1) Art comics are rooted in an appreciation for American male-oriented genre comics.
In contradistinction to Indie Comics, which eschewed the hyper-masculinity, violence, and overall "flashiness" of superhero comics, art comics embraced this 'junk culture'. This shift in comics coincided with the cultural shift from "Indie" to "Hipster", the former being adolescent, insecure, gender queer, and softspoken, the latter being late 20's and 30's, secure, gendered, and brash. Whereas the 'Indie' comics creator would make comics about how awkward they felt making comics, the 'Hipster' comics creator made comics that seemed to shout "I'm over it." The irony of the Indie era ("twee as fuck") led to the post-irony of the hipster era ("metal as fuck").
Just as "Indie Music" became the new mainstream, so too did "Indie Comics" (although on a vastly minisculed scale) with the success of "Graphic Novel". Meanwhile "Art comics" people looked elsewhere.
2) Art comics emphasize the surface and object-ness of the page.
Art comics participated in the rise of boutique publishing which profited from the "collector" mentality of its patrons. Unusual or previously unaffordable printing and binding processes were utilized to create books as fetish objects. Superior reproduction resulted in an enhanced view of the materiality of the comics page, resembling the aesthetics of art books. Whereas previously the printed page was the final canvas, in this case the printed page was an archival window through which to view the original canvas.
When this trend in printing became a "style" in comics, the result was heavy use of textures, an increasingly dominant focus on materials (which previously had only been black ink and white paper), and an emphasis on the static image over the fleeting image-as-aspect.
3) Art comics creators are image-makers first, writers second.
In the Indie-oriented "Understanding Comics", Scott McCloud warns against treating art and text as separate entities by imagining two creators that each focus on either text or image:
"FINALLY THEY'RE READY. BOTH HAVE MASTERED THEIR ARTS. HIS BRUSHSTROKE IS NEARLY INVISIBLE IN ITS SUBTLETY, THE FIGURES PURE MICHAELANGELO. HER DESCRIPTIONS ARE DAZZLING. THE WORDS FLOW TOGETHER LIKE A SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET. THEY'RE READY TO JOIN HANDS ONCE MORE AND CREATE A COMICS MASTERPIECE."
In this scenario, the male is the "Art Comics" practitioner, the woman is the "Indie Comics" practitioner.
Whereas Indie Comics create prose in which the lines used to make the images resemble the lines used to make the text, Art comics create comics which separate the two, often in favor of the image over the text. The "joy of drawing" corresponds to a "joy of reading", whereas a "joy of writing" seems less visible.
Who Makes Art Comics?
Art comics makes up more than 50% of the output of two publishers:
Picturebox (America)
Buenaventura Press (America)
Comics Publications which primarily feature art comics:
Kramer's Ergot (America)
Kuti Kuti (Finland)
Abstract Comics Anthology (America)
Non (America)
Comics Publications which sometimes include art comics:
Drawn And Quarterly Showcase (Canada)
Nazi Knife (France)
Frederic Magazine (France)
Mome (America)
Art comics creators include:
Mat Brinkman
Brian Chippendale
C.F
Victor Cayro
Chris Cilla
Julie Doucet
Austin English
Noel Freibert
Matt Furie
Leif Goldberg
Carlos Gonzales
Aidan Koch
Blaise Larmee
Jesse McManus
Jason T. Miles
Andrei Molotiu
Jerry Moriarty
Gary Panter
Paper Rad
Ron Regé, Jr.
Elvis Studio
Souther Salazar
Frank Santoro
Jon Vermilyea
Mickey Zacchilli
Critics / Editors who have argued for art comics:
Sammy Harkham
Frank Santoro
Andrei Molotiu
Images by Taylor Mckimens, Bald Eagles, Sammy Harkham, Jon Vermilyea, Noel Freibert and Lane Milburn
62 comments:
If I accept your definition, I don't see how Harkham fits in there. His work is way more about story than image. His style and material use is pretty traditionally minded.
@derik agreed
moved harkham to 'editors'
i'm leaving his image because it:
features a wandering male 'hero'
is colorful/dynamic
emphasizes materiality
is 'poetry' (vs prose)
introduced what was (for me) the defining standard of 'art comics', kramers ergot 5
wank wank wank watch me classify myself wank wank wank
Thanks for clearing all that up for me, B.
I'm pretty sure D&Q is Canada, not America. It *is* in Quebec, as is it's storefront.
re: this post.
why?
Yeah, I think your definition is strong, but I don't agree with a lot of the names you put on the list. I feel like a lot of that work is too direct to be categorized as such, but that could depend on who's reading them as well, how one's reading experience and frame of mind allows something to be interpreted.
@tony seems like definitions are a valuable commodity
@sam which names would you remove/add?
adolescent, insecure, gender queer, and softspoken
sounds like you blaise
i will mail a copy of 'young lions' to anyone who successfully edits (ie avoids deletion) the wikipedia entry for 'art comics' in order to reference this blog post
remove:
Marc Bell
Mat Brinkman
Brian Chippendale
CF
Noel Freibert
Matt Furie
Carlos Gonzales
add:
Warren Craghead
Molly Colleen O'Connell
Jason Overby (obv.)
yourself (obv.)
Chris Cornwell
Tim Hensley
Leif Goldberg
Jerry Moriarty
Tom Herpich
Amanda Vähämaki
I guess the issue for me is whether a person generally uses a linear reading device in their plot or not. Almost everyone listed so far could easily just have a "(sometimes)" added next to their name, seemingly a thin line to cross.
The more I look at post-Fort Thunder art comics the more I think that it's just the Undergrounds all over again, just this time in full color. Certainly there was an evolutionary line from MAD (the comic) to Zap to RAW to D&Q (the anthology) to Kramers Ergot, but maybe it's a cycle of rebirth instead of a continuous process of development. Like a cyclical universe.
A real question is, is it over? And if so, what's next? The Undergrounds ended when the head shops went under, an economic event as opposed to an aesthetic event. Maybe art comics ended when the economy tanked? Kramers 7 was kinda the last super ambitious high-production value art comic. The art comic McMansion if you will.
The two publishers you mentioned Buenaventura & Picturebox have certainly scaled back their releases since the economy tanked. Is it because money is tight or because new talent is thin? Does the tightness of funds lead to the perception that talent is thinner than it actually is?
Either way, the point is it may be over. In other words, perfect time to hop on board! What came after the Undergrounds? Well, they went even further underground and you had Newave and the advent of the mini-comic. Maybe that's what will happen again, except this time the mini-comic will be Blaise's "tumblr comics" or some such crazyness that only the kids understand.
Well done, and a fairly cogent series of definitions. One thing my wife and I have found to be consistently fascinating and frustrating is the over-reliance on gender, and perceived gender characteristics, as somewhat cheap ways of labeling, defining, and ultimately confining creative roles.
"In this scenario, the male is the "Art Comics" practitioner, the woman is the "Indie Comics" practitioner."
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding that part and assuming you are using this as a broader example instead of simply referring to McCloud's piece. Apologies if the error is mine, but this obsession with gender is something we've noticed in a lot of "art comics" arenas.
Ultimately it's very disappointing. It seems to prove that there is never really any progression or evolution, at least not toward a more complete understanding of...well, anything. It's just a bunch of people jumping from one labeled box into the next labeled box, in an endlessly stagnant circular pattern.
Ian poses a good question! Although KE7 came out not too long ago, at the same time we also saw people like Kevin Huizenga and Sammy Harkham giving up on having their shorter works formally published, and instead making mini-comics and turning to the web (What Things Do). Is accessibility the new meme?
Did I use that right?
I posted a reply of sorts: http://madinkbeard.com/blog/archives/art-comics-indie-comics
@Derik
I think the 80's genre comic underpinnings of the Fort Thunder stuff in particular is just an placeholder in a process that's played out before. Those guys were contemporary artists who approached comics in the very abstract sense of "let's make comics." The idea being that "making comics" is a fun thing to do, and they were drawing all the time anyway so why not make some comics?
I think this is the same attitude that Crumb and the Underground guys had. Except for them instead of 80's Marvel comics it was 50's EC comics or funny animal comics. In both cases the artists were taking a vague notion of what they loved about the comics they grew up on and channeling it through the contemporary art and drawing that was going on around them in their day.
Next time this process plays itself out it will probably be with Manga.
The difference between the Underground guys, the Fort Thunder guys and everything that came after them each time was that the original guys were being Promethean and bringing something new to the table from out of the blue. The artists that followed in each case were always in context to what those pioneers had originally done, thus "post-Fort Thunder". I don't think it diminishes those artists per se, but it's likely that history won't look on them as being quite as important.
A lot of Blaise's posts seem to be focused on this notion of a new Promethean event in alternative comics. Maybe it's already happening with Dash Shaw.
I'm not sure you can say the Undergrounds brought something "out of the blue". There's tradition, there's antecedants, there's influence just like everything else. Perhaps the Undergrounds were bringing in more from non-comics arenas, but it wasn't all new all the time.
Of course nothing is completely out of the blue, but for what the comics essentially "were" in America at the time, what the looked like, what they contained, etc., the Undergrounds were a revolution.
When it comes to Fort Thunder you have to keep in mind what Alternative comics were at the time. Chris Ware, Seth, Dan Clowes, etc. These artists represented a full maturation of what came before them. In other words they were a product of evolution. The Fort Thunder threw a monkey wrench in everything.
It's not something that happens all the time, like I said it seems like a cyclical thing to me. I think continued evolution is the more likely immediate fate for art comics right now, the revolution may still be 10 years off.
Also it's important to point out that Fort Thunder didn't blast Ware, Clowes, and Seth out of the water. They just made some ripples around the boat. Ware. Clowes and Seth are all in the "victory lap" phase of their career. They aren't open to debate anymore in a sense. I'm looking forward to seeing Brinkman, Chippendale, Jones, ect take their "victory laps" over the next decade. maybe CF will do the cover to the New Yorker in 2020, ha!
I think the next (or, perhaps, just a third) category is related to conceptual concerns. Some of the folks on Blaise's lists and especially those Derik highlighted in his blog post fit more comfortably there. Whereas "art comics" deal with surfaces and "indy comics" deal with form and function meshing well in stories, this new group of creators searches for meaning within an exploration of surfaces and questions both literary values and form/function dichotomies. And I don't think it's at all about progress. I value Krazy Kat, R. Crumb, Dan Clowes, Gary Panter, Chester Brown, Sammy Harkham, Mark Bell, C.F, and Austin English pretty equally.
There is no real distinction to make between "art" and "indie". Nearly every name you mention doesn't fit neatly into those camps.
These artificial distinctions ( as in not being present in the examples, not that you're making them up) are basically your way of trying to take ownership of "art comics"..
Instead of accepting the anxieties over making comics- like the "indie" folks did- you're manufacturing little flags to wave that distract from that anxiety ( we're interested in genre comics! It doesn't matter what we write, "art comics" are more about drawing! Says who..?). It provides a nice little sense of being a part of something that can be conquered in 5 simple steps.
Ultimately, you're saying art comics are whatever makes you feel the most like you're a really good representation of art comics.
You're presenting a few things that are/were going on, but only in a very limited way- the genre stuff, for example, the desire to get over the percieved self obsessions of cartoonists who're over 40. Yeah, that stuff is going on, but it's just a reaction that's occurred in the last 5 years or so. It's what we in the biz call a trend. It might be great, but it's still a trend.
Everything going on today is of a piece with many different historical examples. I mean the guys in RAW are old enough to be your dad ( or grandad, even), and that stuff has clear, though varied, antecedents in more popular comics of yore, as well as contemporary/modern art and literature.
How different is a Taylor Mckimmens from a David Sandlin? INCHES, my friend.
"Art Comics" is a useful term, but only in circumstances when you need to describe something that is distinctly other than the popular conception of indie comics. That is to say, not super useful. It might indicate the cartoonists' concerns, but only in a very rough way.
Is Lief Goldberg more "art" than Chris Ware? Why? How so?
To be clear, I think that your particular concerns/interests might be valid, but there's no need to universalize them into some kind of "school". In fact, I think it'll detract you from exploring those concerns in a way that might satisfy you.
what about alternative comics?
those were so good.
i think they straddled some fences.
i dont remember "indie" being used as much as "alternative" in the late '90s.
i think many "art comics" creators think the term is silly. but i dont remember "alternative" cartoonists taking so much issue. i could be wrong.
also @blaise:
where does (did) highwater fit into this, in your view. the highwater website was the first place many "art comics" folks were exposed to fresh eyes. i feel like they were still seen as "alternative" somehow, just more secretive and messy.
on that same note, you do not mention the Non anthologies, a bad error.
I think it's a mixture of things that aren't causally linked. "Art comics" is a name layed on top of the work of a group of creators to supposedly signify what they're about, but it's really just an ad-hoc phrase to lump these guys together. "Alternative" was the word for this type of comics in the late-80s/early-90s when that was also what non-mainstream music was called. Before "alternative" was "underground." After "alternative" was "indy," probably because that's what weirdo music was called. "Indy" music and comics seemed to overlap because being twee and ironic were valued by a certain sect within youth culture who consumed both music and comics. The phrase "art comics" came next as a way to diverge from indy when post-Highwater/FtThunder seemed to be offering something different from the zeitgeist. These terms are naming eras, not trends, I think. There are similarities between drawers within each era because they're relatively the same age, generally, and are interested in the concerns of their era.
are some people already talking about 'surfaces' in comics while like...the rest of the world (or just America i guess) still has a 1-1 relationship with the terms 'comics' and 'superheroes'?
also uland kind of summed it up pretty well:
"Is Lief Goldberg more "art" than Chris Ware? Why? How so?"
i donno. again, why are these classifications so important to some people? that to me is more interesting. i think until comics create some kind of relevancy on a day to day level with people outside of The Dark Knight and MAYBE Black Hole, this is becoming like pure comic nerd wankery. like i cant picture reading KE 6 off my shelf and using these terms even on my art school friends to describe the comics in that book. those terms are hardly new elements being introduced to comics.
i mean, i know kirby's not 'art' enough for you guys, but didnt like 80% of his comics deal with a wandering male hero in a colorful dynamic landscape in a pretty poetic manner? i mean, i could get into 'materiality' but to me that seems kind of a loose art nerd term that outside of abstract comics and like KE 7 (because it weighs 120 lbs) have little to do with how the comics are viewed or read. but given that kirby was 'mass producing' differentiating quality pages at a relatively insane pace for a booklet that was cheap and quick to read, I'd say that if you dig deep enough there's some 'art' things to talk about there.
but i get a funny feeling in my stomach when i start basing people's work into vocabulary words.
also, when i edited my last post, i took out the phrase
"am i wrong"
really though, is it off to say that the relationships MOST people have with comics is with an odd preconception? not necesarily superheroes but one that still doesnt view comics with the same weight or 'legitimacy' as other american heavyweight 'art forms' like Jazz? l
Jason- I think it's a little early to call them eras. We're all relatively young, and we've all watched this stuff so closely, that I can see how something, say, Fort Thunder, would appear to have "changed everything", but I don't know if history will bear that out.
Also, when we talk about "alternative" vs. "indie", we're talking about the same creators, for the most part.
I think for "era" to come into use, there needs to be some clearer distinctions. There are plenty of "art" cartoonists who're a lot more like a Chris Ware than Mat Brinkman..
Just on a personal level, I think it might be fun to discuss this stuff, but man, why place these kinds of limitations on yourself? There's so much great stuff out there to draw inspiration from..I feel like codifying "art comics" is the best way to kill it.
Sam — Kirby is a way better and more relevant art cartoonist than anyone on that list..
"I feel like codifying "art comics" is the best way to kill it."
I think that's Blaise's obvious intention with this post.
on the indie/alternative type stuff. There's a certain terminology that is more about the industrial production means than the work itself.
"Alternative" comics were an alternative to mainstream comics from a production/publisher standpoint. Those alternative comics were as often as not just lo-fi version of the mainstream (or hi-fi versions of them published by someone with less money/distribution/audience).
"Indie" probably isn't the best term for the more literary-written comics out there, those that now are essential the "mainstream" in relation to the general populace. Those that get noticed in libraries, bookstores, magazines, newspapers, etc.
@Ian: I guess I still dont buy the Undergrounds as that revolutionary. They took comics and added other elements of the contemporary culture. But, I've never been a fan of the undergrounds to begin with. Too much shock for the sake of shocking and too grotesque for my tastes.
Let me help everyone out with the terms (I've got it all figured out, btw)
Indie Comics: Is a term used to describe comics that are produced by a small publisher, usually meaning "not Marvel or DC". I would probably include "not Image and Dark Horse" as well. So for the most part all Alternative, Art, and Avant-Garde comics are Indie comics. (Except maybe Graphic Novels published by large book publishers like random house.) In other words, it's more of a business term than an aesthetic term.
Alternative Comics: Any comic that is not a mainstream-style superhero comic. There are still plenty of Indie Super hero comics that are indie, but not Alternative. Alternative is an aesthetic term that relates to Mainstream Superhero comics.
Art Comics: Are Alternative comics that are created with a contemporary art sensibility.
Literary Comics: Are alternative comics with a contemporary literature sensibility.
Poetry Comics: Yes they exist, but nobody talks about them yet.
Avant-Garde Comics: Are experimental art comics that intentionally push the formal envelope.
Also, don't take any of this too seriously. it's just shorthand, not dharma.
"I think that's Blaise's obvious intention with this post."
Why are you posting anonymously, Blaise?
The thing I think we all need to keep as a baseline is the notion that comics are a form of communication first and foremost. Yeah, it can be done artfully, but comics are not inherently "art".
Poetry, art for arts sake, literature, genre; any comic can be all of those things. There is no need for these little ghettoes any longer.
Historically speaking, I think art, alternative and indie will all be spoken of in the same breath..
Think of it this way: the Undergrounds are over but Kim Deitch and Crumb are more or less making the same comics.
Or think of it this way: was Gary Panter making "art comics" in 1975? Or was he just making "comics"?
Or this way: Rothko hated Warhol. They are two very different painters. But their work is generally lumped under "Art of the 1960s".
more importantly, Frank...
why does the new comics comics site make my browser explode and close instantly?
art comics is the worst term ever. it's like saying "word books". who's responsible? and what is the opposite of art comics?
Fun Home
hahahahahahahaha
i have no time for this.
It seems to me that what we're talking about here is position-taking, not inherent artistic qualities.
My sense is that, for a long time, but perhaps not any longer, the term indy was taken to mean all sorts of comics production outside of the traditionally dominant "mainstream" (misnomer) superhero publishers. Alternative, as I understood it, had a more specific meaning, or made a more specific claim: comics tracing their inheritance to the underground or Newave or, later, the RAW and post-RAW movements. When shopping for comic books back in the mid-nineties, I understood the term indy to apply to, say, both Strangers in Paradise and Eightball, but the term alternative seemed to apply only to the latter.
I've always associated indy, not necessarily with the sort of "literary" comic typified by the recent success of books like Fun Home, but with aspirations toward what some folks, briefly, were touting as "the new mainstream," that is, the comic books in traditional format that sidestepped the superhero but still could easily be slotted into recognized market genres, comics by creators like Jeff Smith, David Lapham, et al. (remember those fond hopes of the new mainstream, back in the early to mid-nineties?).
Because comics like Fun Home were published, essentially, outside of the direct market, they really aren't "indy" in that sense. Most of the terms we're talking about here were specific to comic shops, where a label like indy became shorthand for a kind of definition-by-contrast to the so-called mainstream. Contradistinction. Outside of the cloistral environment of comic shops, the terms need not apply.
The term art comics I have often used as a sort of shorthand for everything from Kramer's to the aforementioned Fun Home. I was not aware of it being used widely to distinguish the post-Fort Thunder, post-Kramer's contingent. I didn't realize that some people use the label to denote a specific genre; I just thought it denoted an aspirational stance that includes many different genres.
Bart Beaty's book on Eurocomix, Unpopular Culture, sheds a lot of light on this kind of cultural position-taking. "This is what I am NOT," Beaty points out, has always been a more powerful descriptor than "This is what I AM." Personally, I find the impulse toward position-taking, or circling the wagons, to be counter-productive. There tends to be a kind of aggression behind the making of camps, the boundary policing of schools and movements, etc., that I find distracting and even damaging to my appreciation of the art as such.
What has happened is that what was once considered the Promised Land, that is, the recognition of comics as a "literary" form, has happened. The avant-garde, as it always does, has retreated from the terms of this success and tried to recuperate the less "respectable" aspects of the art form. Great, I think, for our appreciation of comics (I wouldn't want any pigeonhole, even the literary, to become the native habitat of comics), but at the same time problematic because, suddenly, people are having to prove their avant-garde bonafides by dissing very good comics that are conventional in idiom but ambitious in their thematic content (the art comics reception of Fun Home being a good example of this kind of backlash IMO).
I wasn't really trying to be snarky by suggesting that "Fun Home" wasn't "art comics." It seems like it's pretty understood that that term refers to post-GP comics that often employ visuals for their own sake, some self-consciously utilizing New Wave strategies (the image) to deconstruct the notion that communication is a this/that binary, some not. They seem like a reaction to the idea that there is an ideal form for comics and suitable content. The drawings in "Fun Home" are much in service to the narrative, and not really appealing on their own. Nor do they offer information that resists easy interpretation. If "Art Comics" is a real cultural phenomenon, it seems to be about aesthetics that oppose easily understood content.
'some [creators] self-consciously [utilize] New Wave strategies (the image) to deconstruct the notion that communication is a this/that binary'
who are you thinking of?
I think we need to start using examples at this point.
What comics defy a "binary" conception of comics? Doesn't literature do just that? If the image is the difference, wouldn't "literary comics" describe that?
I think we need to start using examples at this point.
What comics defy a "binary" conception of comics? Doesn't literature do just that? If the image is the difference, wouldn't "literary comics" describe that?
Or is this really about a group of young-ish artists trying to manufacture a movement in order to live out a conception of generational art that ironically rejects the very notion?
Is it that we've all been spoiled, and really do want to have it all, including inclusion in a "movement" that can be accessed safely from home?
Allright, maybe that was over the top, but I think you get the idea..
Charles: I think your last paragraph is a really good summation of the general thrust of "art comics".
I think it could be taken a step further by describing how most self-conscious "art cartoonists" would reject the idea that they're doing anything like what you describe. Here, on this blog, there seems to be an idea that it's all filtered in as long as you're sufficiently naive.
Ok, maybe it's reaching to say it's self-conscious, maybe Satoro's doing this or Austin or Jason Miles, or it's just my interpretation of what they're doing. I'm making it way too pretentious. I just mean that people are drawing rad fucking drawings because they look cool and each thing they draw doesn't have to function to enhance the storytelling. It's not a movement. It may have something to do with wanting to be underground. It may be a rejection of the post-McCloud formalism that seemed to dominate comics in the 90s and early 00s ("Is this utilizing the medium of comics to its utmost potential?" Blech). Maybe some people are bored of dry, cerebral strategies like Ware's and wanna throw their guts in the ring. I don't know, but there are people making comics that function differently from Bechdel's or Tomine's (sorry, man) or Brunetti's. And I think everybody rejects the notion that they're a part of this or that movement because all this shit is after the fact and doesn't really influence the art people make. But I think there are reasons why quite a few people are making this other thing.
And, sorry, I wasn't being clear with my terms. By "binary" I meant this is a "tree" or a "penis" or "Garfield riding lasagna" as opposed to "not-a-tree," "not-a-penis," or "not-Garfield-riding-lasagna." that there's a huge school of thought that contends that clarity (binary drawing) is of the utmost importance. That you should draw each object or phenomena (wind, heat) as a unit distinct from all the others instead of seeing the potential of making imagery that's more open to interpretation or is possibly at odds with the narrative or speech/thought balloons.
i.e, fuck the idea of comics as "writing-in-pictures."
i think mainstream and 'avant garde' mean the same thing
'fun home' is impenetrable
'wanna throw their guts in the ring'
just had an image of jackson pollock disemboweling himself onto a canvas, seemed to redeem him partially.
the image reminds me of the image i have of ozzy osbourne eating a bat or of the black 'threadless' t-shirt i bought ~8 years ago with a 'bleeding heart' illustration
it's just my personality and disposition.
thinking about the japanese 'types' in culture, seems like there is the subdued (by Buddhism?) rational, emotionless type, the 'desperate' or 'crazy' emotional type, and the zany/wacky exaggeration of the emotional type
motion in the ocean
I was just thinking about Jason's statement on the art in Fun Home as not being appealing on it's own, and also about how the same thing could be said about John Hankiewicz's art yet he's creating some of the most avant garde comics out there. So go figure I guess...
I think rad drawings is a big part of the equation, but doing really interesting things with your narrative presentation is probably even more important. The truly best "art cartoonists" over the last ten years have been the guys who have really deconstructed the presentation of their words and images in sequence. Nilsen, Chippendale, Yokoyama, Jones, to name a few off the top of my head.
"the art in Fun Home as not being appealing on it's own, and also about how the same thing could be said about John Hankiewicz's art"
Couldnt disagree with this more. John makes the msot 'appealing' (to put it extremely lightly) images around.
I wasn't dissing John's art, I understand that he creates his images that way for a reason. I'm just saying he isn't exactly Xavier Robel or some other wild visualist. His renderings are intentionally conservative and mundane in order to draw a contrast with his content and narrative, which is actually quite radical.
My point was that melting someone's eyeballs with you surface aesthetic isn't the only approach to making good art comics. It's an important aspect, but if your foundations are strong enough you can avoid it al together, and quite artfully.
If art comics are about the immediacey of the drawing above all, I'm not interested. Why wouldn't I just look at drawings?
Is there some kind of defeatist logic at work, like "I'm not super great at image making alone, and I'm not great at writing alone, but if I present an obtuse mixture of the two, I can be master of this little town.." ?
Comics are writing with pictures. There is no need for comics without it.
Jason- All though I was responding to some of the things you wrote, I wasn't really talking about you or your comics. I get that it's hard not to be sensitive about your work, but jeez...
Did I sound sensitive? Or like I was ranting? I'm just frustrated that I can't communicate what I'm talking about. It's hard to build a box to enclose these loose and jangly ideas. "Art Comics" is not just about the immediacy of the pictures. Hankiewicz is the absolute poster-child for what I'm talking about. His comics are really good at being disjunctive but engaging. And his drawings aren't what makes the comics work, but I think they're beautiful and amazing. He had some prints and other stuff up at Pony Club here in Portland a year or so ago and they blew me away - definitely my favorite pictures qua pictures in the whole show.
And obviously the sheer pleasure of drawing has very little to do with what motivates my cartooning. There's a lot of drudgery, patterning, systems building that is unrelated to image-making.
And what do you mean by "writing?"
I guess by writing I mean an image that is "read" in terms of what came before it and what comes next. Images that tell stories.
I thought you took something personally, btw. Communication on this thing is so clunky..I apologize.
I like Hankiewicz's comics a great deal, but I'm not sure that I get them in the sense that he means them to be got. That frustrates me. I think it is the beauty of the drawing that keeps me coming back. I sort of wish that drawing could be applied to a "straight" story ( relatively speaking) , maybe about the suburban area that he lives.
On that note, I have to retire from this thread. I'm really trying to ween myself off the internet..
man everyone on here is so harsh. that being said i think fun home has the ugliest art ive ever seen and have had no interest in reading it ever.
also ive never really thought of comics in comparison to literature that much. i've always thought of the storytelling in comics functioning much more like the movies, but in a more intimate and powerful way.
and in reference to what Uland said about comics with no real narrative being pointless and the idea of "why not just look at a drawing", i don't see how comics can't also just function as drawings but still be called comics. if they still represent the form and are attractive who gives a shit?
I'm kinda playing the role of advocate for some new type of comics, which has to be in opposition to what people are defining comics as right now. I can appreciate aspects of lots of different stuff, but it's very hard to think of anything as wholly "good" (like "Jimbo in Paradise" or "Helder/Showing Helder," two things that I consider masterpieces). And I think I'm more with ULAND in that I'm least attracted to comics that're just drawing, but some of these (like Blaise's Wig Wam) can also be pretty much perfect.
Snickers—
I care about comics, as a whole. I, like lots of people, have a pretty specific idea of what they'd like to see more of/less of in the world of comics.
If we look at it as just a popular/media medium, sure, whatever gets marketed and sold as "comics" is "comics".To draw it out, if comics are the radio, I'd rather hear a song, or a voice talking in complete sentences, than I would some kind of art school dropout knob twiddling . In other words, I'm open to lots of different kinds of content, but I'm not really interested in stuff that doesn't make an earnest effort to communicate something or other.
If it's all all the same, who cares if I care?
Why don't we all just agree to draw neon pizza slices? How about the medium of the t-shirt? Why not just stick with that? It's all crap, really, isn't it? Who cares if it is? Who cares about who cares?
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