Heidi over at the Beat had a post at the end of last week in which she argued that indie comics are rarely examined in cultural context.
And yet, it does seem that indie comics and cartoonists are rarely examined in a larger contextual way. This is possibly because the content involves a lot of what some call introspection, and others emo shoegazing—even the greatest one—and maybe because this kind of analysis if of a secondary interest of most of those creating and consuming indie comics? And to be fair, a lot of indie comics are created by an ethnically homogenous groups of suburban white kids. When they stray too far away from writing what they know, as Craig Thompson did with Habibi, the results aren’t awesome. Even a work as great as Building Stories is a personal story—on a most simplistic level, it’s telling us that it’s better to have a happy marriage than lie in bed every night wondering if you should kill yourself.
I disagree with the vast majority of what Heidi says in that post…but I don’t know that a fisking would really be that productive. So, instead, I thought it might be fun to take her post as a challenge, and try to do a roundtable on indie comics in social context.
What “social context” means is a little unclear; Heidi seems to be particularly focused on issues of racism, sexism, and gender, since she’s responding specifically to the recent discussion of Jason Karns work (Heidi has all the links on her post.) I’d certainly be interested in hearing folks talk about those issues in relation to indie cartoonists, but I’d think other approaches would be useful as well. For instance, looking at comics in terms of their relationship to visual art traditions, or to literary traditions, or, for that matter, to comics traditions, seems like it would qualify. Talking about comics in relation to historical events could work too. I’m sure folks could think of other possibilities.
The term “indie comics” also seems like it’s somewhat up for grabs. We’re trying to avoid mainstream superhero titles, obviously, and genre works (manga or otherwise) seem like they should be out too. Heidi expressed interest in focusing on more recent cartoonists (i.e., not Crumb, Clowes, etc. etc.), though again that’s maybe more something to think about than a hard and fast rule.
So…anybody in? I think I’d aim for early October or thereabouts. If you’re interested, let me know in comments, and maybe mention who you might write about if you have an inkling, since I think that would be a nice way to spark discussion and generate ideas.
Anya Davidson’s School Spirits, which Heidi talks about at her post.
Isn’t criticism concerning race and gender on the top 5 list of things on HU? And Building Stories is also about disability and that’s been covered in at least one piece of criticism at TCJ.com I think. There’s been a reasonable amount of talk about the sex industry as a result of Paying for It etc.
How are you going to make this roundtable stand out from your average week or two at HU? Ignore the technical and narrative aspects and focus on “contextualization”? E.G. There’s been lots of comics criticism about war but now take a detour and apply it to Syria?
Well, the main way it’d be different is that it’d be focusing on indie comics exclusively; usually we mix things up a bit more.
But I don’t think it needs to be hugely different than what we usually do! More a way to highlight it, perhaps.
I walked into Forbidden Planet, must’ve been two days ago, and looked at all the small press and indie singles with the intention of picking up a handful. It was a thoroughly depressing adventure. Almost everything looked like it was derived from Deforge, Ryan, or Clowes. I couldn’t bring myself to buy any of it. There wasn’t a whole lot of “visual dynamism” on that shelf.
Can Deforge actually lay claim to originating that “style” of comics. Surely the Fort Thunder crowd were there before him – Brinkman, Chippendale. and distant associates like Ron Rege etc. Johnny Ryan has produced a school of art?
I follow Jacob in saying that form is Deforge-derived because it blew up with his monstrous success. I’m not sure that the people doing the work are as well-acquainted with the history of the medium as you are, though I may be projecting.
As for Ryan-derived art, perhaps you can educate me on my mistake. What’s the lineage that Ryan’s picking up here? Hyperviolent, manic, scaly, slimy, ugly, and sweaty. I’m thinking here largely of Prison Pit, to be totally honest. I’d say it’s Crumb/80s derived but once again I suspect, based on the content, that the work has a lot more in common with Ryan than it does with Crumb.
The larger point I was trying to impress was that a lot of it looked boring.
I didn’t even know that Deforge was a monstrous success so I’ll defer to your diagnosis.
As for Ryan followers, I was merely expressing surprise that people were aping Prison Pig or Angry Youth or whatever. I’d say the style probably goes as far back (at least) as S Clay Wilson, Rory Hayes, and maybe even Mark Beyer. Ryan would probably scream at these comparisons though.
I’ll tell you what, Suat, next time I go I’ll pick up some of it and we can have our own little HU Small Press Comics post and you can judge with your own eyes.
You could do it for the roundtable!
Also Prison Pig sounds like a great comic.
Score one for the echo chamber-ber-ber-ber!
But I’m with you, Noah. I’m really not sure what would count as taking indie comics in a “cultural context” that would not include much of what HU writers (and most academic comics critics) do all the time.
So I can get you to write for it Peter, right?
Right?
(echo….)
I think you forgot to put a link to Heidi’s post.
Anyway, having recently discovered Karns’ work thanks to the controversy, I wouldn’t mind doing something on Fukitor’s feminism. Is that indie and contextual enough?
Oh, for pity’s sake. I put it in now; thanks Charles.
And yes, a post about Karns’ feminism would be great.
“Can Deforge actually lay claim to originating that “style” of comics. Surely the Fort Thunder crowd were there before him – Brinkman, Chippendale.”
You think? I don’t see a huge similarity. Deforge’s lines are clean and his forms usually riff on cartoony graphic patterns – Chippendale and Brinkman go for the Gary Panter scratchiness and tend to depict characters of more heroic proportions, usually sitting with epic fantasy elements. I can see an affinity between Deforge and Rege, though. Both tend towards geometry in the way they organise their lines.
As far as the storylines go, Deforge’s cold absurdities and biophobia remind me much more of early 90s post-new-wave anthologies like Last Gasp, The Biologic Show and the some of the shorts in Eightball than the peculiar blend of introversion and object oriented optimism issued by the Fort Thunder crowd.
I also see very little resonance between Ryan and Wilson or Hayes. Ryan is a clown – Wilson and Hayes are on a more visionary tip, fecund with terrible desire.
Welp, count me in, then.
Charles, you are in.
Briany, if you wanted to turn any of a number of the ideas in that comment into a post for the roundtable, that’d be awesome.
It probably goes without saying, but I would be interested in contributing. Emily says she is too. I’ll probably do something about censorship. Emily thinks she’ll write something more directly responding to the idea that we shouldn’t respond to comics from a wider cultural context, “not that there’s much to say that isn’t obvious, but apparently it needs to be said.”
Super; those both sound great.
Yeah, for me it’s interesting just because it’s a chance to talk really directly about these issues. Partly because apparently people on the internet need to hear it and partly because, even if the initial comment is really stupid, it is good to reflect on how and why we’re doing the kind of work that we do. I think that really sets it apart from the things I usually write, where I just assume that everyone knows what I’m doing and that it makes sense to be doing it, so I’d be really interested in engaging with the idea that everything I do is totally illegitimate. I know that’s not true, but I could get something interesting out of it.
Briany – I was just thinking how far back this craft-y home-made style reaches. Some of Deforge’s single illustrations do have the feel of Brinkman’s monumental figures though. But in terms of closer likenesses, yes Rege, Marc Bell, and maybe even Kaz. Probably of a piece with many of the things that appeared in early Kramer’s Ergot. I just don’t see his style as being so distinctive that you could say people are copying him.
Ryan – Is being a clown a good thing or a bad thing? Because it sure sounds like you’re saying he’s shallow. Basically violent slapstick.
Noah, thanks for the invitation.
I don’t know how edifying an extended picking over of the styles of various cartoonists for potential commonalities would be, though. It’s a fun game for observing one’s own perceptive tendencies, but the output would likely be pretty listless without some other impetus to make it buoyant.
More interesting might be to do a similar thing but with cartoonists v contemporary practices in other graphic arts. Gig posters is one obvious example – as many underground and indie cartoonists also work in that field – and I suppose commercial illustration for magazines, adverts and packaging are close cousins to comic art.
There’s definitely rich soil growing round that family tree.
Can I bothered? Wouldn’t I rather just tease out the loose threads in other people’s reasonings?
It pretty much depends how much cake and coffee I can lay my hands on as to how many paragraphs I can sweat out…
Kaz -> Deforge, yes definite similarities there.
Deforge is doing something distinctive within comics, it looks like to me, he’s got his own kind of awkwardness. Kaz’s lines are straight from trad cartooning, Deforge filters similar sources but via more absract mediation.
Ryan=clown. Basically I mean he’s a functional performer, he engineers laughs. The other guys in the comparison (Wilson, Hayes, Beyer) are reporting on their own febrile manifestations. I guess that description still fits Ryan, but he seems more outward-facing – self-conscious for a different type of formation, a type which he can manage and deploy with parsimony.
What struck me most about the whole Karns dust-up was his anachronism: In an interview on TCJ.com last year [1], he was pretty outspoken about how much the present sucks, and living in the past seems to be a point of pride for him.
A devotion to the past is prevalent in mainstream comics, but, in general, the alternative and indie works in a given medium are usually the ones propelling the medium forward, whereas Karns and his defenders seem to be devoted to reliving the past in the works of the present.
[1] http://www.tcj.com/an-interview-with-jason-karns/
That’s interesting. I don’t know that I see indie comics as particularly forward focused; nostalgia is a pretty big deal in comics of all sorts it seems like?
I mean…Clowes and Ware and Spiegelman are really nostalgic creators, an they loom pretty large. Though perhaps you’re thinking of other aspects of the scene?
I don’t see indie comics as particularly forward focused either, and that seems odd or unique to comics in comparison to the role that indie/alternative creatives play in music, film and literature.
Even though Ware is nostalgic, “Building Stories” did something new in terms of form and/or content. But with Karns, it seems like he’s trying to do the 70s/80s as if it still were the 70s/80s, with no real acknowledgement of any time having passed.
I think it has to do with comics’ status as a fairly unpopular pop culture medium. There just tends to be this backwards focus on the lost (semi-mythical) moment when comics mattered.
You see it in some other genres, like neo-soul or country (which is its own complicated discussion.) But comics is weird in the way that it seems to reach across the entire medium, regardless of genre. It’s as true of superhero pulp as it is of indie stuff. (Though perhaps less so for children’s comics, maybe.)
I heard somewhere that The Comics Journal initially called The Nostalgia Journal… I’d love to know if that was true or not.
I’m actually really confused about Heidi’s quote up there, and will echo people saying “Yes, isn’t that what we do here?” But also– I thought that indie comics are mostly valued in art/lit circles for their context as comics. That Maus is interesting because it’s Holocaust+Talking Animals, that Jimmy Corrigan is Dysfunctional Men + Superheroes… as much mileage that McCloud has gotten out of de-linking comics content and structure, most critics are interested in how comics-content affects non-comics content, and could care less about the medium’s formal possibilities…
It’s not clear to me how much Heidi reads HU as a regular thing, so it’s possible she’s not really aware that we do that? Or she may feel it doesn’t count for some reason or another. I don’t know.
In terms of comics as novelty — I think you and Heidi may be talking about slightly different communities? Heidi seems to be talking about discussions within comics, while you may be looking at discussions from outside that community, to some degree? Of course it’s not like there are rigid demarcations, so….
I’d totally forgotten this article by Caroline Small about SPX and indie comics and inside/outside comics culture, which I think suggests that talking about context re indie comics is vital in lots of ways.
At the risk of being really stupid again…
>>>I heard somewhere that The Comics Journal initially called The Nostalgia Journal… I’d love to know if that was true or not.
Yes. It is on the Wikipedia page.
>>>I think it has to do with comics’ status as a fairly unpopular pop culture medium.
See, I just disagree with this to begin with, I’ve spent the entire summer being bombarded with images from comics every time I leave my house, although not always indie ones, unless you count The Walking Dead, which I’m sure no one does, and translated into other forms. Even with the decline of the newspaper, there are still immensely popular webcomic and newspaper characters, and even Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries.
The discussion of DeForge here quickly turned into a discussion of formalism; I don’t dispute that there is a lot of comics crit on that level. I’d compare Deforge to previous horror/dysmorphophobic cartoonists including Charles Burns, Renee French, Hans Rickheit, maybe even Jim Woodring.
Likewise with Ryan, his content is the shock humor of S. Clay Wilson filtered through the banality of Hanna Barbera and Bushmiller. A lot of Ivan Brunetti’s work was also on this level, although even more overt, as were the undergrounds, including Air Pirates.
“Indie comics” is not a very useful term, I will admit. I often use art comix and literary comix, but not interchangeably. alt.comix?
As I mentioned in a comment on the original thread, the world is not crying for more in-depth discussions of Dan Clowes or Chris Ware, let alone Art Spiegelman’s trailblazing use of funny animals to discuss the Holocaust—20 years ago. Those guys are In The Club (although I seem to remember the HU crew saying maybe they weren’t, really.)
For me the greatest comics will always be the works of the greatest humanism, from Krazy Kat to Peanuts to Posey Simmonds. I love the smell of fantastic technique in the morning (Forming, Blexbolex) but a lot of the most admired alt.comix cartoonists are still in danger of having Alex TOeh-like careers—all hit, no field.
That was Alex Toth, of course. I’m typing this on a train.
Hey Heidi! The Johnny Ryan discussion isn’t about formalism. The Deforge is…but we’ll see if we can get someone to do a different take in the roundtable.
I also don’t think there’s the kind of firm separation between form and content that you’re suggesting? Krazy Kat and Peanuts are both really impressive formal achievement, and their content is about that in various ways, I think, just as the formal achievement is in some ways the content.
Re popularity; Material *from* comics is often super-popular in other mediums. But that just kind of underlines the point, doesn’t it? The Avengers movie is exponentially more popular than Avengers comics; The Walking Dead tv show is how most people know the Walking Dead comic.
Webcomics is an interesting exception, though. I don’t have a strong sense of how popular Penny Arcade or xkcd are in comparison to something like the Avengers film….looks like a job for Google Trends!
Here’s Penny Arcade (the most popular webcomic, right?) compared to Twilight (one of the most popular book series.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=penny%20arcade%2C%20twilight&cmpt=q
Penny Arcade gets stomped; it’s not pretty.
What about Penny Arcade compared to the Avengers?
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=penny%20arcade%2C%20%20avengers&cmpt=q
Again, not pretty for Penny Arcade. (And pretty clear from the timeline that what’s doing the stomping is Avengers the movie, not Avengers the comic.)
And Penny Arcade vs. Beyonce:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=penny%20arcade%2C%20beyonce&cmpt=q
So…I’d agree that Penny Arcade is popular, but at least form Google Trends, it sure looks like “popular for a comic” is a lot, lot less popular than “popular for a book, film, or recording artist.”
Hard to stop playing; here’s xkcd vs. Harry Potter.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=xkcd%2C%20%20harry%20potter&cmpt=q
And what the hey, xkcd vs. Metallica
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=xkcd%2C%20%20metallica&cmpt=q
And because you want to know; xkcd vs. Penny Arcade
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=xkcd%2C%20%20penny%20arcade&cmpt=q
Using the same Google Trends approach suggests to me that my estimation of Deforge’s success is unfounded. So, apologies for misleading every/anyone.
Owen, that “Penny Arcade” vs “xkcd” vs “DeForge” graph was hilarious. Thanks for suggesting it.
I think Google Trends can result in some pretty bitter cultural pills to swallow.
So…just looking at some Deforge online:
http://kingtrash.com/ants/index.html
I am…sort of failing to see the appeal. Is this the wrong one to look at? The designs and colors are pretty, but beyond that it sort of reads like those terrible Chris Ware bee comics. Charles Schulz non-joke jokes which are supposed to be more adult because they deal with “adult” subjects (sex and death)…and I guess because they focus on icky insects rather than cute children. And because they’re not funny. I was intending to read the whole thing, but couldn’t hack it.
Anybody want to explain what I’m supposed to be getting out of this?
Oh, and here’s the Penny Arcade vs. xkcd vs. Deforge.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=xkcd%2C%20%20penny%20arcade%2C%20%20michael%20deforge&cmpt=q
“Ware,” “Sacco,” “Clowes,” and “Spiegelman” also get trounced. But “Seth” comes out on top . . . until you realize that the references are all to Meyers and MacFarlane.
We occupy the back room of the last house on the left in the farthest outskirts of visual-entertainment culture.
A short adventure for you:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=michael%20deforge%2C%20%20Johnny%20Ryan%2C%20%20Daniel%20Clowes&cmpt=q
Penny Arcade crushes Art Spiegelman, though:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=spiegelman%2C%20penny%20arcade&cmpt=q
As with a lot of the artists published in Kramer’s Ergot, I think it’s important not to focus too hard on the words!
And since you mentioned Peanuts: http://mattseneca.blogspot.sg/2012/03/beyond-pale-michael-deforges.html
I appreciate the flat, alienated affect and the visual panache. And of course I love the colors. I really think that some of his printed work is stronger (Lose, Very Casual), but, showing my coarse taste, I very much like Ant Comix too. I don’t think Deforge really cares about appearing “adult”, though. He’s not that guy, from what I’ve gathered.
But Noah, if you don’t like his sort of weirdo “bored world” aesthetic it’s just cause you’re old, man. You’re not hip with the kids!
Huh. The whole Incinerator is here, looks like:
http://studygroupcomics.com/main/incinerator-by-michael-deforge/
Better than the Ant one, if only by virtue of being shorter. Matt S. interprets it as man robbed of animal self, but seems like it’d be easy to read as comics robbed of children’s audience/mainstream cultural position. Alt comics are both nostalgic for that and exulting in the adultness/marginality. A narrative which seems Clowes-like, though without Clowes’ anxiety, for better and worse.
He wants to be avante garde and weird. That’s a kind of claim to adultness, even if it’s often an adulthood obtained through re-appropriating childhood.
I am old, though. I don’t get the new boredom.
So the mighty HU brain trust has already been able to discern that Beyoncè is more popular that Michael DeForge? Impressive.
Heidi…I don’t get it. Nobody insulted you, or even pointed mild snark in your direction here. I took your points seriously, and thought about them, and tried to figure out a way to verify them. I really honestly thought at first that Penny Arcade might be as popular as other large scale media successes.It doesn’t appear to be, but that doesn’t mean your suggestion was dumb.
So…why are you all pissy? Again; it doesn’t make sense to me. Are you mad that I don’t like Michael Deforge’s comics? That I don’t agree with you that comics are all that popular? That I said I didn’t agree with your original column? Or what?
And nobody actually ran google trends on Beyonce and Deforge, I don’t think. Though,you know, if you wanted to, I don’t see why that would be a horrible thing to do. Google trends is fun to play with.
FWIW…thinking about comics in relation to other cultural phenomena is one way you put them in cultural context. Yes DeForge is a lot less popular than Beyonce…but if you’re not willing to actually think about that, or if you mock anybody who wants to talk about it, it’s difficult to see where DeForge actually fits in that broader cultural context, it seems to me. Comics’ position as unpopular popular art is pretty interesting. Getting defensive about it seems silly; it’s not going to change things, and you just shut down a potentially productive conversation.
It seems like, by that paradigm, comics are about the adult/child dichotomy and struggling with it (that is, any modern comics are). If you write/draw Jailbird, you’re hearkening back to Felix and ancient Tezuka books and embracing comics’ childishness. If you are Deforge, you’re reappropriating youth, or you might find yourself stuck in a generation of comics (the eighties, the nineties, etc.)
I think this is a very effective framework (as a variant on Bloom’s anxiety of influence), but some of us grew up in an environment where nobody ever gave a shit about comics, whether they were in the paper or at a news stand or whatever. However, it might be that our generation just repeats the same gesture with the anime that was on Toonami (Stokoe) and the labored breathing of corporate comix like Garfield (KC Green). I’d like to think, though, a lot of us who grew up in the nineties aren’t as stuck on the idea of a Golden Age. The internet means that we can discover old comix in a different way; the further visible splintering and dehistoricizing of culture means that we’re working with more of an archive than a history. That may be my youthful naivete at work, but I think that there’s a case to be made.
Don’t get it twisted; I went back and read a bunch of Peanuts because Schulz is such a totem around here, but sometimes I feel like the emphasis on the attempt to overcome the childishness of comics is just a way of keeping the place of Peanuts in the Berlatsky canon as an unsurpassable Ur-Comic. This is obviously caricature, but it can be a bit frustrating at times. Does that make sense?
Who do you like that’s young and working today, Noah? Do they escape that dichotomy, or do they actively affirm it?
Mind you, according to Google Trends, xkcd is more popular than Tolstoy and Proust combined. So it looks like we have nothing to be too “ashamed” about. Google Trends has its limits.
Does it have limits because it doesn’t tell us what’s important or because it might be providing us with inaccurate information? Cause that sounds accurate to me.
Noah would probably say that Beyonce is more relevant, important, and interesting than Tolstoy and Proust combined so I don’t think that division would help matters.
I think this has been discussed on HU before. Google Trends doesn’t pick up things which aren’t in the headlines, it’s weighted towards “youth”-internet culture, it doesn’t tell you what’s being taught in school/university, it doesn’t pick up on things which lots of people enjoy silently (presumably) etc. etc.
I like Beyonce a lot, and neither Tolstoy nor Proust are necessarily my favorite novelists…but I wouldn’t actually say that she’s more relevant, important and/or interesting than either of them alone, and/or both of them combined.
If Penny Arcade would shine anywhere, it should be in youth internet culture, though, right? If it’s not popular there, then where?
That’s a good point re: Penny Arcade vs. Spiegelman, though. Obviously, Spiegelman has a lot more cultural capital in universities…and you’d think he’d have more name recognition overall, wouldn’t you?
“I went back and read a bunch of Peanuts because Schulz is such a totem around here, but sometimes I feel like the emphasis on the attempt to overcome the childishness of comics is just a way of keeping the place of Peanuts in the Berlatsky canon as an unsurpassable Ur-Comic. This is obviously caricature, but it can be a bit frustrating at times. Does that make sense?”
That’s pretty funny. It’s not just Peanuts though. Or, I mean, it’s often Peanuts for indie comics (Snoopy is literally set on fire in that Deforge comic, so I don’t think I can really be accused of dragging him in there.) But superhero nostalgia is really prevalent in indie circles too…and obviously even moreso in the mainstream, where all the characters are 30-70 years old.
I do think Peanuts is an unsurpassable ur-Comic. Still…younger creators whose work I’ve really dug include Ariel Schrag, Edie Fake, Lili Carré — and Johnny Ryan, for that matter. I like Carla Speed McNeil, too, if she counts. I’ve enjoyed Kate Beaton’s work. I find xkcd funny sometimes, and often like it’s aesthetic.
In terms of how they relate to childishness/adulthood…kind of don’t want to go through all of them, but Ariel Schrag’s Likewise, for example, is in conversation with James Joyce and possibly Art Spiegelman rather than with old comic strips. Edie Fake’s in conversation with fantasy narratives, and Fort Thunder, and gallery art, I’d say; again, superheroes and comic strips aren’t really where he’s at. Lilli Carré is interested in literary fiction and high art; I”m sure she has low art influences, but I don’t feel the same insistent referencing of/embracing/distancing from comic strips and superhero comics.
So…I’d say that I tend to find the particular fetishization of and nostalgia for strip cartoons and comicness fairly off-putting, and the creators I tend to respond to seem to be focused on other concerns and other conversations. Which is why I’m so often not in sync with the comics community’s consensus opinion, I’d guess.
It is possible to take Charles Schulz and do something enjoyable with him. Berkeley Breathed did. Some of Chris Ware did too…though I’m pretty tired of Ware’s schtick at this point.
Here’s a piece from a bit ago about Lilli Carré and Derik Badman, where I talk about their relation to comics. I think they’re both really infinitely smarter/more interesting than those Deforge comics I looked at.
I should really write about Bloom County one of these days too; I love that comic, and it seems like it’s almost entirely forgotten….
Okay, I was being a little sporty there, and Noah, you and I have dueled before but I appreciate your civil tone (not that you ave ever been anything but) so maybe a little sleepless crankiness there. I’m a fan of Deforge but he isn’t known outside whatever the ‘”alt.comix” bathyscaphe, however big that is. Google trends provides no clew here.
DeForge is definitely part of the “Adventure Time” mafia, though.
Yeah; I saw him mention that in the interview with Matt Seneca. I barely know what Adventure Time is, embarrassingly enough. It’d be fun to have someone talk about the links between indie comics and animation; I know there are a ton of them.
Oh go moisten your Shroeder tattoo, Berlatsky.
I was going to ask if you knew of any good work on Breathed and Peanuts. I’d love to read it. I’ll look at the Carre, too, but I really think that you don’t give Deforge enough credit.
Heidi if you spend enough time on HU you’ll see that Msr. Reece can get Noah pretty cranky himself. He ain’t beyond reproach.
Also you say “Adventure Time mafia” like it’s a bad thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sETXBMi90RM
Should have been M. Reece. Need to work on my french.
I get cranky all the time! I strive for unfailing politeness, but it doesn’t always work….
And if you wanted to write about Deforge and convince me of my errors, that’d be super. There could also really be something he’s done that would knock my socks off; I’ve only seen those two comics, and I know he’s very prolific.
You guys remind me of a bunch of rich kids at a summer camp who decide one of the counselors is a killer and form a “Super Excellent Detective Club” and spend the summer livening things up by finding clues and snooping around. Except the counselor is the comics medium.
>>>I like Carla Speed McNeil, too, if she counts.
Why shouldn’t she count? That’s the kind of rigid compartmentalization that I’m talking about. Why are people who put scribbles up on Tumblr “legit” topics for Super Excellent Detective Club (SEDC) and not cartoonists who have several hundred pages of highly detailed world building under their belt?
Johnny Ryan’s work is full of the pop culture tropes that you say you hate. I still don’t get it.
Well Noah could call the roundtable “Heidi’s Super Excellent Detectives Club”. There might even be a comics spin-off one of these days.
Hate to ruin a good run on misplaced righteous indignation but I think that Noah was probably referring McNeil’s age (42) rather than turning up his nose at her work. Course Ryan is 42 as well so I can understand how you might get confused. Maybe the perpetual adolescence of his material lends him a youthful glow.
Yeah, I guess I just didn’t have a good sense of how long McNeil’s been around, is all. HU has quite a bit of coverage of her though, mostly focusing on gender issues in her work. I find her a lot more interesting than Michael DeForge, personally.
I’m find with pop culture tropes? It’s a particular anxious relationship to comics’ history that I’m saying puts me off. I think I find Johnny’s flat out dismissive/aggressive relationship to that history more congenial?
I talk about Johnny Ryan and Axe Cop here.
Johnny Ryan has an aggressive attitude towards comics history and its champions because he’s a dirty mean bad-boy who dont play by nobody’s rules, pop. there aint no milk he wont spill in the name of kicks and giggles.
he’s a self-hating nerd.
Y’all can mock. The Art Spiegelman/Red Skull team up remains one of the highlights of Western civilization.
Here, in this scientific study, we can see the fluctuation and decline of feminism as a human interest, as compared to the eye-catching leviathan that is Adventure Time.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=feminism+suicide#q=adventure%20time%2C%20%20feminism&cmpt=q
I still have faith in feminism long term.
a new study shows that 2011 was the year that Grant Morison became more interesting to the world than workers’ rights.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22workers%20rights%22%2C%20%20%22grant%20morrison%22&cmpt=q#q=%22workers%20rights%22%2C%20%22grant%20morrison%22&cmpt=q
Here is the great Hooded Utilitarian vs a horseshoe crab showdown.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=hooded+utilitarian%2C+horseshoe+crab#q=hooded%20utilitarian%2C%20horseshoe%20crab&cmpt=q
I read a fair bit of indie comics and while I’ve heard about DeForge (from comikers on the net) I haven’t really seen much of his work until here now. I just looked it up and there isn’t a single copy of a comic by him in the country’s library system (Penny Arcade can be found).
The visual and thematic similarities to Adventure Time are unmistakable though and I guess that is pretty big (the comics can be found).
I might have thought XKCD and Penny Arcade would be bigger but then again I mostly interact with people my age that are interested in one of more of comics, science and video games (you know, nerds).
Does anyone have a link to a brief summary of how and why HU killed Heidi’s dog?
Bad news, everybody!!!
I think Heidi particularly hated this post, from way back when.
Oh man that comment section made me laugh for days. I remember being thoroughly bored by 100 Bullets. Maybe I should take another look.
Also shouts out to Mark Waid. I read Irredeemable. That had its moments.
“For instance, looking at comics in terms of their relationship to visual art traditions, or to literary traditions, or, for that matter, to comics traditions, seems like it would qualify. Talking about comics in relation to historical events could work too. I’m sure folks could think of other possibilities.”
I don’t understand. Were you not saying on THE BEAT that HU had covered many of the indies-in-context matters that she felt had not been adequately covered? Or are you saying that while you have covered indies this way already, there’s room for improvement?
Well…we’ve done it often before. I just thought it’d be fun to use it as an excuse to do a roundtable focused on indie comics really (which we cover when folks want to, but not necessarily in such a concentrated way all at one time.)
I’m not exactly a fan of Waid’s work, but, yeah, ‘MEDIA.’ Fuck. And ‘mediums’ is so common now. It always makes me think of a bunch of gypsy women with colorful scarves wrapped abound their heads. ‘Vinyls’ is my current irritation.
Gene, I guess it’s probably sort of a demonstration? We do this thing all the time…see, here it is! Somewhat childish, probably, but hopefully not offputtingly so….
I’m trying to grasp something here: you guys aren’t basing any real/sincere assertions or opinions on Google Trends are you?
As Ng Suat Tong points out, trend results seems weighted towards news but overall Google is so opaque about its methodology, and the data is so lacking in verifiable context that it’s white noise as a basis for serious thought. It’s unclear if trends can even discern between different searches using the same words (Penny Arcade being a topic, comic and common AKA).
When it comes to popularity – how often do people search for a webcomic anyway? Once you find and bookmark the URL, you may never look for it again. If you pick it up through some secondary source, you may never search for it once.
Later playful comments seem to acknowledge this, but it appears an initial serious discourse on art and popularity was grounded in what is informational white noise. It’s the sort of pseudo-data David Brooks, Thomas Friedman and use to feign substance for their arguments.
I think utilitarian means being able to admit when an argument is based on general impressions and assumptions of limited accuracy. Persuasive arguments about art can have merit just from compelling argument, even if they involve assertions which might not prove out on a graph.
Note: Hooded Utilitarian neither endorses nor often has any interest whatsoever in utilitarian thought.
Yeah; not utilitarians. The name is a joke.
I think google trends is a decent measure of popularity, with caveats. I don’t find the argument about bookmarks convincing. I’m sure lots of people have news updates on beyonce sent to them automatically. I don’t really see webcomics being different in that regard.
Suat’s point, that folks with academic and institutional support can be glossed over in trends, seems reasonable though.
Is the joke that you’re not really an atheist?
I’m an atheist! I don’t think all utilitarians are atheists though.
The joke is sort of that I think utilitarianism is funny. Also this.
How would you describe your moral/ethical philosophical position if you think utilitarianism is a joke?
Well, one of the things that’s funny about it is the effort to systematize. I’m sure it forms part of my moral/ethical philosophical position too, though; it’s ubiquitous and hard to escape at this point.
No, I mean the moral/ethical philosophy you subscribe to, or the ones you’ come closest to. You seem sufficiently conversant that you can at least approximate your position. I’ve seen you dismiss morality that lacks a “transcendent source,” but you’re very assertive about calling yourself an atheist, which a lot of nonreligious people don’t even do.
Yeah; I don’t know that I have one, is I guess the thing. I feel like religious versions of ethics are more coherent, often, but since I’m not a believer, that ends up being a problem.
A lot of my ethical writing comes out of feminism, one way or another.