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arionhunter May. 11th, 2009 05:07 pm)
arionhunter May. 11th, 2009 05:07 pm)And...this is the comics post.
One of the things I mentioned in the recent post of Ten Things About Me was that though I want to study comics, I don’t really currently read many comics. Now the why of this is heavily influenced by financial circumstances, but it’s also a part of my current distaste for the great crossover madness. Continuity, except on the large scale of overall characterization, is an aspect of comics I try to ignore. I dislike the impositions continuity can place on a comic by limiting its overall scope before an issue has even been created. But I’m also not a fan of trying to meet preset definitions of art as defined by the Great Pigeonholing Committee. Instead, I like works that are, for whatever reason, fun to me.
Which means I picked possibly the least-definable trait of all. But it’s also the most satisfying to me, for it means I also make a point to acknowledge the need (quoting Scott McCloud) to separate “the form of comics from its often inconsistent contents” while at the same time not dismissing the individual values of either. I can find fun in fantastic form with poor-to-marginal contents, and ignore bad form when it holds enjoyable contents. My values are variable and filled of influences from outside, both good and bad.
When I can’t find fun, however is when a creator treats the values of ‘craft’ and ‘art’ as mutually exclusive. In his essay “Politics of Paraliterary Criticism,” Delany notes that “in support of the concept of art, craft is a useful and fine, even necessary concept.” However, as he continues, craft is not enough to produce what is defined in its strictest sense as “art.” And those who try to go even further and “master” a medium are “the gallery of administrators and producers, those who sink their money into its creation, its distribution, its sales; those who hope that, through such mastery, they can bend art to their own whims.”
If this sounds a bit familiar, you may have picked up more than a few hints of the imprint-mad Nineties in there. Unsurprisingly, Delany goes on to note that “the results are always broken-backed, limping, incoherent pieces that, to the audience, are laughable and instantly forgettable,” for “regardless of how we like to talk about it, there is nothing there to be mastered. There are only things to be submitted to.”
That is, I think, why when I read him now Marv Wolfman seems so outdated (and Chuck Dixon is becoming the same). For his era, Wolfman was a great craftsman, able to bend to the current will of editorial and still continue to consistently put out good stories that may occasionally verge on great (see: The Judas Contract). But when I read a Wolfman story now, he tends to feel rote, almost traditional in today’s industry because his talents, consistency and strong understanding of then-current audience interests, were of the most value then. Both Wolfman and Dixon excel at writing comics in the industry’s equivalent of the journalistic Inverted Pyramid, whose structure is so pre-determined so as to make it near impossible to screw up. Their great talent for this aspect of craft allowed them to focus on the repeated establishment of solid, approved characterization.
But today’s environment is one inescapably shaped by the Grant Morrisons and Neil Gaimans, who are chameleons able to (at least initially) camouflage themselves to fit the constraints of the form they are given while still retaining their own creative flourishes. Where Alan Moore only based Watchmen on historic Charlatan characters for various reasons (one of them no doubt the fact that many of them were now owned and currently in use by DC), Morrison in Final Crisis tries to achieve the same effect, in his own unique way, with the established DC mainstream cast under Editorial’s blessing.
As the industry escapes the confines of its cultural image as the idolized nostalgia dustbin of lost childhood memories, it also goes through the growing pains of meeting the contradictions between ‘craftsmanship’ and ‘art’ in preparation for the medium’s ongoing formation of a creative canon (not unlike that of the novel roughly ninety or less years before).
Neither value is objectively bad, but both have different constraints that tend to induce sneering at the demands of the other. A fine example of this is the annotated Final Crisis book being released as a way to clear up all the continuity confusion Morrison introduced. Though Morrison aimed for ‘art,’ ‘craftsmanship’ demands that the continuity introduced by him constantly try to achieve some semblance of internal DC-wide consistency.
So the alternative problem to the craft-focused eras posits itself now: comics as a medium, especially in the Big Two, attempting to live up to “art” in its strictest sense while simultaneously trying to ignore the aspects of craftsmanship that place onto the medium certain constraints, most notably continuity. So while those (both readers and creators) who find they value craftsmanship above art in comics are no longer enticed as they once were, suddenly the “artistic” establishment ‘discovers’ comics, as if the medium had never really existed before Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, and Maus. Now comics must live up to their supposed artistic forbearers, lest they are again discarded as “childish pop culture trash.”
This is, of course, a false dichotomy. Delany rightly notes that comics will be dismissed because of their working-class esthetic, for “all working class judgments, positive and negative, are dismissed—because the class is presumed to uneducated and uneducable.” As a solution, Delany would propose that critics focus on, instead of the “definition” of comics and thus the “definitive” comic, the all-encompassing “functional description” of comics as a medium.
Which is, admittedly, all well and good, but only on a small scale sense of boutique and small press publishers. The marketable solution for large-scale publishers on whom continuity rests heavily is much more complex, pulled as they are between multiple forces. Do I have, or even think there is, a solution? Not really. Any one that could be proposed requires giving in to the need for the “definitive” creation which looks to serve only one master. But I do think Delany’s admonition to not consider “mastering” a medium a good one.
After all, who am I to say? I like “fun” comics. And on my list of fun comics?
Mr. T and the T Force.
One of the things I mentioned in the recent post of Ten Things About Me was that though I want to study comics, I don’t really currently read many comics. Now the why of this is heavily influenced by financial circumstances, but it’s also a part of my current distaste for the great crossover madness. Continuity, except on the large scale of overall characterization, is an aspect of comics I try to ignore. I dislike the impositions continuity can place on a comic by limiting its overall scope before an issue has even been created. But I’m also not a fan of trying to meet preset definitions of art as defined by the Great Pigeonholing Committee. Instead, I like works that are, for whatever reason, fun to me.
Which means I picked possibly the least-definable trait of all. But it’s also the most satisfying to me, for it means I also make a point to acknowledge the need (quoting Scott McCloud) to separate “the form of comics from its often inconsistent contents” while at the same time not dismissing the individual values of either. I can find fun in fantastic form with poor-to-marginal contents, and ignore bad form when it holds enjoyable contents. My values are variable and filled of influences from outside, both good and bad.
When I can’t find fun, however is when a creator treats the values of ‘craft’ and ‘art’ as mutually exclusive. In his essay “Politics of Paraliterary Criticism,” Delany notes that “in support of the concept of art, craft is a useful and fine, even necessary concept.” However, as he continues, craft is not enough to produce what is defined in its strictest sense as “art.” And those who try to go even further and “master” a medium are “the gallery of administrators and producers, those who sink their money into its creation, its distribution, its sales; those who hope that, through such mastery, they can bend art to their own whims.”
If this sounds a bit familiar, you may have picked up more than a few hints of the imprint-mad Nineties in there. Unsurprisingly, Delany goes on to note that “the results are always broken-backed, limping, incoherent pieces that, to the audience, are laughable and instantly forgettable,” for “regardless of how we like to talk about it, there is nothing there to be mastered. There are only things to be submitted to.”
That is, I think, why when I read him now Marv Wolfman seems so outdated (and Chuck Dixon is becoming the same). For his era, Wolfman was a great craftsman, able to bend to the current will of editorial and still continue to consistently put out good stories that may occasionally verge on great (see: The Judas Contract). But when I read a Wolfman story now, he tends to feel rote, almost traditional in today’s industry because his talents, consistency and strong understanding of then-current audience interests, were of the most value then. Both Wolfman and Dixon excel at writing comics in the industry’s equivalent of the journalistic Inverted Pyramid, whose structure is so pre-determined so as to make it near impossible to screw up. Their great talent for this aspect of craft allowed them to focus on the repeated establishment of solid, approved characterization.
But today’s environment is one inescapably shaped by the Grant Morrisons and Neil Gaimans, who are chameleons able to (at least initially) camouflage themselves to fit the constraints of the form they are given while still retaining their own creative flourishes. Where Alan Moore only based Watchmen on historic Charlatan characters for various reasons (one of them no doubt the fact that many of them were now owned and currently in use by DC), Morrison in Final Crisis tries to achieve the same effect, in his own unique way, with the established DC mainstream cast under Editorial’s blessing.
As the industry escapes the confines of its cultural image as the idolized nostalgia dustbin of lost childhood memories, it also goes through the growing pains of meeting the contradictions between ‘craftsmanship’ and ‘art’ in preparation for the medium’s ongoing formation of a creative canon (not unlike that of the novel roughly ninety or less years before).
Neither value is objectively bad, but both have different constraints that tend to induce sneering at the demands of the other. A fine example of this is the annotated Final Crisis book being released as a way to clear up all the continuity confusion Morrison introduced. Though Morrison aimed for ‘art,’ ‘craftsmanship’ demands that the continuity introduced by him constantly try to achieve some semblance of internal DC-wide consistency.
So the alternative problem to the craft-focused eras posits itself now: comics as a medium, especially in the Big Two, attempting to live up to “art” in its strictest sense while simultaneously trying to ignore the aspects of craftsmanship that place onto the medium certain constraints, most notably continuity. So while those (both readers and creators) who find they value craftsmanship above art in comics are no longer enticed as they once were, suddenly the “artistic” establishment ‘discovers’ comics, as if the medium had never really existed before Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, and Maus. Now comics must live up to their supposed artistic forbearers, lest they are again discarded as “childish pop culture trash.”
This is, of course, a false dichotomy. Delany rightly notes that comics will be dismissed because of their working-class esthetic, for “all working class judgments, positive and negative, are dismissed—because the class is presumed to uneducated and uneducable.” As a solution, Delany would propose that critics focus on, instead of the “definition” of comics and thus the “definitive” comic, the all-encompassing “functional description” of comics as a medium.
Which is, admittedly, all well and good, but only on a small scale sense of boutique and small press publishers. The marketable solution for large-scale publishers on whom continuity rests heavily is much more complex, pulled as they are between multiple forces. Do I have, or even think there is, a solution? Not really. Any one that could be proposed requires giving in to the need for the “definitive” creation which looks to serve only one master. But I do think Delany’s admonition to not consider “mastering” a medium a good one.
After all, who am I to say? I like “fun” comics. And on my list of fun comics?
Mr. T and the T Force.