In my last post, Why Is Comics Studies So Predictable, I considered a number of approaches to defining the concept comic, and found them wanting. In particular, I looked at four sorts of approach, which can be summed up (with some simplification) as:
- Formal: Something is a comic if it has the right formal properties.
- Moral: Something is a comic if it tells the right sort of story.
- Historical: Something is a comic if it has the right sort of causal or historical pedigree.
- Institutional: Something is a comic if it is accepted as such by the art world.
I also considered approaches (Delany, Wolk, Hatfield) that reject either the possibility, or the usefulness, of a definition in the first place. A predictably lively and helpful conversation ensued – one that ended with Jones, one of the Jones boys, writing this:
…that said, could you at least gesture in the direction of a sketch of a promissory note for what a better strategy for characterizing comics might look like? Do you have anything particular in mind?
Almost immediately after this, I was visiting the comic studies program at the University of Wisconsin, and Adam Kern (director of the program, comics scholar extraordinaire, and professor of East Asian Languages and Literature) similarly pressed me for a definition, or at least account of the nature of comics.
Now, I should begin by pointing out that I am not convinced that a completely correct, precise set of necessary and sufficient conditions is even possible. But I do think that, even if we had good reasons for thinking such a perfect, precise definition is impossible, it would still be worthwhile to think about initially promising-looking definitions. Why? Because we are likely to learn a lot about the nature of comics, and how comics work, by carefully determining why carefully formulated, plausible-looking definitions fail. For example, discussion of the anachronistic objects that get characterized (incorrectly) as comics by McCloud’s formal definition of comics, such as the Bayeaux tapestry and ancient Egyptian carvings, helped to foreground the important role that institutions and history have in grounding our judgements that particular objects are or are not comics (even if later historical or historical attempts at definition failed equally spectacularly, in part due to ignoring the formal aspects of comics).
So, I began to think about how I would define comics, if I had to give a definition. What is the best such definition I can think of? This is what I came up with, in its initial short, snappy form:
Comics are narratives that we look at, and do so at our own pace.
The basic idea meant to be captured here is one that can be traced back to Will Eisner when he writes that, in comics, “Text reads as image!”(Comics and Sequential Art, 1985). In more detail, the thought is this: typically, we experience text and pictorial images differently – we read text, but we look at images. In comics, however, even if we read some parts of the work (such as the squiggles typically found in thought balloons), we look at all of the parts. This is Eisner’s insight: we look at the text in comics in the same way that we look at a painting, which is not the same way that we experience text in, say, standard novels (where the visual characteristics of the font used typically doesn’t matter so long as it isn’t strange enough to detract from our experience of reading). The final bit about looking at our own pace is to distinguish comics from animation, where the pace of experience (of looking) is controlled by the author and/or projector (and this also emphasized what I take to be a critical difference between comics and animation – it’s not so much the movement, but the fact that the viewer doesn’t control the pace of the movement).
There are, of course, some additional kinks to work out. The first has to do with the fact that we can look at anything, in the relevant sense of “look at”. I can look, and admire the visual characteristics, of the font in which this post is typeset. That doesn’t mean that this post is a comic (even if we grant that this post is a narrative in the relevant sense). So it must be the case that comics are narratives that we are meant to look at. But even this is a bit ambiguous – meant to by whom? Here I am just going to bite the bullet and invoke authorial intention in a manner I am comfortable with, but other “Death-of-the-author” types might not be.
Second, the above simple version implies that any comic involves a coherent narrative of some sort. Andre Molotiu, editor of the amazing Abstract Comics volume, would be very displeased! So I am going to insert some academic-sounding gobbledygook about some kind of “meaningful agglomeration” to cover this case.
Finally, we need to make sure that everyday paintings and photographs don’t count as comics. So we will invoke a formal constraint – one that doesn’t invalidate the idea that the practice of “looking at” is what is of central importance. A comic has to involve two or more distinct parts that we look at separately. Importantly, however, these parts could be (1) an image and (2) a caption below it, or (1) an image and (2) a speech balloon laid over it, or (1) an image and (2) another image, etc. Basically, it need not be a sequence of two images, but must be a fusion of two distinct visual foci of some sort.
Hence, we arrive at something like this: A work is a comic if and only if:
- It is a narrative (or other meaningful agglomeration) composed of two or more visually distinct parts.
- Each of the parts is intended by the author to be looked at (i.e. experienced, interpreted, and evaluated in the way we experience, interpret, and evaluate images, rather than text), and looked at separately from the other parts.
- The audience is able to control the pace at which they look at each of the parts.
So that’s what makes something a comic.
I think there’s a problem with some single panel cartoons…If you’ve got a single panel cartoon with no words, then it’s just an image. It’s still a comic though, right?
Or what about comics covers without words? I don’t think you need two or more visually distinct parts to have a comic.
Noah: Yeah. This is why I characterized it in the post as my best attempt, not necessarily as getting things exactly right (and why I included all the rhetoric about carefully formulated but imperfect definitions still being useful to think about). I had already thought about ‘silent’ single panel cartoons. On this account they wouldn’t be comics – they would be something else (maybe spot drawings). This bothers me, but if it was the only problematic, apparent counterexample, maybe I could live with it.
I don’t think that comics covers (with or without words) are themselves comics. I think that they are parts of the comics that they cover, and are thus important to understanding the comic in question, but I don’t think they are comics on their own.
In general, though, I think you pinpointed the weakest part of the definition – the inclusion of the “at least two distinct parts” clause. But without that clause pretty much any painting or photograph would count as a comic on this sort of “intended to be looked at” account.
Hi Roy,
I’m honestly unsure what I’m gaining or losing by accepting your definition over other formal definitions. How, for example, do you see your definition diverging from McCloud’s (“juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response”) in was way that is pragmatically and/or analytically significant? Does it come down to saving single-panel captioned cartoons by replacing “images” with “visually distinct parts”?
“But without that clause pretty much any painting or photograph would count as a comic on this sort of “intended to be looked at” account.”
Yep; you’d need to start looking at context, marketing, etc, rather than just formal elements.
Noah made some good points.
I would argue that a single panel gag cartoon is a comic whether it has a caption or not.
For example, if the cartoon displays a scene that the average viewer can readily tell occurred after an implied sequence of events, it is a comic. Envision a single panel where a man is seated on the ground with a bewildered look on his face, has a broken flowerpot on the ground next to him, and he has a bump on his skull with “pain lines” emanating from it. That’s a comic as much as is a three-panel sequence showing the event happening. In fact, a good comics creator who knows his/her audience can take advantage of such shorthand to speed up a traditional comics story.
And since we’re on the subject of “pace of movement,” I’m sorry to deflate your hypothesis, but a skilled creator can absolutely control the pace of comics viewership almost as easily as a filmmaker can. How? Simple. They just increase or decrease the number of panels telling a sequential narrative.
Artist Jack Kirby was the master of visual comics shorthand. To speed up a story, he often deftly varied camera angles and eliminated any unnecessary panels, making his stories move at a breakneck pace compared to some of his contemporaries.
Other artists masterfully forced readers so slow down their reading pace for effect. For example, you have Krigstein’s “Master Race” (Impact #1, April 1955) and Steranko’s “At the Stroke of Midnight” (Tower of Shadows #1, Sept. 1969).
This same manipulation of time can also be done by comics writers by varying the verbosity of a script.
The fact is, like the best filmmakers, the best comics creators know exactly how to manipulate a viewer’s reading pace for emotional and dramatic effect.
Didn’t know you were being played like a drum, eh? That’s the beauty of the best comics!
Peter: I think part of why I like this approach is not necessarily that it gets this or that troublesome case ‘right’, but rather that it emphasizes something about comics that other definitions don’t – that whether something is or is not a comic is (if I am at all on the right track here, and I might not be) a matter of how we consume it (or how we are meant to consume it). So we can distinguish between comics and other sequence-of-visual-element works in terms of how we understand and appreciate the works (or how we should do so) rather than in terms of any purely formal elements.
R. Maheras: No deflated hypotheses here! Instead, I think you have conflated two sense of ‘control’.
Now, of course comics creators can use all sorts of techniques to attempt to control the pace at which we experience a story. But this is a very different kind of control than the control that a filmmaker has. In fact, despite the overuse of this term in academic books and how-to-make-comics tomes, calling this “control” at all is at best misleading. The techniques you describe merely suggest a particular pace to the comics consumer. No comics creator, no matter how masterful they are at the sorts of techniques you describe, can actually prevent me from flipping ahead, or spending two hours staring at a particular panel, or looking at each panel in a comic for exactly a quarter of a second, or skipping some panels altogether, etc. So the sort of ‘control’ a comics creator has over pace – even a creator as masterful as Kirby, or Krigstein, or Steranko – is merely suggestive.
With films, however (at least, when they are shown in the standard and intended viewing situation – a public theater) the filmmaker (along with the person running the projector) has absolute control over how long I see a particular scene before I am shown the next. Further, it is impossible to flip back and review to remind myself of what already happened (of course, we can do all this on DVD players, but then we have to argue about the proper environment for viewing films).
These aren’t just different degrees of control – they are different kinds of control. And when I talked about a comics consumer being able to look at the visuals at their own pace, I meant they aren’t controlled in the sense in which a filmmaker controls the pace of a film, I didn’t meant to rule out the (merely suggestive) sense in which a talented comics creator ‘controls’ the comics consumer.
You sort of parenthetically try to deal with DVDs, but I think they’re a bigger objection than you’re acknowledging. From your definition, it seems like when you watch films on DVD, the films are comics.
Counter-examples?
(A) Sherlock Holmes has obtained two thumbprints – one from the crime scene, and one from the suspect. He shows them to Watson: “Observe the distinctive whorl in the upper left quadrant of the thumbprint from the crime scene. Now observe the same whorl in the suspect’s thumbprint.”
(B) A film scholar displays two frames from a film, to make some kind of point or other. e.g. David Bordwell routinely does this in his textbooks and on his blog.
(C) A captioned graph or
(D) A painting displayed at a gallery, with a text-card on the wall beside it.
…I’m not sure about (C) and (D), because I’m not sure about your (2). The straightforward interpretation is that you mean *each* part is evaluated/looked-at/etc. in a way different from how we evaluate/etc. text. But then that rules out captioned gag panels (since one part *is* text there), and your comments about “silent” panels suggests that you mean at least captioned panels to count as comics.
Noah — Yep! For a recent sketch card project I completed for Topps, “watched” The Empire Strikes Back many dozens of times for reference and screen captures — and never once from start to finish at the original designed film running speed. So, was I watching a comic — since I had total control? Of course not.
Roy — A traditional floppy comic book or comic strip in the United states is designed to be read left-to-right, top-to-bottom — general in one sitting. If it has pages, the pages are turned sequentially.
If one opts to read a comic in any other way, it is impossible to get the pacing and impact the artist and writer intended. So, while you think viewing a comic in any other manner than it was designed empowers you, it really doesn’t.
It’s like riding a roller coaster and self-controlling the car you are sitting in in a manner it was not designed for. The results simply won’t be the same.
The best comics are so engrossing after a while I’m not even aware of the reading and page turning process. That part becomes reflexive.
…(E) powerpoint slides that I print 3 to a page and distribute as a hand-out for the audience to follow along. In this case, my presentation isn’t a comic, but it seems like the hand-out is, according to your I’m-not-exactly-saying-this-is-a-definition-but-I’m-not-not-saying-it-is definition, at least if one or more of the slides has some non-textual element. (As I say, I’m not sure whether they all need some such element, on your account)
…and maybe (F) Choose any arbitrarily-long sequence of panels in a comic, e.g. two panels from a Kirby fight scene, or possibly even a single panel with picture and a speech balloon (depending, again, on how to interpret your (3)). Congratulations — you’ve got another comic i.e. on your account, any long-enough comic will itself be composed of smaller comics.
My own “definition”: comics are stuff that look like this (gestures towards a set of paradigm examples, e.g. Garfield, Prince Valiant, New Yorker cartoons, comic books). The resulting vagueness and socially constructed, contingently historical extensions/exclusions are a feature here, not a bug.
I think the narrative aspect is essential. A collage (or Jones’ PowerPoint slides) can be a meaningful agglomeration, but collages aren’t comic just ’cause Kirby liked them. I’m for a more inclusive definition based on formal qualities. If it uses a still image or images to convey a narrative, it’s a comic. That applies even to the Bayeaux Tapestry and the busted flowerpot example, even if the busted flowerpot and the guy with a concussion are portrayed in oils on canvas.
And Jones — of course comics are composed of smaller comics. That’s where collected editions come from.
Mumble mumble Wittgenstein language games family resemblances fuzzy clusters mumble mumble
I further pretentiously submit that my definition is similar to ancient atomist philosphy. You can chop up a comic into its component segments and the segments are still comics, until they no longer convey a narrative. Similarly, when you’ve cut iron into so small a piece that it no longer has the properties of iron, then it’s no longer iron, just stray subatomic particles.
Of course, you may have also converted some of that infinitesimal mass into energy and created a massive explosion. But, the atomists didn’t know about that, and it never happens when you take a pair of scissors to a comic, so my analogy collapses at that point.
Excellent work, Rob. Having now been provoked into looking up Ludwig Wittgenstein because of your allusion, I am better informed. I agree that his concept of overlapping, but not universal qualities within a category applies to comics as well as it does to games. I’m still sticking to my definition, though.
Sorry – I am traveling, and can’t be as responsive as I would like.
Jones: I think the two thumbprints would have to somehow be presented as a single unified work (which wouldn’t be the standard case in the sort of crime-lab scenario you envision). But if so, then I guess this would be a comic according to my account. Similar comments apply to the painting with the info card, and the film scholar showing two stills. In both cases I would say that usually this wouldn’t be a single work, so it isn’t a comic. The labelled graph bit is more worrisome, but I suspect anyone (except perhaps an institutionalist) is going to have the same problems with this case (basically, most accounts are going to fail to adequately distinguish single-panel cartoons with caption and graph with caption). But maybe that’s okay. A lot os XKCD comics seem to live right on this borderline.
Noah and R. Maheras: Well, I agree that the DVD/watching the film out of order case is worrisome. I am tempted to say that, in doing this, you have transformed a film into a comic (i.e. the same physical object is a film if viewed as intended, but can be a comic if viewed non-standardly). But I am only tempted, and am worried about how obviously silly this sounds (although you do have very different experiences of the work in the two cases, which is at least some mild evidence that you might be experiencing two distinct works – one intended by the artist, the other not).
Jones (again): I don’t think the powerpoint slides would be a comic, but that is because (again, at least in relatively standard cases) we wouldn’t look at the text involved, but only read it (i.e. we wouldn’t care too much about the particular font, visual impact of the text, etc., but would, for the most part only care about the content). Of course, if the images in the powerpoint print-out were purely pictorial then my account would entail that the result is a comic, but I am not sure that this is wrong! Also, I completely agree with John and think that comics are composed of smaller comics (although not every random collection of panels is necessarily a comic – again, there has to be some unification, so that we can meaningfully understand the collection as a single work.
John: I’ll just repeat my earlier worry about narrative. If comics must contain narratives, then most of the works in Andre Molotiu’s anthology aren’t comics. But they seem pretty clearly (at least, many of them) to be comics to me. More specifically, I agree that not every collage is a comic, but it seems like some collages might be. Hence the somewhat broader (and admittedly a little wishy-washy) aspect of the account in this regard.
Finally, I am just going to be a bit snarky about Wittgenstein. Ever since the publication of Philosophical Investigations, scholars have retreated to good old Ludwig’s comments about the undefinability of games any time they confront a concept whose borders are at all complicated and potentially indeterminate. Wittgenstein might be right about some concepts. But that doesn’t automatically mean he is right about all of them and every interesting, complex concept must be a case of family resemblance (concepts in most areas of mathematics, and some areas of science, probably aren’t just cases of family resemblance). Assuming this is the case is just lousy and lazy intellectually (I am not accusing anyone here of being lousy or lazy – I just think the larger trend of automatically embracing Wittgenstein’s ideas in this sort of case, instead of doing the hard work of seeing whether there might be a precise, clear delineation of the concept that actually gets it right, is just methodologically bad.
Oh, and R Maheras: I think your comments about mainstream western comics and the way we are meant to read them, you come close to contradicting your earlier comment. If there is a “right” way to read (western) comics, then it would seem to follow that artists don’t have that much control, since they can’t (or at least shouldn’t) influence you in ways that contradict the way in which the format (or genre, or whatever) ought to be read generally. At any rate, I think that a lot of comic scholars would disagree with you (Groensteen leaps immediately to mind). In addition, there are clever comics creators who work with this sort of freedom in mind (e.g. the “visible thoughts” episode towards the end of Morrison’s The Filth, as does the front-to-back symmetry of Watchmen issue #5).
And apologies to Andrei Molotiu for misspelling his name!
Roy, I’ve never “read” Molotiu’s work, but the stuff I just looked up might best be described as “visual poetry.” I’ll grant that there should probably be room for his work. It’s just hard to draw the line between Abstract Comics and any other work of abstract visual art.
Hi Roy,
I appreciate your interest in defining comics in part by “how” we read and interact with these texts. I’ve thrown around my own definition of this type in various conference talks: “COMICS ARE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TEXTUAL READING HABITS ARE ACTIVATED IN A VISUAL (IMAGE-CENTERED) FIELD.”
[Please feel free, everyone, to let this go viral.]
But I also tend to think that all our definitions — yours, mine, institutional, genre- or reader-based, Wittgensteinian, deflationary — are fundamentally FORMAL in the the end.
Your definition and mine, for example, are still trying to capture something about sequence — the juxtaposition of images to be read in a certain order. People who try to formulate definitions based on what either general users of the term or experts in the field think, they still always seem to come down to aspects of the medium that can be described formally. Wittgensteinian “family resemblances” — at least when it comes to this term, comics — seem to resemble each other in formal features. Even people who want to say that comics didn’t exist until there was an institutional matrix for the medium ultimately have to develop new terms to talk about what links post-institutional comics from pre-institutional proto-comics, and those inter- and supra-institutional forms of analysis tend to be formal.
Of course, it didn’t have to be this way. But it is. Or rather, I’ve yet to see that any other definition of comics has any level of usage, pull, institutional support, or analytic heft as formalism. And definitions that try to account for other aspects, for interactive practices, for unavoidable vagueness, and for historical contingency still seem to be tacking their new ideas onto the old formalist structure.
Perhaps, in this case (for now), there is no “outside” or “after” formalism. And that’s okay.
Peter
Peter, I did a non-formal definition a while back; “Comics are those things which are accepted as comics.”
I think that’s actually the definition most people use for most practical purposes, whether scholars, creators, or consumers. People treat comics covers as comics; they treat single panels without text as comics; they don’t treat powerpoint presentations as comics — but they sometimes (or actually, quite often) treat superhero movies as comics.
Yep, I remember, Noah. But I continue to think (as I did then) that this deflationary approach works just fine until you start asking the obvious next question: “Well, what are those things that are accepted as comics, and what makes them accepted?” And right now it is a contingent fact that for most people, expert and non-expert, the central criteria of acceptance are formal.
(I know you’ve suggested that people might call superhero movies comics, but I’ve never met those people.)
Of course there’s another reason for taking a deflationary approach to this or any definition, and that’s simply to *stop* the endless and pointless arguing about such definitions. In that sense, deflation-ism is a potentially beneficial non-starter, imploring us to just get over the pseudo-problem. (“Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white, right?)
Nonetheless, when it comes to the actual practices and preferences of critics and readers — and if you take what “people accept” seriously, or at least serious enough to talk about why they accept X and not Y — right now, there is no avoiding form, even when you never mention it.
Maybe I was too dismissive on the “superhero movies are comics” hypothesis. It really is an empirical question that goes beyond my experience. Can you link me to a few writers who “treat superhero movies as comics”?
(And that “treatment,” I think, should somehow go beyond treating the films and the books as equally contemptible or cool. Ideally, it would make me feel that if I asked the writer, “Is AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON a comic,” they’d probably answer Yes.)
Peter, I’ve had it happen on comments threads. Generally the argument goes:
“Me: Comics aren’t very popular.
Interlocutor: Oh, duh, right; nobody watched the Avengers, you idiot. Sure.
Me: But…the Avengers film isn’t a comic.”
But of course, if folks think the Avengers film is a comic, then it is a comic, I guess. Those films are often called comic-book movies, right? And superhero films and television shows are constantly covered by “comics” sites, which obviously think the Avengers is more of a comic than Krazy Kat, if you go by the amount of coverage.
So…I’d say those superhero films are considered comics institutionally and often rhetorically, in many situations. though of course there are other communities which perhaps look at comics from different perspectives.
“scholars have retreated to good old Ludwig’s comments about the undefinability of games any time they confront a concept whose borders are at all complicated and potentially indeterminate […] Assuming this is the case is just lousy and lazy intellectually”
Well, somebody might think there’s enough empirical evidence to support the prototype theory of concepts that you can just assume all concepts are [or include] prototypes (except for stipulative and massively theoretical concepts — i.e. in maths and science). I am one such somebody. And Rosch’s prototype theory was explicitly influenced/based on Wittgenstein.
“basically, most accounts are going to fail to adequately distinguish single-panel cartoons with caption and graph with caption”
Yeah, I think this is right (except for an appropriately constructed prototype or exemplar theory). You either go too narrow and deny that single images are comics (like McCloud), or too broad (like your definition) and include labelled graphs and pictures.
Anyhoo, I’ll push further on the powerpoint. Suppose I’m teaching a class on public speaking, and Smith is one of my students. I assign an exercise in which students have to make some powerpoint slides, and I will be assessing not so much what is said, but how it’s said. So when Smith gives me her assignment, I am (inter alia) looking at how clearly the slides read, one aspect of which is how the text looks — e.g. is the font (size, shape, colour) legible and effective? Congratulations, Smith, you’ve just made a comic — at least it seems like her assignment satisfies (1) – (3) (yes, she intends for it to be “read” that way). So has Smith’s brother, who’s a graphic designer and has designed the front cover of a textbook, as has Smith’s cousin, who works in public health and has designed a catchy poster about STIs.
[As an aside, this — “we wouldn’t look at the text involved, but only read it (i.e. we wouldn’t care too much about the particular font, visual impact of the text, etc., but would, for the most part only care about the content)” — seems like cheating. Most captioned single-panel gag cartoons would fail this test]
“I would say that usually this wouldn’t be a single work” (a propos the gallery display). This too seems like cheating — what are the formal constraints for something to be considered a single work? Given your day job, I’m pretty sure you have an account of this, but prima facie it looks like you’ve just moved the bump under the carpet. In any case, let’s just take an example where it’s uncontroversially intended as a single work — the artist writes her own sign and intends it to be read in conjunction with her painting.
Actually, let’s make it worse — instead of a painting, it’s a sculpture.
Or, how about this — some Catholic monks build a church. At the front they have a sculpture of Jesus, and at the back the BVM. The church is in some sense a single work and meaningful agglomeration, and would seem to satify your (1), (2) and (3).
Or: suppose I’m renovating my bathroom (this is true). We’ve chosen a nice tile and some fancy pants taps, sinks, vanity…these parts of the bathroom aren’t chosen in isolation; they’re chosen to suitably match and offset one another. Again, in one sense, this looks it satisfies your conditions. Now, I myself like comics, but my wife would be surprised to learn that we’ve just made one.
Hmm, and the architect’s blueprints seem to satisfy your conditions too.
So, I just spoke to Smith and learned more about her family.
Smith’s father works at the DMV, making drivers licenses.
Smith’s sister designs polo shirts for Ben Sherman; she just designed one with charteuse and ecru stripes, and the Sherman logo on the left of the chest.
Smith’s mother prints money for the mint.
Smith’s grandfather is the black sheep of the family — she makes fake ID for people, usually a combination of both fake passport and fake drivers licenses.
Smith’s grandmother is the other black sheep — she counterfeits $20 bills.
…forget about the Kuberts, and Crumbs, Smith’s is the most comicsy family of all time.
A few quick follow-ups:
Noah: One of the main reasons that I don’t like the deflationary account is that it doesn’t allow for even the possibility of widespread mistake – for example, it can’t be the case that something is a comic, but that it takes most of us a long time to realize this, perhaps mis-categorizing it as falling into another category. Even more troubling is that, on this sort of deflationary account, an object could be a comic at one time and not a comic at another time without changing in the slightest (all that is required is that our attitudes towards its status as a comic change). If I brainwash everyone so that they no longer believe Amazing Spider-man #1 is a comic, does it really cease to be a comics?
Peter: Interesting that your definition reads as almost an exact evil twin of mine. On yours, we treat images the way we ‘normally’ treat text, whereas on mine we treat the text the way we ‘normally’ treat images (these are of course only rough glosses).
Jones: First off, with respect to prototype theory – fair enough. But objecting to this sort of definition because you buy into a particular, well-developed scientific theory of concept formation and application is different from just invoking the spiritual mantra “Ludwig” and then rejecting the definitional project wholesale. Prototype theory is influenced and inspired by the Philosophical Investigations, sure, but it is a well-developed theory in cognitive psychology. In short, my point is this: I am much more sympathetic to objections that proceed along the lines of:
“Hey, look at this cool psychology and linguistics I have to back up my point”
(i.e. you), as opposed to objections along the lines of:
“But L. Wittgenstein says [fill in obscure, probably ambiguous, quote]. Wittgenstein? Oh, you know – that guy who forgot how to actually argue halfway through his career and instead relied on the fact that, due to his fame, his infamous strangeness, and his cult-like following, people would automatically attribute genius to his odd little, for the most part argument-and-evidence-free aphorisms.”
(Many of my colleagues and students look at me like an alien when I say things like this about the later Wittgenstein. It doesn’t mean I am not right.)
Of course, prototype theory isn’t the only view of concepts on the market. And I am not sure I think that all, or even most, concepts work this way (or according to other similar models, such as exemplar accounts and the like). But yeah, if you like this sort of accounts of concepts generally, you aren’t going to like my definition (or any definition formulated in terms of precise necessary and sufficient conditions in general)
I am not going to have time tonight to respond to all of your proposed counterexamples (many of which are brilliant, and will keep me thinking for a long time – see, I was right about the value of exploring even flawed definitions!) I think that the definition could probably survive most of your supposed counterexamples if it could be fleshed out in two ways:
(1) The sense of “looking at” at issue is the sort of perception involved when we examine and appreciate visual artworks qua visual artworks (so, for example, we do look at all the different elements in your bathroom, and we are probably looking at them in part in virtue of their visual aesthetic qualities, but it is not obvious that (in normal cases) we are looking at them in quite the same way as we look at paintings when we are appreciating them in the way appropriate for paintings.
(2) Along similar lines, we would need explain how, in comics, we are not just looking at (in addition to reading) the text (if text is present), or other non-pictorial parts (if such are present), but are instead looking at them in a very special way (that is, in the same way that we typically look at things like paintings, drawings, and the like). I think fleshing things out in this manner would handle most of the work done by the Smith family.
The problem, of course, is that I don’t have exact accounts of what, exactly, (1) and (2) amount to. I don’t know exactly what the relevant sort of looking is (e.g. what exactly we are ‘looking for’ when doing the relevant sort of looking). So I am going to have to think about this a bit more.
hmmm, I suspect that any fleshing out of the special kind of “looking” involved is going to rule out certain kinds of things we currently take to be comics — most likely single panels, with or without text. (Single fucking panels, man, no wonder McCloud just rules them out by fiat.) Or else it’s going to rule in various Smithian products. But any definition of anything is going to lead to some bullet-biting, I suppose…
Another approach might be to view comics as a natural kind, whose nature is determined by psychological facts about how they are constructed and read. Something like what Neil Cohn thinks about comics having their own distinctive syntax or whatever — if that were right, then maybe you could pick out a natural psychological/quasi-linguistic kind as “comics”, and that would allow for the possibility of widespread error in categorization (“it turns out that such and such isn’t actually a comic, even though we always thought it was”).
In general, though, the fact that deflationary (and, for that matter, psychologistic) accounts don’t allow for radical error — I think their proponents would see that as a feature, not a bug. The idea that we could be convinced that we were wrong all this time about (say) Garfield or Action Comics #1, and that it wasn’t actually a comic — seems faintly preposterous. [“It says “comics” in the damn title!” thumps fist on table]. I’m not at all a fan of Canberra-plan-type moves, but you could argue that there’d have to be a very large conceptual shift for us to accept such a claim, large enough that you must have “changed the subject”.
My exclusion of Molotiu’s work might be starting to sound more reasonable.
I think we’re writing a description, not a definition. An airplane is a powered, fixed-wing, heavier-than-air flying craft. The definition doesn’t include many other facts about airplanes, like their general dependence on fossil-fuel burning engines, their usual greater speed than ground or sea transport, or the incredible sociological and economic effects of shortening the travel time between vastly different parts of the world. These things are all true, but they’re not defining features. I think features like treating text as images and images as text, or even the capability to “read” a page of panels as a single unit are in a similar category.
Side issue regarding those frustrating single panels: Is Picasso’s Guernica a comic, or any of de Goya’s paintings about the Spanish resistance against Napoleon? They seem a little like single-panel comics to me.
Okay, the italics were supposed to stop with Guernica. I finally figured out how to turn them on on my ancient iPhone, but apparently not how to turn them off.
“for example, it can’t be the case that something is a comic, but that it takes most of us a long time to realize this, perhaps mis-categorizing it as falling into another category. “Even more troubling is that, on this sort of deflationary account, an object could be a comic at one time and not a comic at another time without changing in the slightest (all that is required is that our attitudes towards its status as a comic change). If I brainwash everyone so that they no longer believe Amazing Spider-man #1 is a comic, does it really cease to be a comics?”
Why is this troubling? I honestly don’t understand why it would be. There’s no moral principle at stake; who suffers if Action comics #1 gets recategorized as not comics at some point in the distant future? We’re talking about aesthetic categories; it’s just ways in which people group stuff. Frankenstein wasn’t a sci-fi book initially; now the genre coalesced and it is. If 300 years from now sci-fi has been replaced by (say) speculative fiction, Frankenstein will be speculative fiction. I just don’t see why that’s illogical, or upsetting in any way.
Therefore, because Noah says recategorization of known works is perfectly acceptable, I declare that de Goya’s Second of May 1808 is now a comic.
Still a big “no” on the Avengers movie, however.
“The idea that we could be convinced that we were wrong all this time about (say) Garfield or Action Comics #1, and that it wasn’t actually a comic — seems faintly preposterous. ”
Doesn’t seem that crazy to me. Imagine if you will a world in which comics’ market share shrinks to virtually nothing, and people end up basically reading all comics online or through digital distribution. People also start distributing motion comics or some such through the same channels. A very successful motion comic/digital comic hybrid gets distributed and advertised as a mocom. New readers start to refer to anything in a similar format as a mocom. Action Comics #1 (now mostly read digitally) could easily get reclassified among some communities.
Noah, Fair point about Frankenstein being reclassified over time, but… hasn’t it generally been considered a novel both before and after categorization as sf? I’d say genre and medium or form are different things which you’re mixing up a bit.
Although I suppose there are whole posts about that very thing on HU so…
But in fact we don’t typically say that Duchamp’s Fountain wasn’t a work of art when first exhibited, but then became one. Rather, we politely ridicule the conservative critics and cognoscenti of the time who denied that it was art. And I think we would still do so if every single person on earth other than Duchamp had denied that it was art in 1917, but later came to recognize its status as art.
True, I guess. Although at least one person called it art from the beginning.
And rather than the hypothetical example of Action Comics 1 as something redefined as not comics, it might have been better to cite Maus. Which in some quarters actually has been redefined as not comics,right?
Those kind of value judgements about art – or rather, Art – strike me as something different again, but I guess it could be argued its a particular genre.
When is a comic not a comic? When its(ugh)a graphic novel…
Sean; yes I wrote a post arguing the medium/genre distinction isn’t really as hard and fast as folks like to think it is. I presume the Tale of Genji wouldn’t have been thought of as a novel when it first appeared; it’s been retrospectively claimed as the origin, but of course it would have been categorized differently at the time.
Roy: “we don’t typically say that Duchamp’s Fountain wasn’t a work of art when first exhibited, but then became one.”
Who is the “we” there?
Duchamp’s kind of an odd example, because he was deliberately fucking with definitions of art; you laugh at people who didn’t know that Duchamp’s art was art because Duchamp’s art is designed to make fun of those people. But other category alterations don’t necessarily have to come with the same avante garde burden of anxiety, ridicule, and knowingness. No one thinks folks were idiots for not recognizing Frankenstein as sci-fi, for example.
Some people still deny that Duchamp is art, of course. Conceptual art remains quite controversial (not least with comics artists.) Maybe the joke’s on the comics artists who don’t know art when they see it. Or maybe the point is it is only art when you see it.
All this micro-ontology is giving me eye-strain!
The need for, and scope of, a definition is conditioned by the utterance in which the term to be defined is embedded, and the context in which that utterance is made.
The sense of ‘comic’ in “Grab all the comics from that room,” differs from its sense in “Go to the shops and bring back a comic,” and again from “We’re making a comic.”
On the subject of Action Comics #1 or Amazing SpiderMan #1 being redefined as not-comics:
From at least as far back as the 1890s the term ‘comic’ has been in use to refer to a group (or family) of publications. At first they were heavily illustrated, weekly periodicals which contained some sequential, pictorial narratives but also many pages dominated by (humourous) text. Nowadays, only people over a certain age and from certain cultural backgrounds still refer to these publications as comics. Even the sequentially ordered cartoon stories are considered contentious cases by many, due to the frequent (in the early days) appearance of story elements that are exclusively referred to in the text portion of the presentation and not pictured. They used to be called ‘comics’, in mainstream discourse, in an Anglophone culture, for several decades – and now they aren’t, except within specialised historical practise.
But, I think if you had an issue of Illustrated Chips on the table and asked a companion to pass you a comic, they could hand over that publication without error.
Typography:
Prose might be an artform that isn’t constituted by visual effect, but book-design isn’t. Comics and graphic design synthesise extant technical practises and modes of reception – this is in correlation with their modernity.
(Personally I consider comics to be something like graphic-design meets poetry. Hence I will now switch to talking about poetry…)
Poetry has been kept fecund by looseness of technical/formal definition. The developement of Concrete and Visual Poetry encourages us to de-reify(?) the concept of poetry, which, having deeply inhaled metaphor’s dislocation, aspires to synaesthesia.
Lost my train of thought and forgot some other counterpoints. So, back to basics:
A definition is a kind of statement that depends on an object. The relationship between those two things is a function of the need for clarity about classification of objects. The quality and degree of that need is dependant on the nature and purpose of the discourse within which the object is being spoken of.
I don’t know why anyone would need to exclude an object from being classified as a comic. If someone writes a book/essay/whatever about ‘comics’ or some aspect thereof, it’s up to them to provide a working definition which operates within that work. They shouldn’t be obliged to carry that definition around like a ball and chain, it’s just there to aid and focus the interpretation of the specific writing/utterance which intentionally complies with that particular definition. That’s why you have a foreword.
It’s all just usage, maan – proscription is a mug’s game.
I contend that cartooning is the art of capturing the essence of things, therefore the definition of comics should start with its essence (based on history, aesthetics, materiality and mediality): comics are handmade narrative graphics sequenced on a page for print.
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