ appearance in Ghost World as a leering, middle-aged man, interpreting it as a power fantasy, and treating the whole comic as a coded expression of power and sadism over Enid disallows the self-consciousness and self-critique of that image and makes it the literal truth of the comic. A conspiracy theory doesn’t create a psychologically complex portrait of its evildoers, it relies on a simplistic, cartoonish concept of evil and only gains complexity as it elaborates to account for the facts. Complex self-consciousness would require self-examination and self-criticism, not the endlessly coded expression of malice.
“Comics seem unable to encompass interior states, and unable to move beyond largely bone-headed gags, because comics are for kids.”
If comics are for kids, what about the ones like Watchmen, which you’ve praised? Who is that intended for?
“Much of the adult/edgy content, misanthropy, and violence against women in his books comes across as a kind of desperate signaling that he is not (like say Charles Schulz) writing for children.”
To what extent is violence against women a thing in Clowes’ books? If his attempts to write for adults are strained and immature, what if any comics for adults do you regard as successes?
Nah; you’re not following it. The Death Ray presents superheroes as boring and mundane. The boringness and mundanity is the sign that the comic is adult. So folks like you and me read it and get to think, hey, we’re smarter than the folks who read those stupid superhero comics; we understand that adulthood is really boring and mundane, which means we’re more adult than they are.
Same thing with other superhero parodies, like Watchmen or Adam West Batman. It lets the reader imagine they’re more adult than the material they’re reading, thereby giving them the fantasy of adulthood which is central to the superhero comics they’re parodying. My contention is that this is the reason that superhero parodies are so central to the superhero genre; because the parodies are in fact examples of the genre (and often I’d say the best and most sophisticated examples.)
Oh, and in terms of what comics for adults are successes, this whole piece is about how I think the Death Ray is a success. I think Watchmen is for adults, and I think that’s a success. I don’t know; I like lots of comics for grown ups; Ariel Schrag, Johnny Ryan, Nana, some Moto Hagio, some John Porcellino, Lilli Carre, Edie Fake…just lots of stuff.
I don’t think comics have to be for kids. I’m saying Clowes, in particular, figures them that way in his work. That doesn’t mean they are that; it just means it often seems to be how he sets them up; as an innately childish form which he’s struggling to overcome. It’s kind of common among U.S. indie cartoonists I think, for obvious historical reasons.
There isn’t much to follow, Noah. Whatever trait you associate with maturity (The Death Ray is not boring, but whatever) serves to congratulate the reader’s sense of adulthood, superheroes are fantasies of adulthood, and therefore The Death Ray is just another superhero fantasy. What this formula leaves out, aside from the comic, is any possibility that a serious moral and psychological examination (surely of value for such a dominant genre) can do more than flatter the reader’s vanity. It’s a position with no imagination beyond the status anxiety it purports to expose.
“Oh, and in terms of what comics for adults are successes, this whole piece is about how I think the Death Ray is a success.”
No, you said The Death Ray was successful as a normal entry in the superhero genre, and by definition superior to Clowes’ more adult efforts. My question was whether any comics actually attain adulthood instead of providing a congratulatory fantasy of adulthood for immature readers. As usual, your criticisms seem more applicable to Watchmen, which reads like a better superhero comic rather than a demolition of the genre and is full of congratulatory touches like the quotes at the ends of the chapters. Your other examples sound mostly young adult.
“I don’t think comics have to be for kids. I’m saying Clowes, in particular, figures them that way in his work. That doesn’t mean they are that; it just means it often seems to be how he sets them up; as an innately childish form which he’s struggling to overcome.”
Clowes uses a humorous style because his roots are in satire. Mad Magazine is for kids, but sordid elements don’t clash with that mode because it’s grotesque. His Hollywood noir style doesn’t resemble kid’s comics. It’s with Ice Haven and after that he works in a Sunday comics-page format that often appears open and kid-friendly, but you don’t have a better line into his psyche than anybody else as to his reasons. He’s interested in the mystique of the old comics page. Ice Haven is a cheerful town on the surface. A child’s world is not innocent but full of dark impulses and a confused awareness of adult realities. The Death Ray portrays an adolescent’s world. Mr. Wonderful is a romantic comedy. If Clowes was using this style to signal that he is not writing for children, why would he turn to it after years of comics like Caricature?
“What this formula leaves out, aside from the comic, is any possibility that a serious moral and psychological examination (surely of value for such a dominant genre) can do more than flatter the reader’s vanity.”
Not at all. I think Watchmen does many more things than this. Death Ray does too. Saying it does one thing doesn’t mean it can’t do anything else.
Then that’s not the essay you wrote.
I don’t generally think it’s necessary to say in a short essay, “I have not written everything possible that can be said on this topic.” I tend to assume people know that.
It’s not the argument you made in your essay because saying that a work’s value is in being an escapist fantasy (and that this makes it the author’s best work) implies that it has no more serious value.
You’re welcome to take it that way if you want, I guess. I don’t necessarily think that escapist fantasies aren’t serious, fwiw.
And congratulation of the reader is a poor virtue for a work to have. So if you’re admitting that it does more than that, and you’re admitting it succeeds as a comic for adults, you missed it by a mile.
I like it better than Clowes’ other books because the fact that it embraces, rather than nervously runs away from, genre pleasures, means that it doesn’t have the cramped snobbishness that I find in a lot of his works.
As far as I can tell, that quality that I dislike is (under different names, obviously) what you like about Clowes. So you think it’s an insult that I say it’s not here. Which by your lights it is, I guess.
I think having the cigarette be the totem of adulthood/superpowers is really funny and clever; the examination of how the superhero genre relies on violence is nice (very similar to Watchmen in a lot of ways actually)
In other words, because it’s about superheroes it’s better than a body of work that is about being better than superheroes. It’s difficult to say which genre comics like Velvet Glove and Ghost World are running away from; if anything they inhabit a Church of the Sub-Genius genre about the pursuit of eccentricity. David Boring is interested in psychoanalytic mythology. And much of Clowes’ work is easily categorized as satire. Satire is satire, legitimate and allowable, but otherwise it’s hard to say that his work is really defined by nervous looks over the shoulder at any genre in particular; and if so, which ones?
I did think your thesis was confused. You say the comic encourages feelings of superiority to the superhero genre, but then you run up against the fact that it really doesn’t. First Clowes is sneering and then “it’s his best comic because he’s able to provide genre pleasures without compulsively assuring his readers and himself that he’s too good for them,” and now you add that it lacks snobbishness.
“the examination of how the superhero genre relies on violence is nice (very similar to Watchmen in a lot of ways actually)”
As an examination of the genre’s dependence on violence The Death Ray has it all over Watchmen, which whatever the claims of its advocates is deeply invested in showcasing its characters as badasses, and takes the personality-defining origin stories and skull/devil-themed adversaries for granted that TDR withholds.
You’re confirming my suspicions that you appreciated more about the comic than your review lets on. Your writing is very concerned with the morality of violence and war; the way a self-styled agent of justice who only turns to force as a last resort and seeks clean, limited engagements can shape every encounter by this narrative; the way the possession of the means of violence and a code of ethics about their use can wind up being a formula that produces their use over and over. Clowes was dealing with themes that you normally really care about, and he certainly had bigger fish to fry than your strike in the comic shop wars of 1990-99.