Tag Archives: Dyspeptic Ouroborus

Comics Criticism: Even comics critics don’t care about it

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(or everyone has tunnel vision except me; or in the land of the blind, everyone is blind)

 

 

wally wood galaxy 1959

[Allegory of Comics Criticism by Wallace Allan Wood]

 

TCJ.com recently published an exchange between Frank Santoro and Sean T. Collins concerning the state of comics criticism (c. 2013).

In his prologue, Santoro expresses concern about the neglect of a whole new generation of cartoonists now as much wedded to the world of the internet as to paper.

“… the small subculture of engaged comics reviewers is getting older, myself included. I really hope that members of the younger generation will start writing about each other. I’m seeing some hints of it here and there, but not many organized voices…The “pap pap” demographic of comics is so insular – which is fine – but out on the circuit younger makers are telling me that they never read this site, or any websites related to comics at all. There’s really not much for them in most comics sites that reflects their tastes or their concerns.”

Some questions should spring to mind immediately upon reading this. Why is it of special concern, for example, that younger makers of comics are not reading TCJ.com or any website related to comics at all? Are they representative of the alternative comics readership as a whole? Or are they simply the kind of people Santoro would prefer read TCJ.com and comics criticism?

Comics has a long history of cartoonists not engaging with criticism and critics at all; they for obvious reasons preferring the company and conversation of their “own kind.” No doubt long time comic aficionados will begin pointing to the classic comic histories or the critical works of Seth, Chris Ware, Scott McCloud, Art Spiegelman et al. It should be pointed out, however, that the very idea of a negative critique is anathema to this school of criticism (unless it is directed at blind intransigent critics). It is adulation and evangelism which is required. Such is the rarity of this engagement that one might say that the arrival of a celebrated cartoonist into the unhallowed halls of comics criticism is, more often than not, greeted with a joyousness befitting the arrival of the Queen of Sheba (the royal metaphor here being no accident of choice).

The attitude of young comics makers conforms to this pattern. They are merely ape-ing the behavior of their forebears. What was once good for the artists of Fort Thunder (and its adherents)—namely steadfast, earnest positive promulgation—is now good for the new web-based alternatives. Collins returns to these concerns towards the close of the dialogue:

“The other big problem, maybe the biggest, and certainly the one that’s worried me the most and I think inspired my whole end of this discussion with you, is that there’s an entire generation of young artcomix makers whose work just isn’t being reviewed at all. …An entire generation, an entire movement, of altcomix creators who are doing vital, defiant, personal work is badly undeserved by criticism, and that will have a huge effect on both comics and comics criticism moving forward.” [emphasis mine]

This might certainly be of concern for readers (and critics) with a long term interest in sustaining the comics grassroots. It might in fact be seen as the duty of committed blog aggregators (with a compliant readership) to push links to these sites on a more frequent basis and for publishers to consider the best of these for print publication and more sustainable retailing. Comics critics who see themselves as evangelists and want to sideline as marketing agents for the small press may also choose to delve into this. Indeed, the vast majority of comics reviews do in fact fall into the category of marketing. There is no reason why these hats cannot be put on or taken off at will. There are even college courses in marketing for those so inclined. One might even consider being reborn as Peter Laird (of the Xeric Foundation) or Kevin Eastman (of Tundra).

But all this is of secondary importance to the state of comics criticism.  Last time I checked, The Comics Journal was supposed to be the  magazine of news and criticism, not the Journal of Comics Marketing.  Collins’ concern that the artists of the Happiness anthologies are not being reviewed suggests that he is concerned that they are not being covered positively and disseminated widely—that they are not being sold to a whole generation of readers. This would appear to be the primary purpose of comics criticism in Collins’ view.

I beg to differ. If you want to sell things, then sell them—send them to famous cartoonists, influential publishers, and comics critics who are interested in selling things.  One influential Tweet by a comics celebrity will do more good than a 3000-word review of the highest quality produced by a nobody. And for god’s sake, don’t send your comics to critics who want to criticize them. Find someone who cares more about how many copies you sell than about the quality of your work. If we could only separate these comics critics from comics marketers, comics criticism might be in a more healthy state.

Comics must be the only art form where the most prominent commentators in the field (who shall remain nameless) regularly dismiss or deprioritize discussions of the art form they are engaging in. The art form I am referring to is not comics but criticism. Santoro’s comment that he “noticed that [he] wasn’t taking the time to read long reviews or blog posts” (in the last few years) is not a new phenomenon but purely a symptom of this modern age—an age of endless distractions and  diminishing attentions spans. The idea that someone might take a copy of The Comics Journal on a long plane flight as reading material (as Tucker Stone has admitted to doing at least once) could be taken as a sign of mental illness or at least an eccentric attitude towards comics.

Comics criticism doesn’t actually need more people who are interested in comics (that is a given considering the insular nature of the hobby); what it needs is people who are interested in criticism.  Collins’ main concern—that the comics he likes aren’t being reviewed—is understandable but should be of little concern to comics criticism per se.

*     *     *

Santoro and Collins began their discussion with much broader concerns, starting with the number of comics reviews being published of late. This question of quantity is first directed at Collins who answers:

“Less. Certainly less as far as alternative/art/literary/underground comics go. It seems as though there’s as much of a profusion of reviews of superhero comics as ever.”

Any proclamations on this topic are guaranteed to be anecdotal and unscientific but my impression is that there has not been a drop in the quantity of long form criticism concerning non-superhero related comics since I started monitoring the field more closely. Santoro suggests that there was an apparent golden age from 2008-2009 “when 1000-word reviews were common.” No doubt quality is always preferable to quantity but a 1000-words can hardly be considered the high water mark of long form criticism. Perhaps it is the bare minimum Santoro demands but 1000-words often suggests:

(1) “I don’t have enough space or money to pay you for more”, OR
(2) “I don’t want to waste my brain cells on this so I’m going to vomit out whatever is on the tip of my tongue”.

600 words for opinion and short analysis (at best), 300 words for the gloss and information, and 100 words for padding and style don’t often add up to much in terms of essential reading for the informed except in rare circumstances. A little more leeway might be found in instances where the work has been thoroughly assimilated by the comics community and a tighter focus brought to bear on the subject matter. 1000-words is of course the “industry standard” for long form criticism and not something to be especially proud of. As a purveyor of this kind of material, I should know. The call for 500-word reviews (to increase coverage) during the closing years of the print Journal certainly heralded the arrival of poorly substantiated opinion as opposed to analysis. A publisher’s synopsis and an Amazon.com comment would have worked just as well in this instance.

The short form approving review or “call to purchase” is tailor-made for the comics critical community, a grouping which is largely unpaid and interested primarily in fellowship—the generation of comments and making friends on Facebook and Twitter. Collins points to this early in the exchange where he writes:

“It’s exceedingly easy to type up your strongest single impression of a new work and post it to Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr, and receive feedback almost immediately. And since your strongest single impression could be nothing more complex than “This is SO GOOD, you guys,” and the feedback can just be a like or a fav or a reblog or a retweet or a share, it’s tough to build up a thoroughgoing interrogation of a comic. The energy is diffused.”

The motivations for writing comics criticism are many and this is but one possibility. Some might do it for pocket change while others might participate in the interest of generating a conversation by which process they might attain enlightenment or at least a modicum of self-improvement. If one desires a large readership and a huge reception on Twitter, then an article on a superhero comic would increase the probability of this (preferably a controversial one).  To expect a substantial response when writing a review of an alternative comic with a readership in the low thousands (or hundreds) at best would be to deny reality. At the risk of stating the obvious, people are interested in what they’re interested in. They are unlikely to read, comment on, or even click on a link to an article about a comic or subject of which they know nothing about. In fact, the best way for a comics critic to get an audience is to not write about comics at all—easily one of the least popular art forms extant today.

The problems associated with writing good, well researched long form comics criticism mirror those found in the creation of alternative comics with a marginal readership. The present day solution to these problems is echoed in both endeavors. If one desires quality criticism of the alternatives in the field then an altogether different attitude (and critic) is required. This is the kind of critic who primarily writes for herself or at least because of some deep inner need (pompously metaphysical as this may sound). It is a simple equation. You write criticism because you have something to say, because you feel compelled to write about it, and because you want to do the best job you can (as would any artisan). The need for an audience (and this is an ever present gnawing desire) must come only after this.  The available readership for comics criticism is limited by the popularity of the form and the attractions of the topic or comic being written about; much less so the quality of the criticism.

An actual increase in the volume of comics criticism is not necessarily desirable or even achievable considering the state of the industry and art form. A different lesson presents itself if one considers the titans of comics. Kirby’s oeuvre, for instance, would have been substantially enhanced had he the luxury to draw and write less and not more comics. In the same vein, I would much prefer it if unusually prolific critics would write substantially less but longer and more considered reviews. Which makes Collins’ point later in the exchange appear somewhat wrongheaded:

“My point, ultimately, is that without a sufficient volume of reviews being written, you’re not going to see needed critiques — particularly since most people are writing for little or no money, and most humans like enjoying themselves if they’re not getting paid, and it’s generally easier to enjoy yourself if you’re thinking about something you like instead of something you don’t.”

It is not critical volume which is required but concentrated quality. The idea of twenty 500-word articles on Alternative Comics X does not please my mind in the least and would certainly not be an advancement over just one good long form article on the same comic.

Monitoring the comics critical scene is an endless drudge considering how often blog aggregators point me to worthless plot synopses and marketing copy masquerading as reviews. Even worse is how little effort they spend differentiating between this excrement and the truly worthy articles which generally get lost in the shuffle. In any case, the state of coverage is considerably better than was the case back in the 80s and 90s when The Comics Journal (the print version) was virtually the only game in town when it came to non-superhero related material. Not being reviewed in the Journal (for good or ill) in those days was tantamount to not getting reviewed at all. Since then, the state of comics criticism has been enriched by voices emerging from the fields of academia; a not surprising new source considering this grouping’s dedication to thinking, reading, and writing about things. A number of these writers emerged from fandom and it is high time fandom looked beyond its own narrow shores  to the wider world of critical writing if only in the interest of improving itself.

*     *     *

Side note:

Noah commented twice on the article at TCJ.com; I understand with some irritation that the site you are reading was left out of the conversation when it turned to subjects such as long form comics criticism and analysis, extended comments sections on subjects other than superheroes, female writers, and coverage of non-superhero related material.

He should not be surprised or overly concerned. To put it bluntly, The Hooded Utilitarian is a pariah site as far as the traditional comics community is concerned—reviled primarily because of its owner and a lack of correct communal spirit. Others might add lies, bad faith, and a lack of “professionalism” to the mix. To expect consideration from a school of comics criticism which you have rejected is perhaps asking far too much. Like a lump of shit, the only instance in which they might care to notice this site is if they stepped on it accidentally.

HU is not exceptional in its pariah status. The manga community is yet another example of a group of “comics untouchables”, a community with women writers and readers in far greater abundance than on HU. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that, for all intents and purposes, women are the Dalits of comics, alienated by virtue of the types of conversations which engage the longstanding comics critical community of males. It might be that in their view, it is the men who helm the traditional comics conversation who are to be avoided. They also don’t need anyone to fight their battles for them (see comments by Peggy Burns, Sarah Horrocks, and Leah at the original article) .

 

Film to Comics: Lessons from Daniel Clowes’ Justin M. Damiano

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Justin M. Damiano was first published to limited notice in The Book of Other People (ed. Zadie Smith; full comic at link) in 2007. Its existence was jogged back into my memory by James Romberger’s recent review of The Daniel Clowes Reader where he calls it:

“…a classic that needs to be read by anyone who writes criticism on the internet.”

This wasn’t the way I remembered the story and I read it again to see if I had been blinded to its treasures on my first read through.

A number of critics have taken Justin Damiano to their bosoms, elevating the specific into a judgement of the whole or at least a comment on a significant number of online critics. At The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw suggests that:

“…mature, contemporary Damiano isn’t a cynic or a loser: he has transferred his idealism from the world of relationships to that of the cinema, and being an online critic, answerable only to himself, he is perhaps freer to express this pure, unapologetic idealism…Is Justin a sad sack for believing that this transcendence is to be found in the cinema rather than human relationships? Maybe – but not necessarily, and it isn’t clear that Clowes is inviting us to assume this.”

Another critic, Brian Warmoth, opines that:

“Clowes’ ability to distill the bitter side of humanity in menial activities and everyday labor or interests is extremely keen…It’s also about the rifts between critics and artists that can sometimes encompass shared ground.”

Part of this boils down to a presumption of antagonism—that artists are supposed to have a very low opinion of critics and criticism in general. It is easy to slip into this diagnosis unless one looks closely at the details of Clowes’ exposition, most of which holds very little water and specificity for critics. To suggest that Clowes was presenting a critique of critics in general here would be to do him a disservice and may even imply that he is a person of shallow intellect. Naturally the title of the anthology begs the question, “What other people?” It might be that the ultimate “other” for an artist is not his audience but his critics, but this wouldn’t be that much of a leap of the imagination for Clowes who has engaged in scathing criticism for years in the pages of his comics. Clowes isn’t so much an artist chastising critics but a practicing critic contemplating his own art.

Taking James’ premise as true, however, what exactly are the lessons we (as online critics, silent or otherwise) are supposed to glean from Justin M. Damiano?

Justin 00

(1)  Critics have a overweening sense of self-worth.

Translation for comics-kind: A comics critic is a (part time) warrior, and each of us on the battlefield have the means to glorify or destroy (whether a comic, a career, or an entire philosophy) by influencing perception in ways that, if heartfelt and truthful, can have far reaching repercussions.

Justin 01

This sounds insightful (and damning) until you start replacing the word “critic” with other words like, “artist”, “cartoonist”, “director”, “journalist”, “politician”, and “pop star”. Basically anybody with access to the wider media through talent, money, or both. In this day and age, this would mean a television program, a newspaper, a studio, and, yes, a popular blog. There is very little doubt though that the comics critic is the dung beetle of this august list of movers and shakers.

(2)  Critics enjoy toilet humor (or perhaps playful metaphors).

Justin 00a

Well, they sort of do, and they’ve also shown some fondness for bidets apparently. A clear reference to Duchamp and his porcelain urinal but also a self-referential finger pointed at Clowes himself—a very arch critic in many stories in Eightball and a florid user of metaphor.

(3)  Critics are self-absorbed and insular.

Justin 02

“He so perfectly gets how we’re really all like these aliens who can never have any meaningful contact with each other because we’re all so caught up in our own little self-made realities, you know?”

There’s an interplay between panels 2 and 3 on this page.  The blonde girl, Marion, is the target of Justin’s irritable internal musings:

“Most critics will give any movie three and a half stars if it flatters their self-image…Have you noticed that most critics usually disagree completely with the public? That should tell you a lot about critics.” [emphasis mine]

That latter point is quite contrary to experience as a simple survey of the top 5 movies of the last two years will attest:

Top 5 movies by domestic gross 2013 with Rotten Tomatoes (RT) score
Iron Man 3 (RT 78%)
Despicable Me 2 (RT 76%)
Man of Steel (RT 56%)
Monsters University (RT 78%)
Fast and Furious 6 (RT 69%)

Top 5 movies by domestic gross 2012

Marvel’s The Avengers (RT 92%)
The Dark Knight Rises (RT 87%)
The Hunger Games (RT 84%)
Skyfall (RT 92%)
The Hobbit (RT 65%)

Of course Clowes doesn’t mean any old critic. He means critics like Justin M. Damiano who is shown throughout this page in an act of self-condemnation, hurling stones at others while he sits in his own ivory tower of arrogance and recalcitrant elitism—the stuck-up loner with delusions of grandeur; the keyboard warrior of  “modern alternative film criticism.” For all intents and purposes, this would include well over 50% of all comics critics.

But what exactly does “flatters their self-image” mean? One presumes that it means that critics tend to prefer movies which align with their own vision and experience of existence. Damiano suggests that critics should instead acquire a taste for other aspects of humanity as presented on film—those which run counter to their own beliefs. It should be stressed that we are specifically talking about “taste” and not action here, for Damiano is never shown acting on his preferences in art. Thus a critic with Randian principles should be able to develop empathy for the works of Vittorio De Sica. Similarly, a critic who abhors violence and misogyny should be able to appreciate and enjoy glorifications of the same. Since Marion is portrayed as a typical online critic, some might see this a proposition put forward by Clowes but this may not be the case. If Damiano is seen as a negative indicator (in some instances), it could also be taken as an admonishment of the critical community as a whole.

Marion’s comment that the film depicts human as “aliens who can never have any meaningful contact with each other” proves to be Damiano’s own “defect”—the very reason why he prefers “escapism” in film. The cinema becomes a brothel of whispered dreams and vicarious experience, a panacea for his lack of human contact. This explains his boredom when faced with Godard’s Le Mepris (a film about estrangement), a movie which probably mirrors all too accurately his own life. This isn’t so much Clowes needling critics so much as Clowes poking fun at himself, for his comics have consistently portrayed “sordid humanity” and immorality.

(4)  Critics are mercurial and careless – “Good I hope it fails.”

But are they significantly more so compared to the general public?

(5)  They don’t suffer fools gladly – “Well watch it again!”

Justin 03

(6)  They are frequently jealous of access.

See point 4.

(7)  “Every critic, even the most most mainstream hack, thinks of himself as a “rebel.” But in a culture of self-indulgent experimentalist navel-gazing, a real rebel believes in truly subversive ideas like “escapism” and “universality.” 

Justin 04

This isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. Damiano suggests that every critic considers himself a “rebel,” which would make him a rebel himself. Rather than promoting “bidet” art, Justin has taken his beliefs one step further and is rebelling against rebellion—championing “escapism” and “universality.” In other words, the act of criticism is seen here not so much as an act of connoisseurship but a process of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement which has little relation to “taste” or the object beheld.

At this point, alternative comics criticism and film criticism diverge, at least in the American sphere. The gradual migration of superhero fans into alternative comics has led to a renewed interest in objects of times past and the assimilation of tropes and techniques associated with superhero comics and other forms of commercial art. Further, this might be an area where comics have a leg-up according to Justin Damiano’s injunction. The 5 nominees for Best Continuing Series at the 2013 Will Eisner Awards were Fatale, Hawkeye, The Manhattan Projects, Prophet, and Saga—all firmly lodged in the realm of  of “escapism.”

 

(8)  Criticism is autobiographical and self-revelatory.

Justin 06

 

“I remembered how much Ellen and I love The Devil’s Rowboat…and how desperately I wanted to impress her with that article.”

In the first panel of this page, Damiano’s thoughts completely obscure the words of the director who bears a vague resemblance to a balding Clowes (well, it could also be Gary Groth).  One might say that his own thoughts take precedence over the ideas of the director being interviewed; a point further emphasized by the revelation that a favorite scene of his from an earlier film of that director was quite unintentional (the result of a distributor cut).

This seems like a knock on critics but it actually suggests that criticism is as much an act of creativity as the production of a film or comic—a metatextual comment on the object being read. The real mark of bad criticism in my view is “objective” synopsis. I wouldn’t read criticism if it all read as if it was produced by a machine (or a marketing agent).

 

(9)  Critics are frequently loners with poor social skills.

Justin 07

“I believe in the transformative power cinema. It is only through this shared dream-experience that we can transcend the oppressive minutiae of daily existence and find some spiritual connection in the deeper reality of our mutual desire.”

Justin is  looking at a pictorial representation of a cinema screen which is actually the fourth panel of the comics page. This is probably a reference to Clowes’ own migration to and from comics and film.

Clowes’ cynicism is so thoroughly ingrained into his comics that the somewhat ambiguous but treacly conviction stated here would quickly arouse the suspicions of his long time readers. One imagines that some people feel the same way about the films they see, but this seems like a specific interjection clarifying the state of mind of our protagonist, a point reasserted on the page following where he thinks:

“When Ellen finally left, she said she felt as though she didn’t even know me. She said I lived entirely inside my own head.”

The escapism which Justin seeks in the cinema (and art) has become a substitute for any real real connection. Any warmth in expression (the bottom panel bears his least contemptuous face) or speech is reserved for the figures he sees on the cinema screen. He has nothing but distaste for the people he interacts with in the pages of this comic.

It seems to me that whatever observations Clowes makes about critics are simply a side effect of using a film critic as the main character of his story. Any bitterness or acute observation is restricted to the first half of the story and forms the bedrock for his elaboration on the protagonist later in the tale. The further one delves into Justin M. Damiano, the less it reads like a standard exposè on the failing of critics, and the more it feels like a story about a man who just happens to be a film critic. In this way, it has many similarities to one of Clowes’ earlier works, “Caricature”, which constantly straddles the line between reality and illusion in its portrayal of a caricaturist—a competent loner working the crowd and his sexual proclivities.

But even more than in that work, Justin M. Damiano turns in on itself, becoming a moment of self-criticism and reflection; a careful dissection of his own comics. The “other” of the collection’s title (The Book of Other People) is not so much his critics or his audience—they remain anonymous and unknowable.  The “other” is the person that he can never hope to become.

 

The Best Post Ever on the Internet If You Want It To Be

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Thanks to the internets and the wonder of ever-increasing connectivity and what not, everyone can listen to the band that is the best all the time. This means that no one is listening to any of the other bands because they suck. Kanye and Beyonce and Kanye and Beyonce and also, maybe Metallica, I guess, on constant rotation, with Mick Jagger gagging, “Start me up!” as his ancient bony bits spurt ever new shiny new quality product.

Anyway, here’s a graph, showing that the most popular graphs are getting ever more of the clicks.

Krueger-ShareofRevenue

See? Just looking at that graph makes you hipper and more content-optimized.

But…does it? Just because it is the graph that all the wonks are looking at until other graphs turn green with envy and their trend lines droop with despair — does that mean that it is really the best of all possible graphs?

The answer is, shockingly, no. People look at the graph they look at just because that is the graph people look at. It doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the graph, or the freshness of Mick Jagger’s spurting. Here is a graph showing that that 1 Elvis fans is right only in the sense that he or she has correctly identified the website where the 49 million other Elvis fans hang out.
 

Krueger-popularity

 
In short, I could be Andrew Sullivan if I’d just supported the Iraq war at the right time.

Neil Irwin, whose graphs I stole, quotes Alan Krueger who is an economist and therefore has succeeded entirely by merit explaining that he is shocked (in a low-key way that won’t damage his brand) to learn that art is not about quality despite the sterling example of Tom Petty.

“In addition to talent, arbitrary factors can lead to success or failure, like whether another band happens to release a more popular song than your band at the same time,” said Krueger. “The difference between a Sugar Man, a Dylan and a Post Break Tragedy depends a lot more on luck than is commonly acknowledged.”

Mathematically, Dylan’s Dylan not because he’s great but because a bunch of people stochastically tuned in and everyone else dropped on after. We’re all just basically sheep slipping on the hillside and bathing our sheep ears in giant wads of everyone else’s sheep shit.

Or that’s one interpretation. Another possibility, though, is that we’re not quite as dumb as those sheep — or, perhaps, those sheep aren’t as dumb as we are. Or, at least, when we are together with the sheep, we revel in the earthy sheep power of bathing in shit together. We may be sliding down that hill, but it’s by choice.

This is somewhere in the vicinity of what Paul Lauter argues in his essay “Class, Caste, and Canon” (1981/87). Lauter starts his essay by talking about one time he was sitting listening to a feminist literary crit collective, as you end up doing sometimes when you’re a lefty literary critic, and they started to analyze a poem by Adrienne Rich, because all feminist literary crit collectives analyze poems by Adrienne Rich, and/or by Beyonce, depending. Lauter assures us that he likes Adrienne Rich (and/or Beyonce), but, he says, why always this thing? Why always the standard of meritocratic excellence and formal beauty? Why not instead follow in the well-worn boots of the working class, and embrace art that speaks to communal enthusiasms and needs and desires? Working class art, he says, is valuable because of its use [his italics] in the lives of the proletariat. Art is not to loose anarchy or Yeats, but to bind us together so we can overcome and love one another right now. It’s the song, not the singer.

These days, of course, the proletariat is exponentially less likely to be listening to Roll Jordan Roll than to be watching American Idol or the Voice where hopefully they’re not singing Roll, Jordan, Roll. But whose to say that the change is for the worse? After all, if the point of art is the community that it fosters, then it seems like any community will do. What does it matter if you’re singing authentic volk songs or reading Adrienne Rich or watching Mad Men with a billion friends on Twitter? The point is the use as communal totem. People aren’t confused when they choose the most popular graph as the best graph. On the contrary, they’ve got it just right. Art makes a culture a culture, and it does that by being the culture you take as your culture. Who can buck the trend when the trend is the trend?

There are sub-trends of course, and subcultures, whether built around Dr. Who or Foucault or Richard Linklater or (as Lauter would presumably have it) work songs and sea shanties. The polite fiction is that we enter communities of culture because of what we like, but that’s just a way of inserting ourselves into the algorithm whereby our art sells our community back to us as ourselves. “Quality” is a ghost that haunts our skulls; a mirage we worship like a mirror. The Internet’s just given us a bigger frame on which to be somebody, too.

Dyspeptic Oroborous: The Divine Hobby

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A couple of days ago, my twitter feed displayed the following message from TCJ.com.

Today we worship the latest by @xaimeh with pieces by Dan Nadel http://bit.ly/oZjPF2, Frank Santoro and Adrian Tomine http://bit.ly/mV9U8W

I’ve liked things that both Dan and Frank have written in the past — Dan’s piece on the Masterpieces of American Comics exhibit was probably my favorite selection in the Best American Comics Criticism volume that Fanta published a year or so back. And tcj.com has been doing a lot of good things since they sent us packing (this lovely piece by Craig Fischer, for instance. So I was assuming that that “worship” was just a bit of jocular hyperbole. Obviously the pieces would be laudatory, but I had hopes they wouldn’t be sycophantic.

Alas, if you click the link you get what the tweet says; Jaime’s comics transubstantiated into communion wafers, less to be read and discussed than to be consumed as a path towards union with the divine. Thus, Frank expresses awe, reverence, and wonder, talks about breaking down into tears, lauds the purity and uniqueness of Jaime’s talent, and finishes up with what reads like literal hagiography.

No art moves me the way the work of Jaime Hernandez moves me. I am in awe of his eternal mystery.

Tomine’s piece is more of the same, albeit shorter. In comments, Jeet Heer suggests that it might be worthwhile to compare Jaime’s work to Dave Sim’s. This does seem like an interesting juxtaposition, but Frank nixes it insisting, “Lets be careful to not make this thread about Sim. This is a Jaime celebration.” No criticism at TCJ, please. Only celebration, worship, and gush.

To be fair, neither Frank nor Tomine are making any pretense of trying to explicate, or really even engage, with Jaime’s work. Instead, both of their pieces are testimonials — personal accounts of having seen the light. From Frank’s piece

Something extraordinary happened when I read his stories in the new issue of Love and Rockets: New Stories no. 4. What happened was that I recalled the memory of reading “Death of Speedy” – when it was first published in 1988 – when I read the new issue now in 2011. Jaime directly references the story (with only two panels) in a beautiful two page spread in the new issue. So what happened was twenty three years of my own life folded together into one moment. Twenty three years in the life of Maggie and Ray folded together. The memory loop short circuited me. I put the book down and wept.

We don’t need to see the two panels in question reproduced (or, indeed, any artwork from the story reproduced), because it’s not about the panels. It’s about the effect of those panels, and of Jaime, in Frank’s life. Jaime is transformative because Frank says he’s been transformed. It’s a witness to true belief by a true believer for other true believers. The imagery of short circuits and closed loops is unintentionally apropos.

Dan’s essay is nominally a more balanced critical assessment. In practice, though, it’s got the same religion minus the passion, resulting in an odd combination of towering praise coupled with bland encomium. Frank’s piece has the energy of an exhortation; Dan’s, on the other hand, reads like a painfully distended back-cover blurb. “The Love Bunglers”, Dan declares, is the story of Maggie “finally holding onto something.” Jaime’s art is great because it is personal, so that “this alleyway is not just any alleyway — it’s an alleyway constructed entirely from Jaime’s lines, gestures, and pictorial vocabulary.” And the big finish:

In the end we flash forward some unspecified amount of years: Ray survives and he and Maggie are in love and Jaime signs the last panel with a heart. “TLB” is also a love letter from its creator to his readers and to his characters. It’s a letter from an old friend, wise to the fuckery of life, to the random acts that occur and that we have no control over. Jaime, I think, used to be a bit of a romantic. He’s not anymore, but in this story he gives us something to hang onto: A piece of art that says that you should allow fear and sadness into your life, but not let those things cripple you. That sometimes life works out and sometimes not, but the things we can control, things like comics and storytelling, carry redemption.”

Let fear and sadness into your life but don’t let them cripple you. Sometimes life works out and sometimes not. It’s criticism by fortune cookie. And…signing the last panel with a heart to show us the power of love? Gag me.

The point isn’t that “Love Bunglers” isn’t great. I haven’t read it; I don’t have any opinion on whether it’s great or not. But I wish instead of telling us that this is one of the greatest comics in the world no really it is, Dan would have taken the time to develop an actual thesis of some sort — a reading of the comic that elucidated, unraveled, and interracted with its greatness, rather than just declaiming it.

I’m talking here specifically as someone who is interested in and conflicted about Jaime’s work. I would like Dan, or someone, to write something that would allow me to see why this particular sentimental melodrama dispensing life wisdom is better than all the other sentimental melodramas in the world that are also dispensing life wisdom. But instead all Dan provides is assertion (“It just works. They’re real.”), predictable appeals to vague essentialism (“There are no outs in his work — what he lays down is what it is.”) and paeans to nostalgic retrospection (“As I took it in, I realized that I remembered not just the moments Jaime was referring to, but also the narratives around those moments. And furthermore, I remembered where and how and what I was when I read those moments. I remembered like the characters remembered.”) If I am unconvinced by standard-issue authenticity claims and do not have years and years of reading Jaime comics to feel nostalgic about, what exactly does “The Love Bunglers” have to offer me?

Part of the trouble here may be that it’s difficult to write about something you like as much as Dan likes Jaime’s work. Love can sometimes reduce you to gibbering — which is understandable, though not a whole lot of fun to read for someone who isn’t under the influence of similar giddiness. I think it can also be especially tricky to write about soap-operas, where a large part of the point is personal emotional attachment to individual characters. If the narrative deliberately figures the reader as fan or lover; it can be hard to say anything other than, “I adore this character! I adore this author! I’m in love I’m in love I’m in love! It’s so awesome!”

I don’t have a problem with people writing to say that something they love is awesome. I’ve been known to do it myself even. But this is TCJ,…and it’s Jaime Hernandez — the most prestigious publication devoted to comics criticism focusing on one of the most lauded contemporary cartoonists. If they wanted to run one love letter, I guess I could see it…but two or three? Surely, nobody in TCJ’s audience needs to be told that Jaime is awesome. Everyone knows Jaime is awesome. Except, possibly, for a few weirdos like me who are waiting to be convinced. But if this is the case, why forego actual nuanced and possibly convincing discussion of his work in favor of vacuous cheering?

Partially no doubt it’s because comics remains permanently tucked in a defensive crouch. No matter how unanimous the praise of Jaime is, no matter how firmly he is canonized it will never be sufficient to undo the brutal unfairness of the fact that he’s not as popular as…Frank Miller? Harry Potter? Andy Warhol? Lady Gaga? Somebody, in any case, can always be trotted out to show that the really famous and canonical person you love is not famous and canonical enough.

But there’s also a sense in which TCJ’s tweeted fealty is less about Jaime (who surely doesn’t need the flattery) and more about the celebration of fealty itself. You worship at the altar of Jaime because worshiping at the altar of Jaime is what the initiated do. The sacramental praise both constitutes an identity and confirms it for others. You are in the club and enjoying the hobby in the proscribed fashion. Fellow travelers shall take you to their bosoms, and even the chief muckety-muck shall weigh in with a heartfelt and avuncular hosannah.

Comics was long a subculture first and a subculture second and an art a distant third. TCJ set itself to change that. Certainly, it has altered the list of holy objects. But the rituals remain depressingly familiar.

____________
Update by Noah: This is part of an impromptu roundtable on Jaime and his critics.

Dyspeptic Oroborous: Reacting To It

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I recently finished reading an advance copy of Chester Brown’s new book Paying For It. I’m writing a review for someone who is (appropriately) hopefully going to pay me for it, so I’m not going to talk about the book specifically right at the moment. But…I was interested in talking about Tom Spurgeon’s review of the book, and some reaction to it.

Tom’s review is striking because he so strongly insists that he doesn’t want to talk about the book’s content.

I felt myself at a disadvantage throughout the entire process of reading Paying For It, Chester Brown’s long-awaited graphic novel about his becoming a John and how that part of his life developed over a lengthy period of time. I have no interest in prostitutes, less interest than that in the issue of prostitution and sex work, and can muster only the tiniest bit of prurient intrigue for watching how a cartoonist of whom I’m a fan orients himself to the aforementioned. That’s going to sound like a protestation, but I genuinely mean that I lack a fundamental interest in that specific subject matter.

Consistently enough, Tom then goes on to say that his favorite part of the book was a moment having nothing to do with prostitution.

The most fascinating sequence in Paying For It for me didn’t involve a single naked woman or the sensible peculiarities revealed by the veteran comic book maker as he unfurls the operational workings of such enterprises from the consumer’s end. What I enjoyed most was a few panels where Brown tries to orient himself to the fact he’ll soon move from the home of one-time lover and longtime friend Sook-Yin Lee. Buffeted by very understandable waves of grief, Brown gathers himself, pounces on a brief, inexplicable flash of happiness and pins it to the white board of his consciousness like an amateur entomologist. I’ve read that section four times now. It feels much more intimate than any time the cartoonist depicts himself in the sexual act, more revealing, even, than when Brown suggests we take a second look at his actions throughout this work for the implications of a surprising, final-act twist. The greatest strength of Paying For It comes in its facilitation of these tiny, off-hand moments, less its ability to bring us the world in which Brown moves than the manner in which he processes what he sees once he gets there. (m emphasis added)

In the remainder of the review, Tom continues this back and forth, expressing discomfort and indifference to Brown’s major themes while concluding that the book is still great. “Whatever the comics equivalent of saying you’d watch a certain actor read a phone book might be,” Tom says, “that’s Chester Brown.”

Over at tcj.com in comments, Jeet Heer expressed some doubts as to whether this was a useful approach to Brown’s book.

I also want to know what Tom thinks about sex work. Which is another way of saying that, like Joe Sacco’s various books on contemporary wars and Crumb’s Genesis, Brown’s book is one where the content requires the reviewer to give more than just an aesthetic judgement and also weigh in on the content and issues raised. Given the nature of the work, I think its important to be upfront about one’s response to Brown’s arguments/opinions, although of course it’s possible to like the book and think that the legal and cultural changes he’s advocating are completely out to lunch.

Tom responded sharply.

I couldn’t disagree more that any kind of response is required of anyone writing about a work, either in this case or generally, although I realize that some folks may think less of any piece that doesn’t engage a work on those levels. Those kinds of strictures don’t seem logical to me — or fruitful, even. Heck, I think you can make a stronger argument that any response to Paying For It needs to be in comics form before it needs to engage X, Y, Z issues in A, B, C ways. And as the former’s obviously silly I think the latter’s silly, too.

I’ll catch you guys up next time (first time) we meet as to my deep and personal opinions on the sex work stuff. It’s faaascinating. (No it’s not.)

And Jeet then backed and filled a bit.

Just to clarify: I thought Tom’s review was really smart and incisive. So if he doesn’t want to tackle the politics of the book head on, that’s fine. But someone (not Tom, if he doesn’t want to) should take “Paying For It” seriously not just as a comic by a major cartoonist but also a book with a radical political message — that message is worth trying to evaluate (along with, of course, the sort of formalist evaluation of the book that Tom did so well).

What’s interesting to me is that this is, I think, a debate that comes up a lot in comics criticism. That debate being…what place does content have in a discussion of a comic? Does it matter that Crumb’s Genesis (for example) has nothing particular to add to the discussion of Genesis? Do we need to think about Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s attitudes towards sex when reading Lost Girls? Is it important to think about Ditko’s objectivism when evaluating Ditko? Or are the contributions of cartoonists tied into their art — so much so that responding to what they’re saying, as what they’re saying, can be beside the point?

In that regard, I think it’s interesting that when challenged, Tom went immediately to the idea that it makes more sense for reviews to be done in comics form than for reviews to have to engage with ideas. Again, he said:

Heck, I think you can make a stronger argument that any response to Paying For It needs to be in comics form before it needs to engage X, Y, Z issues in A, B, C ways.

He then adds that either requirement (review in comics form or review responding to polemic) is silly — but he seems to believe that the first is (at least marginally) less silly than the second.

Like Tom and Jeet (in his second comment) I’m somewhat reluctant to say, “reviewers must react to a work in this way.” On the other hand…I do agree with Jeet’s first comment, that works of art, especially polemical works of art like, say, James Baldwin’s essays, really seem to be demanding an engagement with their ideas. If you refuse to grant them that engagement — if you insist, I will not talk about racism, I will only talk about Baldwin’s prose style and the moments of personal revelation of universal human insights — you are in fact missing the point in a fairly profound manner.

What’s interesting to me, too, is that I don’t think Tom does miss the point in that way. He disavows a polemical stance, but there’s ample evidence in the essay that he is not so much indifferent to Brown’s opinions as uncomfortable with them — especially when they’re expressed in the prose appendices rather than in cartoon form.

This is a far cry from what comes through in the essays: that Brown’s orientations might somehow be the basis for policy and cultural change, that all stigma is correlative, that the removal of cultural discrimination afforded paid sex is the difference between the world we live now and a world that functions a bit more like Chester Brown. When the cartoonist moves away from his own experiences and into broader proclamations about the nature of romantic love and assertions that more frequent monetary remuneration in sexual relationships will somehow ease relationships between men and women, it’s hard to engage with what he’s saying beyond being certain he means it. To put it more directly, even for someone not invested in the general subject matter, many of the broader arguments fail to convince.

That paragraph to me doesn’t sound like someone who is not invested in the subject matter. It sounds like someone who disagrees with Brown — but who values his cartooning so much that he’s ambivalent about saying so.

The thing is, to me Tom is being in many ways more generous to Brown when he agrees to think through and reject his ideas than he is when he suggests that you can put those ideas aside, and that the main thing to go to Brown for are the cartooning choices irrespective, almost, of the issues they engage.

For example, you can say Jimmy Stewart would be great if he read the phone book…and, in fact, I wouldn’t mind hearing Jimmy Stewart read the phone book as an exercise in dada. Still, the fact remains that Jimmy Stewart was at his very best when he was directed by Hitchcock and John Ford and Capra in movies that did not suck. Acknowledging that he is not so great when in movies that weren’t so great (like the mediocre The Mortal Storm) is not an insult to him. Rather, it’s a compliment to his real greatness; he’s an actor that deserves great movies — and indeed, his greatest performances are not separable from his best movies.

Similarly, I think we owe cartoonists an evaluation not just of their formal talents, or of their small choices, but of what they do with those talents, and what those small choices add up to. To withhold that is not a mark of respect for comics or for individual cartoonists. Quite the contrary.

________________

It’s worth noting that both Sean Collins and Chris Mautner have reviews in which they engage fairly directly with the polemical aspects of Brown’s book.

Short Thought for the Day: What Art Will Last?

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“When the critic has no delicacy, he judges without any distinction, and is only affected by the grosser and more palpable qualities of the object: The finer touches pass unnoticed and disregarded. Where he is not aided by practice, his verdict is attended with confusion and hesitation. Where no comparison has been employed, the most frivolous beauties, such as rather merit the name of defects, are the object of his admiration. Where he lies under the influence of prejudice, all his natural sentiments are perverted…Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty.”

“Of the Standard of Taste”, David Hume

 

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DWYCK: Critiquing a Lively Art

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For this column, I’d like to return to the subject of comics criticism. A while back, HU hosted a Popeye roundtable, which raised some interesting general questions, but seemed to stop from lack of enthusiasm before it went very far. Not being in a position to contribute at the time, I would like to resurrect it for the purpose of raising a number of issues pertaining to how we talk about comics and art.

Noah in his ambiguous essay on E. C. Segar’s strip expresses frustration at what he perceives to be its shallowness:

Though I enjoyed the energy of the drawing, and the Sea Hag and Goon provided some evocatively creepy moments early on, the limited range of the humor, and its empty-headedness, quickly becomes numbing. Wimpy is lazy, Wimpy eats a lot, Popeye is noble, defends the underdog, and always wins.

Robert, in his piece, which references a series of earlier, excellent reviews on his own site, concludes that the strip is “largely of historical interest”, writing:

The challenge I gave the work was for it to transcend that description. It occasionally did; there were flashes of satirical and absurdist genius every now and then. “The One-Way Bank” storyline from Volume II and the finale of “The Eighth Sea” storyline from Volume III stood out, and I was especially taken with Volume II’s “The Nazilia-Tonsylania War” — its treatment of state and military folly ranks with Dr. Strangelove (almost) and Duck Soup. (No pun was intended with the name “Nazilia,” by the way.) However, Segar was generally far more enamored with farce and slapstick for their own sake than he was with satire. That greatly limits the appeal of his work, at least for this adult reader. Farce and slapstick that don’t connect with anything deeper are best in small doses; they tend to wear out their welcome fairly quickly.

So the strip is less than great because it is simplistically conceived and primarily concerns itself with slapstick and farce, only rarely ‘transcending’ these. For Robert, this happens when it becomes satirical, because that somehow connects ‘deeper’ than mere laffs.

This seems to me a holdover from modernist conceptions of aesthetic value that privilege the framework provided by the ‘high’ arts. Robert even spells out this bias:

No reasonable person would consider it on the level of Faulkner, Kandinsky, or Jean Renoir’s work, but it looks right at home when viewed alongside the efforts of Mae West, W.C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers. I have nothing against the popular-entertainment standard for determining “good” comics, by the way. If a comic entertains people, it’s doing its job. And if it’s entertaining people to the extent that it becomes a pop-culture phenomenon, which Segar’s Popeye certainly did, then it’s doing its job terrifically well.

…But it still isn’t as great as Faulkner, Kandinsky or Renoir. Invoking the consummate elitist Harold Bloom’s definition of the canon as what should be taught in our schools, Robert judges Popeye out. But why? He has himself conceded that it gripped more than one generation of readers and became a pop-culture phenomenon. Isn’t that worth teaching in schools? And what about those great humorists cited? Irrelevant to the understanding of our culture?

My intention here is not to claim that Popeye – or Thimble Theater if we want to be correct – is the equal of the best high art had to offer at its time (conversely I’m not saying that it ain’t either). What I am saying is that it will necessarily look impoverished when judged in the framework of high culture, and that I find such a yardstick unhelpful in assessing its qualities — qualities that clearly resonated widely and persistently. Although we have now for several decades described our times as postmodern, with everything that entails, the elitist legacy of modernity is amazingly hard to shake.

Noah recognizes this, essentially framing his dismissal of the strip as personal preference. He compares with another low-culture medium, which has received even less high-culture acclaim: television, concluding that,

…what is and isn’t considered art is really arbitrary. Comics critics have spent a lot of energy for the past decades trying to get comics accepted as high art. They’ve had definite (if not unqualified) success, and now even frankly pulp, unpretentious works like Popeye can be put up in galleries, given lavish reissues, and hailed as canonical examples of the form.

I would guess that someone like Noah, who spends a fair amount of energy as a critic acclaiming the qualities of some of the most commercial iterations of contemporary pop music, would be unsatisfied with the kind of high-culture point of view brought to bear on comics by some of its more assiduous critics at this current, mercurial juncture in their history.

Having long regarded hip hop as one of the most inspiring cultural manifestations of the last 30 years, I sympathize. It has been interesting to watch its fortuna critica in the cultural establishment as it has evolved: regarded initially as a fad, its staying power has come to be recognized and it is now classified as a legitimate musical genre, but it still isn’t considered an art form on the level of, say, rock music. “Gangsta Gangsta” by N.W.A simply doesn’t cut it when measured by the yardstick of “Like a Rolling Stone”, but it is undeniably a hugely resonant piece of work, every bit as influential on the generation from which it sprang.

Similarly, at the time of Thimble Theater, surely ‘no reasonable person’ would consider something like ragtime or jazz on the level of opera. Yet, today, these forms and their progeny are regarded as entirely respectable art forms, capable of greatness akin to that achieved in classical music. Music unites us in ways that other art forms don’t, and we seem to be more receptive to “shallow” qualities there than we do in literature, fine art, or even comics. Perhaps this is not so surprising, since music generally is less cerebral than those forms, making us appreciate — and intellectualize — our emotional and visceral responses to a higher degree.

And actually at least one perfectly reasonable person did consider ragtime and jazz, and with them a whole range of other popular forms such as vaudeville, the movies, and yes, comics, on the level of high culture. A cultural critic and New York correspondent of T. S. Eliot’s Criterion, his name was Gilbert Seldes (1873-1970). In his precocious defense of popular culture, The Seven Lively Arts (1924), he wrote:

If you can bring into focus, simultaneously, a good revue and a production of grand opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, the superiority of the lesser art is striking. Like the revue, grand opera is composed of elements drawn from many sources; like the revue, success depends on the fusion of these elements into a new unit, through the highest skill in production. And this sort of perfection the Metropolitan not only never achieves — it is actually absolved in advance from the necessity of attempting it. I am aware that it has the highest-paid singers, the best orchestra, some of the best conductors, dancers and stage hands, and the worst scenery in the world, in addition to an exceptionally astute impresario; but the production of these elements is so haphazard and clumsy that if any revue-producer hit as low a level in his work, he would be stoned off Broadway. Yet the Metropolitan is considered a great institution and complacently permitted to run at a loss, because its material is ART. (pp. 132-133)

Lest he be dismissed offhand as the kind of contrarian philistine such statements might evoke in us today, I hasten to supply the following; during a visit to Picasso’s studio in Paris, he was shown a fresh canvas by the master, which prompted in him a synthesis:

I shall make no effort to describe that painting. It isn’t even important to know that I am right in my judgement. The significant and overwhelming thing to me was that I held the work a masterpiece and knew it to be contemporary. It is a pleasure to come upon an accredited masterpiece which preserve its authority, to mount the stairs and see the Winged Victory and know that it is good. But to have the same conviction about something finished a month ago, contemporaneous in every aspect, yet associated with the great tradition of painting, with the indescribable thing we think of as the high seriousness of art and with a relevance not only to our life, but to life itself — that is a different thing entirely. For of course the first effect — after one had gone away and begun to be aware of effects — was to make one wonder whether it is worth thinking or writing or feeling about anything else. Whether, since the great arts are so capable of being practised today, it isn’t sheer perversity to be satisfied with less. Whether praise of the minor arts isn’t, at bottom, treachery to the great. I had always believed that there exists no such hostility between the two divisions of the arts which are honest — that the real opposition is between them, allied, and the polished fake. (pp. 345-346)

I think we could do worse than take a cue from Seldes’ notion of the ‘lively arts’ in our current reassessment of comics as cultural phenomena and art. About the comic strip:

Of all the lively arts the Comic Strip is the most despised, and with the exception of the movies it is the most popular. Some twenty million people follow with interest, curiosity, and amusement the daily fortunes of five or ten heroes of the comic strip, and that they do this is considered by all those who have any pretentions to taste and culture as a symptom of crass vulgarity, of dullness, and, for all I know, of defeated and inhibited lives. I need hardly add that those who feel so about the comic strip only infrequently regard the object of their distaste.

Certainly there is a great deal of monotonous stupidity in the comic strip, a cheap jocosity, a life-of-the-party humour which is extraordinarily dreary. There is also a quantity of bad drawing and the intellectual level, if that matters, is sometimes not high. Yet we are not actually a dull people; we take our fun where we find it, and we have an exceptional capacity for liking the things which show us off in ridiculous postures — a counterpart to our inveterate passion for seeing ourselves in stained-glass attitudes. (p. 213)

Seldes doesn’t mention Thimble Theater, and couldn’t have known Popeye (on account of he hadn’t been born’d yet), but he regarded highly its neighbor in the New York World, Krazy Kat, whose creator George Herriman he considered one of the two genuine artistic geniuses in America at the time (the other was Charles Chaplin). In his famous essay on that strip, he wrote:

With those who hold that a comic strip cannot be a work of art I shall not traffic. The qualities of Krazy Kat are irony and fantasy — exactly the same, it would appear, as distinguish The Revolt of the Angels; it is wholly beside the point to indicate a preference for the work of Anatole France, which is in the great line, in the major arts. It happens that in America iron and fantasy are practised in the major arts by only one or two men, producing high-class trash; and Mr Herriman, working in a despised medium, without an atom of pretentiousness, is day after day producing something essentially fine. (p. 231)

Granted, Krazy Kat has received greater high-culture recognition than any other strip of its day, and seems more effortlessly to accommodate a fine arts perspective, but I don’t see why one couldn’t formulate something along similar lines for Thimble Theater. Noah suggests that one might compare the strip with the cinema of Buster Keaton, which strikes me as particularly instructive:

Keaton’s work rightly occupies an important place in the cinematic canon, despite it being similarly resistant to the kind of interpretative framework that eschews slapstick. As the New Wave filmmakers recognized, however, his auteurial presence is acutely felt throughout his work, and it gives us a highly original, fatalistic and uncannily comic conception of depersonalized action in a world of strange, fickle serendipity.

Now, let’s look at fairly typical, self-contained Sunday page from Thimble Theater (sep. 30th, 1934):

On the surface, it delivers a straightforward gag pitting, as is so often the case, Popeye’s morality against Wimpy’s lack of same. But Segar is anything but a utilitarian gang man; he proceeds like a cartoon behaviorist, generously packing in as much character detail and humorous instance to create a highly seasoned repast, all the while unfolding a strongly intuited moral ethos.

Watch his unaffectedly plump line and vernacular wit unfold across the page: Wimpy insinuating himself into the frame and the duck hunt, bodily/verbally; his mention of his favorite animal, “hamburger on the hoof”; the manner in which he splays his three surplus fingers while pressing his nose to quack (and, inevitably, to hamburger moo); his poker face registering the hit, turning to sniff; the derision on his face against Popeye’s soon-to-vanish irascible scowl; the silent burial bookending Popeye’s contrition, Wimpy empathetically yet efficiently settling the mound; the exchange: “WHAT! NO DUCK?!” — “Yeah, no duck”; the unchanged expression on Wimpy’s face as he kneels caninely to exhume the duck with speed, his coattails waving; it remains unchanged as he sits at the end, counter to the left-right flow, roasting the kill.

Clear in presentation, yet richly studied, this sequence is a perfect summation of the profane reality of Thimble Theater. A true comedic hero, Popeye is pugnaciously selfless in a world governed by selfishness. He always restores order around him (often, disturbingly, by violence), but is simultaneously given enough of a tragic edge — his morality is rarely reciprocated — to keep us involved. As with Keaton, there’s a fatalistic undertone to his and, by its frequent extension to the rest of the cast, the strip’s indomitable catchphrase: “I yam what I yam, an’ that’s all I yam!” It’s trenchantly inspirational and it is great fun, so why can’t it be great art?

Part of the answer, if one compares with cinema, is that it has taken comics much longer to expand its field beyond a fairly restricted set of idioms and genres, all of which are candidly low culture. It hasn’t had its James Agee, though people like Donald Phelps, R. Fiore and Art Spiegelman have done their best in recent decades; they haven’t had their Raymond Rohauer and have only recently begun experiencing comprehensive restoration and republication, and they haven’t had their new wave until now.

Which brings us to the matter at hand: this is a time of redefinition for comics, which is not only manifest in contemporary cartooning, but naturally extends back to encompass its history. Neglected by critics and historians, and forgotten even by most cartoonists, the classics now demand our attention for what they teach us about their time and the evolution of the form, but ultimately also as works of art. Though it is surely healthy to assess comics in the expanded field of cultural production being opened up as distinctions between high and low are collapsing, to not cut them any exceptionalist slack, it would seem ill advised to judge them according to antiquated systems of hierarchical exclusion.

PS — Because Noah mentioned them as part of his high-low concordances, I can’t help bringing in the Coen brothers here. While it is correct that they are becoming canonized as directors, it is remarkable that their best loved, and arguably best though not most critically acclaimed film, The Big Lebowski, is so unabashedly shallow. It totally fails the modernist test as a work of art, and yet there it is, and it’s glorious.

Squint, imagine some more punching, and it might almost play at the Thimble.