“I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. I think those films are kind enough to allow you a nice nap and not leave you disturbed when you leave the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks.”
Abbas Kiarostami in an interview with Dr. Jamsheed Akrami
A consumer warning. That’s about all this manga deserves. A radioactive label to keep potential customers away from this glistening turd.
[Note: This is a blog interlude pending the publication of Matthias Wivel’s discussion of Charles Hatfield’s Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature]
Of the comics which emerged through the independant press during the 80s, few comics have acquired as high a reputation as Gilbert Hernandez’s Human Diastrophism. The recent roundtable on Charles Hatfield’s Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature has provided me with an excuse to revisit this comic after a space of some 20 years. This was prompted by Noah’s disappreciation of the second last page from that story which is produced below with Noah’s commentary following:
The differences between the worlds of comics and fine art would appear to be pretty obvious, but my recent reading of Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World suggests that these differences might be less than they would appear, the great leveler in this instance being human nature.
Taking in subjects like a high end contemporary art auction, self-absorbed art students at a “Crit” session, the strange world of Artforum magazine and a trip to Takashi Murakami’s studio, the entire experience of perusing Thornton’s book was not unlike reading about the decline of civilization (Western in this case but the values are universal); a kind of journal describing that surge of decadence which sometimes marks the end of empire.
Caro recently highlighted an article by Craig Fischer at Transatlantica titled “Worlds within Worlds: Audiences, Jargon, and North American Comics Discourse”. I’ve decided to separate out this short comment on one particular section of Craig’s essay since it is only tangentially related to the bulk of Caro’s comments. The following comes from the middle of Craig’s taxonomy of comics writing called, “Essayists” (emphasis mine):
22 As a contributor to the Journal, my problem with Groth’s emphasis on evaluation is the absence of communal standards. In the editorial to Journal#100 (July 1985), Groth reprinted a commentary from the British fanzine BEM where Bernard Leak pointed out that despite the Journal’s commitment to excellence, “muscular standards-raising activity requires some kind of focus, some general agreement on what a good comic is; and there isn’t any such agreement, in the pages of the Journal or anywhere else” (Groth 12). Leak further argued that
“A general theory of comics, such as has been produced (in many conflicting forms, of course) for literary genres like novels and epics, is necessary before any dreams for the future can take on a definite shape and positive content. If someone doesn’t like any particular theory, he can supplement, modify or replace it; but until one appears all criticism of comics will be floating in the void, unsupported by anything more than a consensus of some readers’ uncontrolled intuitions. (12)”
Some collectors will have noticed that Jaime Hernandez has been selling his original art via Heritage Auction Galleries since March this year. The general scarcity of Jaime’s original art is such that the prices achieved so far have sometimes been quite high with this handsome page from Chester Square (Love and Rockets #41, 1993) fetching $4780:
There is, however, much pleasure to be gained even from pieces of a more modest price. The following page from Love and Rockets #47 (1995, Chester Square) for example which cost a fraction of the page above:
