This might be a bit more directionless than some of my posts, so you've been warned.
As the days have continued to pass, my mind has been continually on the topics surrounding the problems with the comic industry, how to solve them, etc. As I'm not a business expert and, at the moment, just an aspiring creator with only a small amount of independent work to show, this is all still coming from a fairly outside view. Perhaps that's a good thing, though, as most of the problems that tend to exist with comics are due to the insular nature of the current medium.
Lately, the hot button topic in regards to superhero comics has been the treatment of women. This is not a new problem, but it is one that dies down every so often. It hasn't ever actually been solved, and that baffles me. Everyone knows the stereotype. In comics, men are huge muscle-bound guys and women have huge chests and tiny waists. To a point, one can attempt to argue that both are exaggerations, and yes, they are, but they are different kinds of exaggerations. Both are an idealization, but both come from (and are for) a generally male point of view. Thus, the aspects of men in comics that are emphasized are that of physical power and strength, where as female characters tend to be idealized sexually. Posing in comics is a bit of a staple, that pause where the hero shows their power, but it is, again, quite different with male and female characters. For some reason, female heroes tend to stand in such a way so as to show off as much of their bodies as possible, many times in positions that normal human spines would snap in.
This is not just a problem with comics, either. Most all media directed towards male audiences is this way. Look at action movies, especially those that star female characters, for basically the same problem. The only real difference is that movies require actual people, so the ridiculousness of proportions doesn't happen to the same degree. But here's the thing. The physical aspects of the problem are the obvious ones and the thing that most people tend to latch onto. But in my view, they aren't truly the problem.
The problem is the next layer down, and that's characterization. Even if the art in comics changes overall to show more varied body types for female characters, none of that will do any good if the overall characterization of women in comics remains the same. While we're nearly entirely beyond the stories of the 60s and the 70s where all the women, even the Fantastic Four's Invisible Woman (Invisible Girl at the time...), are simply damsels in distress, many stories still contain obvious male/female splits when it comes to the roles they take. It is true that there are a great many more female heroes today, but they still tend to take a back seat to the men.
All of these are problems or issues that you most likely know of on some level already, whether you see it as a problem or not is up to you, but most people do realize that it's there. Yet this is all considered normal to us. Men are our action heroes culturally and have been for a thousand years. But for most of that history, when it comes to women in the stories, they exist as objects or a reason for a plot. Active roles for women in stories are a very modern thing, and the transition to female action heroes even more. Yet, somehow, female action heroes are sexualized in ways that males are not. The obvious reason is that the action genre in any medium (TV, Comics, Movies, Books) is aimed at men, and it's no secret that sex sells.
But to me, this feels wrong. Usually, these are subjects tackled by women, something I am very much not. I don't claim to have some special insight, but the thing is, I don't think it's necessary. To me, this kind of thing has never been a so-called "Women's Issue" and I've always felt that framing it as such misses the point. The longer we bury ourselves in this thinking, the longer we'll have to deal with bad stories and the more we put off new, great things.
It is possible to tell a good action story with a female lead that doesn't rely on her being half-naked or constantly posing for the viewer. In fact, it has been done more than once. That isn't the issue. I'm not saying this doesn't exist, just that it should be the norm. Young girls deserve to have role models in Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Wasp, and even Mary Jane Watson without their only actions being centered around sexualization. And that doesn't mean some characters can't be more focused on sex. Some people are. Men and women.
But, again, it shouldn't be the norm.
Not only that, but those women that do read comics shouldn't be ridiculed when they point out these problems. No one should. If this medium is going to continue, it's going to need men and women reading. The explosion of manga a few years back proved that girls will, indeed, read comics if you give them subjects they want to read. And thankfully, while the big two companies may be slow to change, the indie market will continue to lead the charge into places where we should have been all along. Hopefully, as indie creators push forward, Marvel and DC won't wait too long to catch up.
Showing posts with label rambling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rambling. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Future of Comics
I've spent the last few posts talking all about the history of American Comics and I hope all twelve of you reading enjoyed that, because now we're going to move from the world of facts to a place that I've slowly been moving things towards since the last update all about art in the 90s.
Time for some wild speculation that will all be proven wrong in just a few years!
Now, the comics industry is in a very odd place right now, a great deal of which is due to the world of digital comics. Webcomics exploded years ago and the market is so over saturated that, while there is a great deal of good out there, it's hard to sift through it all to find that. And really, there is a ton of gold out there to be found, but I'll talk more about that another time. Right now, though, digital comics on the iPad and other similar devices is what the industry is grappling with.
In many ways, it's a fight similar to the battle that books are having with e-readers, just on a smaller scale. The two major players in the industry, Marvel and DC, both have their own apps within which one can download comics at a price that is usually comparable to the same price of print comics, but until very recently, one could only get older comics, nothing brand new, digitally. Though this has changed, the problem of pricing remains and highlights the major problem that both Marvel and DC run into with digital: the fear to be the first to dive in head first.
Some would say that, with DC's recent relaunch of their entire line of comics, they've taken this dive already. And yes, DC has made some good steps, with Marvel doing much the same. Both now make all, in the case of DC, and nearly all, Marvel, of their comics available digitally every Wednesday, the day new comics are released in old fashioned, brick and mortar stores. But the prices, as mentioned, are horrid. $2-$4 for a digital copy of a roughly twenty page comic? That just won't work. Not for long, at least.
Digital is going to grow, one way or another, and it's vital for their survival that both Marvel and DC figure out how to do things reasonably. Partial stories delivered monthly like serials of old, the current model of the industry, is a dangerous gamble when combined with the instant gratification that digital creates. Is the cost worth the time to read and then the time to wait for the next issue? At the moment, no, so two obvious things definitely need to happen, though when and if they actually do is questionable.
First, page counts for digital comics need to go up. Someway, somehow, the publishers have got to find a way to release larger books digitally. The idea of digital trades, collections of finished stories that put all the single issues together, is already out there and being done, and the pricing is a bit better, but it still isn't enough. If one is expected to pay $4 for a digital comic, at least double the size of the book. 40 pages for that price begins to feel more reasonable, and even more so at $2. Yes, it's low, but that's how digital works. The music world has gone through this with iTunes and you'd be hard pressed to find many people that are willing to pay more than $0.99 for a single song. A comic needs to be as near that price point as possible.
But this is more an issue for the Now than the Future, so I'll stop going in circles and try to look ahead here.
So yes, I have no doubts that digital is the future, at least in some form. And I also believe that, like books, the physical comics will never truly disappear, though they may become a smaller and smaller piece of the market on the whole. There will always be a group that want the physical things, the music world is, again, a good example of this.
Stories will likely find a middle ground between the current trend of heavily serialized, overarching story lines and the classic so-called "one and done" story, which is more self contained, obviously. In some ways, this is a fight of style that will never truly go away, but the last few decades stories seem to have shifted dramatically from one side to the other, with the industry more strongly on the side of heavy serialization right now. But these things tend to balance out over time, and both types have merit. I'm fairly sure the industry needs to do both, instead of one or the other, if only to bring in more readers who prefer different types of storytelling. You'd be amazed, or perhaps not at all, but how many fans have left comics in the last decade because they feel they can no longer pick up any single issue and enjoy it on its own.
Beyond this, I do think webcomics will mature on the whole. I'd like to believe that we can move away from all webcomics needing to be joke-a-day style comics and push into more serious topics and genres. The content delivery of the internet shouldn't restrict the genre and the main reason for the current over saturation is that 90% of webcomics really are just the same joke style comics as everything else...and not funny. There have always been a small number of more serious, traditional-styled comics and stories in the webcomic world, and I'm glad to see more and more appearing in the last couple of years. If these kinds of webcomics are allowed to grow, it will only do good and, at the very least, allow more people the chance to tell stories and possibly even get noticed by the industry at large.
There is one major danger in looking forward, though, and that is nostalgia. In many ways, American comics are built on nostalgia, and to a point that's okay. But if the industry gets caught up in only catering to the group that wants to relive their childhood through comics, things will not continue for long. New is vital. And new can be done with old things. Some of the best stories with classic characters have been told in recent years, and I have no doubt that even better stories lie ahead, but none of that can happen if the industry allows itself to grow smaller and smaller without reaching out beyond its current audience.
In many ways, that's why I made this blog and write all of these long winded ramblings about why I love comics and feel they're a legitimate art form. There is something here for everyone, but that still requires the publishers to put it out there FOR everyone.
Okay, well, it looks like I had less to speculate about than I'd thought. Still, there are a couple of similar topics to this I want to talk about all on their own. So as the days go by, I'll have another artist-specific post finally go up, tackle webcomics in a much more focused way, and probably finally get around to talking about this DC relaunch and what it means...since this Wednesday marks the last of their new books and it'll be a perfect time to look at how this can be a good or bad thing for the industry, both artistically and overall viability.
Oh, and one last thing. My last post I horribly disparaged the long-running, never ending Spider-Man story, The Clone Saga. I want to remedy that cruelness. Yes, it continued to almost end and then go on, and when it finally did end, no one was happy and it was a convoluted mess, but I will say one very good things came out of it that probably shows, more than anything, my age. Spider-Man's clone, Ben Reilly, is a great character and one that deserves a return. So there, the Clone Saga wasn't all bad. Just...mostly bad.
Time for some wild speculation that will all be proven wrong in just a few years!
Now, the comics industry is in a very odd place right now, a great deal of which is due to the world of digital comics. Webcomics exploded years ago and the market is so over saturated that, while there is a great deal of good out there, it's hard to sift through it all to find that. And really, there is a ton of gold out there to be found, but I'll talk more about that another time. Right now, though, digital comics on the iPad and other similar devices is what the industry is grappling with.
In many ways, it's a fight similar to the battle that books are having with e-readers, just on a smaller scale. The two major players in the industry, Marvel and DC, both have their own apps within which one can download comics at a price that is usually comparable to the same price of print comics, but until very recently, one could only get older comics, nothing brand new, digitally. Though this has changed, the problem of pricing remains and highlights the major problem that both Marvel and DC run into with digital: the fear to be the first to dive in head first.
Some would say that, with DC's recent relaunch of their entire line of comics, they've taken this dive already. And yes, DC has made some good steps, with Marvel doing much the same. Both now make all, in the case of DC, and nearly all, Marvel, of their comics available digitally every Wednesday, the day new comics are released in old fashioned, brick and mortar stores. But the prices, as mentioned, are horrid. $2-$4 for a digital copy of a roughly twenty page comic? That just won't work. Not for long, at least.
Digital is going to grow, one way or another, and it's vital for their survival that both Marvel and DC figure out how to do things reasonably. Partial stories delivered monthly like serials of old, the current model of the industry, is a dangerous gamble when combined with the instant gratification that digital creates. Is the cost worth the time to read and then the time to wait for the next issue? At the moment, no, so two obvious things definitely need to happen, though when and if they actually do is questionable.
First, page counts for digital comics need to go up. Someway, somehow, the publishers have got to find a way to release larger books digitally. The idea of digital trades, collections of finished stories that put all the single issues together, is already out there and being done, and the pricing is a bit better, but it still isn't enough. If one is expected to pay $4 for a digital comic, at least double the size of the book. 40 pages for that price begins to feel more reasonable, and even more so at $2. Yes, it's low, but that's how digital works. The music world has gone through this with iTunes and you'd be hard pressed to find many people that are willing to pay more than $0.99 for a single song. A comic needs to be as near that price point as possible.
But this is more an issue for the Now than the Future, so I'll stop going in circles and try to look ahead here.
So yes, I have no doubts that digital is the future, at least in some form. And I also believe that, like books, the physical comics will never truly disappear, though they may become a smaller and smaller piece of the market on the whole. There will always be a group that want the physical things, the music world is, again, a good example of this.
Stories will likely find a middle ground between the current trend of heavily serialized, overarching story lines and the classic so-called "one and done" story, which is more self contained, obviously. In some ways, this is a fight of style that will never truly go away, but the last few decades stories seem to have shifted dramatically from one side to the other, with the industry more strongly on the side of heavy serialization right now. But these things tend to balance out over time, and both types have merit. I'm fairly sure the industry needs to do both, instead of one or the other, if only to bring in more readers who prefer different types of storytelling. You'd be amazed, or perhaps not at all, but how many fans have left comics in the last decade because they feel they can no longer pick up any single issue and enjoy it on its own.
Beyond this, I do think webcomics will mature on the whole. I'd like to believe that we can move away from all webcomics needing to be joke-a-day style comics and push into more serious topics and genres. The content delivery of the internet shouldn't restrict the genre and the main reason for the current over saturation is that 90% of webcomics really are just the same joke style comics as everything else...and not funny. There have always been a small number of more serious, traditional-styled comics and stories in the webcomic world, and I'm glad to see more and more appearing in the last couple of years. If these kinds of webcomics are allowed to grow, it will only do good and, at the very least, allow more people the chance to tell stories and possibly even get noticed by the industry at large.
There is one major danger in looking forward, though, and that is nostalgia. In many ways, American comics are built on nostalgia, and to a point that's okay. But if the industry gets caught up in only catering to the group that wants to relive their childhood through comics, things will not continue for long. New is vital. And new can be done with old things. Some of the best stories with classic characters have been told in recent years, and I have no doubt that even better stories lie ahead, but none of that can happen if the industry allows itself to grow smaller and smaller without reaching out beyond its current audience.
In many ways, that's why I made this blog and write all of these long winded ramblings about why I love comics and feel they're a legitimate art form. There is something here for everyone, but that still requires the publishers to put it out there FOR everyone.
Okay, well, it looks like I had less to speculate about than I'd thought. Still, there are a couple of similar topics to this I want to talk about all on their own. So as the days go by, I'll have another artist-specific post finally go up, tackle webcomics in a much more focused way, and probably finally get around to talking about this DC relaunch and what it means...since this Wednesday marks the last of their new books and it'll be a perfect time to look at how this can be a good or bad thing for the industry, both artistically and overall viability.
Oh, and one last thing. My last post I horribly disparaged the long-running, never ending Spider-Man story, The Clone Saga. I want to remedy that cruelness. Yes, it continued to almost end and then go on, and when it finally did end, no one was happy and it was a convoluted mess, but I will say one very good things came out of it that probably shows, more than anything, my age. Spider-Man's clone, Ben Reilly, is a great character and one that deserves a return. So there, the Clone Saga wasn't all bad. Just...mostly bad.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
A Look at Comics History: The Modern Age (Part 2)
Continuing from my last post, still rambling on about the so-called Modern Age of Comics.
One of the biggest things to happen in the early 90s was the rise of independent publishers. Yes, there have always been many comic book publishing companies out there through all of comics history, but in the 90s, things went fairly crazy. The real why and how is, of course, complicated, but as this is my blog, I'm going to attribute it to one major development: The idea of comic creators as celebrities...minor ones, but still.
In the late 80s and early 90s, a long fight finally came to a head. The creator's rights movement finally gained enough strength to actually get some fairly major things done. Jack Kirby, without a doubt the most influential creator in comics from the Golden Age on, got into a heated legal dispute with Marvel Comics over the return of his original artwork over the years, much of which had supposedly disappeared. Its important to realize that, for the majority of comics history, original pages meant nothing to most people. The companies kept the original pages in warehouses or anywhere, really, if they kept them at all, but it was never a concern that the artist get the pages back. As time went on, this changed and some publishers, Marvel in particular, were quite difficult when it came to returning original pages. Jack Kirby, an icon for comics creators for obvious reasons, became a rallying point for other creators and this legal fight fueled the fires of more creator-owned works.
At the same time, newer artists were gaining popularity to the point where they became huge names, not just in the industry, but some even in popular culture of the day. Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and Rob Liefeld are probably the biggest names among them, but there were quite a few others. After time working for the two major publishers, their growing starpower mixed with a desire to actually own the work they were doing led to the creation of Image Comics. Image was founded on very strong creator's rights ideals, mainly that the company itself did not own the characters that were being published.
Image was really just a publishing center that consisted of multiple studios, each led by the various founding members. When Image launched, it truly did rock the foundations of comics at the time. Books like Spawn, Youngblood, and Savage Dragon made huge waves, directly and easily competing with the biggest Marvel and DC books of the time. But, at the same time, Image tended to capitalize on the problems of comics as a whole in the 90s, and is seen by many as a perfect example of what went wrong: tons of variant covers, foil, stories that tended towards flash more than substance, etc. These things, of course, have their fans, so I don't want it thought that I'm throwing out summary judgements, but its important to note.
Also important is that Image was in no way the only independent publisher to see success in the 90s. Valiant Comics, headed by former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, revived smaller books from the 60s and 70s such as Doctor Solar and Magnus Robot Fighter, along with creating its own line of superhero comics. Also of note is the publication of Art Spiegelman's Maus, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and is a book that, to this day, has some of the strongest penetration into non-comic reading markets.
Now, most people tend to consider that we are, today, still in the same era of comics as all of this. I'm going to be different and say we are not. Comics from the mid 80s and through the 90s were a very specific thing, and as was mentioned in the last post, the entire industry barely survived the decade. But in 2000, subtle changes that were coming over a few years began to show themselves and, in my opinion, what comics had been in the 90s ended firmly.
In 2000, a still barely-surviving Marvel Comics launched a new line of comics, called Ultimate Marvel. This saw classic Marvel characters completely re-imagined in the modern world, starting over completely from the beginning, and in no way connected to the previous comics, which still ran side by side. The flagship book was, unsurprisingly, Ultimate Spider-Man, which brought Peter Parker very much back to his roots as a character.
Coupled with this new line of comics was an even more important development that happened at both Marvel and DC at roughly the same time. Throughout the 1990s, artist were king. Stories rarely mattered, and it was all about flashy art and big, explosive ideas that didn't necessarily come together well. Everything centered around the artists and trying to shock readers with supposedly "gritty" stories that just tended to mean they were ultraviolent and childishly full of blood. Some time right around the year 2000, both companies shifted towards a more writer focused aim. Story grew to be more important, though the art wasn't thrown to the side.
While I am an artist and truly love good comic book art, this is a decision that likely both saved the industry and will see it grow into something more as time goes on. Now, some older troubles in writing still continue, as I mentioned last time, both companies rely on yearly summer Event Comics that supposedly shake up the universe but rarely do. Its a cycle that will, hopefully, be moved away from in time, as it has the potential to just devolve into the same troubles stories had in the 90s, but that's a thing for me to talk about later.
The key point to make with all of this is that I think the so-called Modern Age of Comics only lasted from 1985 to 2000. And no, that doesn't mean we're in the Post-Modern Age now, or even the Digital Age, though things are heading that way. I don't know what to call where we are now, but its clearly something distinctly different from what happened in the 1990s.
Next post will be one more talking about this era as a whole, and I'm going to head back to a focus that really is important to me: Art. The good and the bad and thoughts on it all. Then, after that, just maybe, I'll finally get to thinking on the possibilities of what the future holds.
One of the biggest things to happen in the early 90s was the rise of independent publishers. Yes, there have always been many comic book publishing companies out there through all of comics history, but in the 90s, things went fairly crazy. The real why and how is, of course, complicated, but as this is my blog, I'm going to attribute it to one major development: The idea of comic creators as celebrities...minor ones, but still.
In the late 80s and early 90s, a long fight finally came to a head. The creator's rights movement finally gained enough strength to actually get some fairly major things done. Jack Kirby, without a doubt the most influential creator in comics from the Golden Age on, got into a heated legal dispute with Marvel Comics over the return of his original artwork over the years, much of which had supposedly disappeared. Its important to realize that, for the majority of comics history, original pages meant nothing to most people. The companies kept the original pages in warehouses or anywhere, really, if they kept them at all, but it was never a concern that the artist get the pages back. As time went on, this changed and some publishers, Marvel in particular, were quite difficult when it came to returning original pages. Jack Kirby, an icon for comics creators for obvious reasons, became a rallying point for other creators and this legal fight fueled the fires of more creator-owned works.
At the same time, newer artists were gaining popularity to the point where they became huge names, not just in the industry, but some even in popular culture of the day. Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and Rob Liefeld are probably the biggest names among them, but there were quite a few others. After time working for the two major publishers, their growing starpower mixed with a desire to actually own the work they were doing led to the creation of Image Comics. Image was founded on very strong creator's rights ideals, mainly that the company itself did not own the characters that were being published.Image was really just a publishing center that consisted of multiple studios, each led by the various founding members. When Image launched, it truly did rock the foundations of comics at the time. Books like Spawn, Youngblood, and Savage Dragon made huge waves, directly and easily competing with the biggest Marvel and DC books of the time. But, at the same time, Image tended to capitalize on the problems of comics as a whole in the 90s, and is seen by many as a perfect example of what went wrong: tons of variant covers, foil, stories that tended towards flash more than substance, etc. These things, of course, have their fans, so I don't want it thought that I'm throwing out summary judgements, but its important to note.
Also important is that Image was in no way the only independent publisher to see success in the 90s. Valiant Comics, headed by former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, revived smaller books from the 60s and 70s such as Doctor Solar and Magnus Robot Fighter, along with creating its own line of superhero comics. Also of note is the publication of Art Spiegelman's Maus, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and is a book that, to this day, has some of the strongest penetration into non-comic reading markets.Now, most people tend to consider that we are, today, still in the same era of comics as all of this. I'm going to be different and say we are not. Comics from the mid 80s and through the 90s were a very specific thing, and as was mentioned in the last post, the entire industry barely survived the decade. But in 2000, subtle changes that were coming over a few years began to show themselves and, in my opinion, what comics had been in the 90s ended firmly.
In 2000, a still barely-surviving Marvel Comics launched a new line of comics, called Ultimate Marvel. This saw classic Marvel characters completely re-imagined in the modern world, starting over completely from the beginning, and in no way connected to the previous comics, which still ran side by side. The flagship book was, unsurprisingly, Ultimate Spider-Man, which brought Peter Parker very much back to his roots as a character.Coupled with this new line of comics was an even more important development that happened at both Marvel and DC at roughly the same time. Throughout the 1990s, artist were king. Stories rarely mattered, and it was all about flashy art and big, explosive ideas that didn't necessarily come together well. Everything centered around the artists and trying to shock readers with supposedly "gritty" stories that just tended to mean they were ultraviolent and childishly full of blood. Some time right around the year 2000, both companies shifted towards a more writer focused aim. Story grew to be more important, though the art wasn't thrown to the side.
While I am an artist and truly love good comic book art, this is a decision that likely both saved the industry and will see it grow into something more as time goes on. Now, some older troubles in writing still continue, as I mentioned last time, both companies rely on yearly summer Event Comics that supposedly shake up the universe but rarely do. Its a cycle that will, hopefully, be moved away from in time, as it has the potential to just devolve into the same troubles stories had in the 90s, but that's a thing for me to talk about later.
The key point to make with all of this is that I think the so-called Modern Age of Comics only lasted from 1985 to 2000. And no, that doesn't mean we're in the Post-Modern Age now, or even the Digital Age, though things are heading that way. I don't know what to call where we are now, but its clearly something distinctly different from what happened in the 1990s.
Next post will be one more talking about this era as a whole, and I'm going to head back to a focus that really is important to me: Art. The good and the bad and thoughts on it all. Then, after that, just maybe, I'll finally get to thinking on the possibilities of what the future holds.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
The Superhero Genre
When the word 'comics' comes up, in many cases, its shorthand for 'superhero comics'. Comics are, as I've addressed a few times and is fairly easy to see looking beyond the surface, a medium and not a genre, but that's neither here nor there. In many ways, American comics ARE superheroes. There are a multitude of reasons for this, but one of the main ones being that, as comics struggled through the 50s and 60s, almost all the other genres that were popular at the time (romance, horror, scifi comics, etc) just didn't survive while superhero books did. A complicated history led to all of this, but right now I want to focus on the genre itself rather than the why.
But before going further, a clarification is important to make here. Superheroes are a genre, yes, but not as specific as something like science fiction. The superhero genre really is a larger, overarching idea that can and does encompass practically any genre one could want. There's science fiction (Fantastic Four, Green Lantern), horror (Hellboy, Ghost Rider), crime/noir (Batman), and various others depending on exactly how you want to nail things down. But while the specifics can alter based on these sub-genres of the superhero idea, the base is there.
And really, the idea of a superhero is pretty simple. So simple that most everyone understands the concept and the genre itself without needing any explanation. Yet superheroes are generally considered childish fantasies or something only for a fringe group of older fans of the characters. This is so extreme that it goes to the point where superheroes alone are the main reason why many people never give comics a chance as a medium, thinking its all ridiculous stories about people fighting crime while wearing tights. Its hard to fault this point of view, but it brings me to a thought that has been on my mind for a while now that I wanted to address.
It has been said many times by people much smarter than I that Superman, Spider-Man, and all the other heroes are the modern equivalents of the classic mythical heroes like Hercules and Perseus. That singular, powerful hero with abilities beyond the normal human, be it in intelligence or actual powers, who comes to save the day for the mortals. While the dressings are different, the core is the same. These classic stories aren't just for kids or some select group, and neither should superheroes. Sure, kids SHOULD have comics for them, and that's a problem all in its own, but the very idea isn't exclusively limited to an age group.
In fact, there is another modern equivalence to all of this that really only removes the tights from the equation: the action hero. Die Hard, Rambo, Predator, the James Bond movies, the Indiana Jones movies, and countless more present characters that are, essentially, superheroes. They are idealized humans in various ways that, in almost all cases, at the very least have the power to take insane punishments and keep fighting. Strip away many of the dressings and here, again, we have mythical heroes of a modern time.
All of these characters, from Hercules to Spider-Man to James Bond, are ingrained in our culture at a very deep level. But if there is so much similarity here, is it really something as simple as tights and powers that hold superheroes back still?
Maybe.
But then again, maybe not.
All of these archetypes of heroes have their own specific uniforms, just some are more innocuous than others. James Bond has his tuxedo and gadgets, Indiana Jones his fedora and bullwhip, Perseus has his polished shield and helm of darkness, and Batman his tights and utility belt. Signature identifying pieces of all these characters and they all tend to share a great deal with one another. But these days, we tend to accept the action hero with normal clothes and a gun, with the amazing power to never be shot unless its dramatically appropriate, over someone with bulletproof skin, saying that the latter is somehow more of a childish fantasy.
It isn't, of course. They're both equally ridiculous, and that's really what I've been working my way around constantly here. Not only that, but it isn't necessarily something that will always remain so. Trends and cultural ideas have a habit of changing, and the rise of superheroes in movies seems to be pushing them into a more accepted cultural place. Obviously, I think this is a very good thing. There is much more to many superheroes than the fact that they just punch bad guys, a strong contrast to most modern action heroes that...well, just shoot bad guys.
The real hope I have behind all of this, which I think is the hope of most any sane person that enjoys superheroes, is that the rise of superhero movies does help turn more to the comics. There is something for everyone in the medium, kids and adults alike, and even if a person swears they hate superheroes...there's a chance they might just not have found the right one yet.
But before going further, a clarification is important to make here. Superheroes are a genre, yes, but not as specific as something like science fiction. The superhero genre really is a larger, overarching idea that can and does encompass practically any genre one could want. There's science fiction (Fantastic Four, Green Lantern), horror (Hellboy, Ghost Rider), crime/noir (Batman), and various others depending on exactly how you want to nail things down. But while the specifics can alter based on these sub-genres of the superhero idea, the base is there.
And really, the idea of a superhero is pretty simple. So simple that most everyone understands the concept and the genre itself without needing any explanation. Yet superheroes are generally considered childish fantasies or something only for a fringe group of older fans of the characters. This is so extreme that it goes to the point where superheroes alone are the main reason why many people never give comics a chance as a medium, thinking its all ridiculous stories about people fighting crime while wearing tights. Its hard to fault this point of view, but it brings me to a thought that has been on my mind for a while now that I wanted to address.
It has been said many times by people much smarter than I that Superman, Spider-Man, and all the other heroes are the modern equivalents of the classic mythical heroes like Hercules and Perseus. That singular, powerful hero with abilities beyond the normal human, be it in intelligence or actual powers, who comes to save the day for the mortals. While the dressings are different, the core is the same. These classic stories aren't just for kids or some select group, and neither should superheroes. Sure, kids SHOULD have comics for them, and that's a problem all in its own, but the very idea isn't exclusively limited to an age group.
In fact, there is another modern equivalence to all of this that really only removes the tights from the equation: the action hero. Die Hard, Rambo, Predator, the James Bond movies, the Indiana Jones movies, and countless more present characters that are, essentially, superheroes. They are idealized humans in various ways that, in almost all cases, at the very least have the power to take insane punishments and keep fighting. Strip away many of the dressings and here, again, we have mythical heroes of a modern time.
All of these characters, from Hercules to Spider-Man to James Bond, are ingrained in our culture at a very deep level. But if there is so much similarity here, is it really something as simple as tights and powers that hold superheroes back still?
Maybe.
But then again, maybe not.
All of these archetypes of heroes have their own specific uniforms, just some are more innocuous than others. James Bond has his tuxedo and gadgets, Indiana Jones his fedora and bullwhip, Perseus has his polished shield and helm of darkness, and Batman his tights and utility belt. Signature identifying pieces of all these characters and they all tend to share a great deal with one another. But these days, we tend to accept the action hero with normal clothes and a gun, with the amazing power to never be shot unless its dramatically appropriate, over someone with bulletproof skin, saying that the latter is somehow more of a childish fantasy.
It isn't, of course. They're both equally ridiculous, and that's really what I've been working my way around constantly here. Not only that, but it isn't necessarily something that will always remain so. Trends and cultural ideas have a habit of changing, and the rise of superheroes in movies seems to be pushing them into a more accepted cultural place. Obviously, I think this is a very good thing. There is much more to many superheroes than the fact that they just punch bad guys, a strong contrast to most modern action heroes that...well, just shoot bad guys.
The real hope I have behind all of this, which I think is the hope of most any sane person that enjoys superheroes, is that the rise of superhero movies does help turn more to the comics. There is something for everyone in the medium, kids and adults alike, and even if a person swears they hate superheroes...there's a chance they might just not have found the right one yet.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
A Few Thoughts on My Artist Posts
Okay, this is going to be a bit short. I've been having some trouble writing more Artists You Should Know, and instead of staring at a blank page about it, I figured I'd tackle it head on and make a post all about that problem.
The goal of all of those posts is, of course, to widen the notice of very good artists and storytellers to an audience that may not know they exist and may think of comics as just a bunch of crude drawings to tell jokes. Now, as I've said over and over, my real goal is to present these people to other artists in the fine art world and the art education world: professors, students, etc. I know at least a few read the blog, so its working some, I hope, but I'm trying to find ways to really push these to people like art professors more without being annoying. Sure, comic fans may already have an awareness of these artists, and that's great, but what about those young art students that are just learning art history? Don't they deserve to learn about comic masters and modern comic artists as much as the fine art world?
I'm purposefully focusing on more modern, working artists for these posts. This is mainly due to the fact that there are already tons of resources for information and validation of guys like Jack Kirby and and Will Eisner. The masters that made comics what they are today and really defined a style and way of telling stories sequentially are well dealt with in other places. But working artists now? Not really so much, so I figure I could say a few things and get some eyes on people.
Which comes to the real stumbling block with the artist pieces I do here: picking an artist. There are so, so many current artists that deserve attention. Oddly enough, this large amount of people I want to talk about, even removing the greats of the past, is still enough to cause me to be unsure of who to talk about next.
So as a bit of a tease, here are the people on my not-so-short list for the future: Paolo Rivera, Sara Pichelli, David Aja, Dustin Weaver, Stuart Immonen, Jock, Alex Maleev, Stefano Caselli, Humberto Ramos, Marcos Martin, Olivier Coipel, Mark Morales, Laura Martin, Francis Manapul, Salvador Larocca, Frank Quitely, and a ton of others. They'll come in no particular order and that's the tough part, but they'll come.
The key point I keep harping on is the true struggle, though. These men and women are artists that are ignored by a large section of the art world that teach new artists. If comics get a mention at all, its usually much more 'indie' creators that tend to be something closer to post-modern artists and that opens a whole different can of worms. I am, clearly, a firm believer that more 'traditional' comic artists deserve just as much recognition in an art history course covering modern times as any fine artist, and that's why I keep hitting these points over and over.
Superhero comics are a truly American art form. They aren't kitsch, and the artists that work on them do not deserve to be brushed aside as they are continuing a tradition of American art that has gone unnoticed only because of how easily available it is to the masses. And beyond even that is the other point I'll never let go of: The ability to tell a story in series of static images is in no way easy, and it is a skill that can help nearly any artist.
So there's a slight rant from me, mostly on the mild side. In many ways, I wish I had been this strongly dedicated to these ideas when I was in college, but better late than never! And, hey, if you have any desire to see my own attempts at making comics, with, of course, my wonderful wife, check out our art blog as we finally start growing it. Yes, that's the second shameless plug, but I'm allowed that!
Don't worry, next post will be either one of the artist talks or another more heady, philosophical talk! I shall cease this rambling mess for now! Enjoy the holiday weekend.
The goal of all of those posts is, of course, to widen the notice of very good artists and storytellers to an audience that may not know they exist and may think of comics as just a bunch of crude drawings to tell jokes. Now, as I've said over and over, my real goal is to present these people to other artists in the fine art world and the art education world: professors, students, etc. I know at least a few read the blog, so its working some, I hope, but I'm trying to find ways to really push these to people like art professors more without being annoying. Sure, comic fans may already have an awareness of these artists, and that's great, but what about those young art students that are just learning art history? Don't they deserve to learn about comic masters and modern comic artists as much as the fine art world?
I'm purposefully focusing on more modern, working artists for these posts. This is mainly due to the fact that there are already tons of resources for information and validation of guys like Jack Kirby and and Will Eisner. The masters that made comics what they are today and really defined a style and way of telling stories sequentially are well dealt with in other places. But working artists now? Not really so much, so I figure I could say a few things and get some eyes on people.
Which comes to the real stumbling block with the artist pieces I do here: picking an artist. There are so, so many current artists that deserve attention. Oddly enough, this large amount of people I want to talk about, even removing the greats of the past, is still enough to cause me to be unsure of who to talk about next.
So as a bit of a tease, here are the people on my not-so-short list for the future: Paolo Rivera, Sara Pichelli, David Aja, Dustin Weaver, Stuart Immonen, Jock, Alex Maleev, Stefano Caselli, Humberto Ramos, Marcos Martin, Olivier Coipel, Mark Morales, Laura Martin, Francis Manapul, Salvador Larocca, Frank Quitely, and a ton of others. They'll come in no particular order and that's the tough part, but they'll come.
The key point I keep harping on is the true struggle, though. These men and women are artists that are ignored by a large section of the art world that teach new artists. If comics get a mention at all, its usually much more 'indie' creators that tend to be something closer to post-modern artists and that opens a whole different can of worms. I am, clearly, a firm believer that more 'traditional' comic artists deserve just as much recognition in an art history course covering modern times as any fine artist, and that's why I keep hitting these points over and over.
Superhero comics are a truly American art form. They aren't kitsch, and the artists that work on them do not deserve to be brushed aside as they are continuing a tradition of American art that has gone unnoticed only because of how easily available it is to the masses. And beyond even that is the other point I'll never let go of: The ability to tell a story in series of static images is in no way easy, and it is a skill that can help nearly any artist.
So there's a slight rant from me, mostly on the mild side. In many ways, I wish I had been this strongly dedicated to these ideas when I was in college, but better late than never! And, hey, if you have any desire to see my own attempts at making comics, with, of course, my wonderful wife, check out our art blog as we finally start growing it. Yes, that's the second shameless plug, but I'm allowed that!
Don't worry, next post will be either one of the artist talks or another more heady, philosophical talk! I shall cease this rambling mess for now! Enjoy the holiday weekend.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Roy Lichtenstein: Plagiarist or Art Thief?
Okay. Before this gets going, two warnings. First: this is likely to be a very long entry. I may even divide it up into two posts. So get comfy. Second: This will, most likely, be my only negative talk about an artist. This is a topic that makes me very angry. In fact, my anger over this topic is part of the reason this blog exists in the first place. There is a distinct possibility I will be much less formal and devolve into angry ranting. I shall do my best to avoid this, but you've been warned. This is something I'm very passionate about.
So. Roy Lichtenstein. His art is loved by artists, teachers, critics, historians, and students alike. Everyone knows "his" work, and those quotes are there for a reason as can likely be inferred from the title of this post alone. Every single art history class mentions him in some form, be it at a high school or college level. He is supposedly a great master of Pop Art, one of the first, even. His taking of comic panels and turning them into larger paintings is still seen as a great use of "low art" and turning it into "high art."
To that, I give you a simple response that can sum up my entire feelings on this without any pretense.
Bull. Shit.
First, it must be made clear that my anger towards Lichtenstein is not because I'm some crazed lover of comics. Clearly, I love comics. Clearly, I believe comics should be treated as art and not some trash to be ignored. And guess what? Lichtenstein is the poster child for the problem. His copies of panels from master comic artists are insipid pieces that only have any life because of the original artists, not his work. Not to mention the fact that nearly all of his copies are inferior to the originals on basic levels, such as line quality, form, etc. And on top of THAT, his lettering is offensively bad all on its own. Oh, and on top of even that, there's the fact that he never credited the original artists, selling his copies for millions while the actual artists saw nothing of it and some spent their lives struggling to make it.
Now before I get into direct comparisons between his "art" and the original works, I want to shoot down the usual counters to these points I'm making. I've already hit on the fact that comics are not "low art" and that the artists behind the originals are worthy of far more praise than they ever have received from the art community, but just keep repeating that because its going in circles in my head.
The other major thing is the idea of Pop Art. One of the other major players in the Pop Art movement was Andy Warhol. Everyone knows his work to some degree. Soup cans, Marilyn Monroe, etc. He stole, too, and while I have a special hatred for some of his work for similar reasons, Lichtenstein was specifically stealing from OTHER artists at the time and essentially taking credit for their work, all the while letting the art world continue to belittle them. But on the idea of Pop Art, the twisting of popular culture into "art" and playing on ideas of mass production and similar themes, Lichtenstein's work STILL doesn't qualify as worthy of praise. Why? Because it is simple plagiarism, at best, and theft, at its worst. Many of the artist he copied were working at the time he was.
This is where the "but all artists steal" comment always comes in. And yes, in many ways, that's true. But that doesn't mean we should condone it, or dismiss the original artists as mere "drawers" as the Lichtenstein Foundation has. But you also have to remember that the only reason Lichtenstein is continued to be seen as such a great artist and thus, can get away with it even after his death, is because he has "historical significance." That's a pathetic way of saying that, yet again, he's better than the original artists despite the fact that doing what he did in any Art School worth its salt would have a student dismissed. You don't get to steal hundreds of pieces of art from other artists and call it your own, especially if you refuse to admit they existed or did anything of significance before you came along and did your thing. That's just called being an asshole.
So suck it up and accept the truth. Lichtenstein was a hack that couldn't paint well even when he copied, and now's the part where I start posting images to show that.
But yet again, one more thing crops up that I must mention. The images I'll be using are from an man named David Barsalou, who's been working for over three decades to find the original sources of many of Lichtenstein's paintings. He has an amazing Flickr page with tons and tons of these, with bits and pieces of info attached to the images and well worth looking through. I'm only going to highlight a few.
So right there is one of Lichtenstein's most famous pieces. He called it "WHAAM!" because of...well, obviously, the sound effect. The original is the top piece, and its from All-American Men at War #89, drawn by a man named Russ Heath. Looking at both side by side, sort of, it should be strikingly obvious which one is a copy and which one is an actual piece of art. Lichtenstein's copy of it is stunted, and badly rendered, despite the fact that he projected the images larger and TRACED them. There is no life to his copy, where as Heath's screams movement and force, emphasized as much be the missile as by a more strongly created and placed sound effect.
And make sure to look at Lichtenstein's attempt at lettering. Not only does he place the caption box in such a way that it looks like a damned flag on the tail of the plane, but his construction of the letters alone is simple sloppy and bad.
Here's another of Lichtenstein's famous pieces, he called it "Drowning Girl." This is, in fact, and obvious if you can read basic English on that image above, actually by an artist named Tony Abruzzo. It is likely from DC's first romance book that started in 1949, called Girls' Love Stories, a title that featured art by many of the great names in comic art.
So what makes Lichtenstien's version of it, the smaller one, art? Nothing. Nothing that wouldn't invalidate them both. All that he did to change it was his usual bad lettering, removing a line of the dialogue, and cropping it just a bit more. So why does Lichtenstein get credit for this and not Abruzzo? Hell, I'll admit, I didn't even know Abruzzo until I hunted information on him, and that is a DAMN shame.
Yes, Lichtenstein even stole from Jack Kirby, the king of comics. No surprise really. Might as well steal from arguably the best, most prolific artists to ever work in comics, right? And hey, if you're going to steal from him, why not bastardize the image as much as possible.
And just in case you can't tell from the extreme close up, the original? That's the X-Men villain, Magneto. And I once again just have to point out how horrible that lettering is. My god. Just take the words out if you can't do it.
And here's a piece called "Reckon Not, Sir!". If you can't tell, Lichtenstein was a master of titling his work. And if you also can't tell, I'm heavily falling into sarcasm the more I do this. Apologies, but its the only way I can cope with it.
This one here isn't nearly as much a direct copy as others, but it still very clearly is a copy. And, again, a horrible attempt. The cowboy hat put on Lichtenstein's character? There's no way that's actually on his head. Hats don't work like that. That's least two different angles, possibly three. THIS is why I get angry. This kind of thing creates that pervasive talk that comic art is, and always has been, bad. That is CLEARLY not the case.
Joe Kubert, the artist of the original piece from DC Comic's Sgt. Rock, is one of the classic artists that has defined what American comics have looked like. That panel alone is gritty, hard, and filled with intense emotion. It is an amazing piece of art, and guess what? Its tiny. Because its a comic book panel. That takes an intense skill that few have.
And to go a little further, Joe Kubert is no slouch either. The man founded The Kubert School, a technically school entirely focused on teach sequential art and the craft of comics. There is a huge list of alumni from the school that have gone on to work in comics and become famous in their own right, including his two sons, both of whom work in comics today.
This is the last image I'm going to attack for this post, and there's a specific reason for it. Lichtenstein called this "Seductive Girl", and as you can see from both of his versions, the title is in every way a lie. The life and emotion in this image only came from Mike Sekowsky, as all of that is gone in Lichtenstein's.
And yet, how many that read this know Mike Sekowsky? He worked on so many comics its almost crazy. From superheros like the Justice League of America and Wonder Woman to romance comics, westerns, and war comics. But we see the image there in the bottom right hand corner, those bright, garish colors and the flatness of it all, and we think that's him. We think that because Lichtenstein has helped to paint the image of American comics as low quality art, but the larger image, Sekwosky's actual art, is never seen.
Yes, I'm not the first to rant and rave on this. No, I won't be the last. And I shouldn't be. There is no justification for putting Lichtenstein in a museum when these artist and tons of others have been treated like trash by the art community, first, and then the public at large, second. We give credit to a hack like Lichtenstein and happily claim how good he is compared to those bad old comics, but most people never look at those originals.
Every single art student should. Especially American art students. Why? Its our history. American comics are a truly American style, and there are great, amazing artists that helped to define it and are still changing it today. That's why this blog exists, because I want other artists to know about them. I want teachers to see them and show their students. And I want hacks like Lichtenstein treated like they deserve to be: Liars and thieves.
Next update...I'll go back to talking about artists I love that we should all love. But this needed to get out.
So. Roy Lichtenstein. His art is loved by artists, teachers, critics, historians, and students alike. Everyone knows "his" work, and those quotes are there for a reason as can likely be inferred from the title of this post alone. Every single art history class mentions him in some form, be it at a high school or college level. He is supposedly a great master of Pop Art, one of the first, even. His taking of comic panels and turning them into larger paintings is still seen as a great use of "low art" and turning it into "high art."
To that, I give you a simple response that can sum up my entire feelings on this without any pretense.
Bull. Shit.
First, it must be made clear that my anger towards Lichtenstein is not because I'm some crazed lover of comics. Clearly, I love comics. Clearly, I believe comics should be treated as art and not some trash to be ignored. And guess what? Lichtenstein is the poster child for the problem. His copies of panels from master comic artists are insipid pieces that only have any life because of the original artists, not his work. Not to mention the fact that nearly all of his copies are inferior to the originals on basic levels, such as line quality, form, etc. And on top of THAT, his lettering is offensively bad all on its own. Oh, and on top of even that, there's the fact that he never credited the original artists, selling his copies for millions while the actual artists saw nothing of it and some spent their lives struggling to make it.
Now before I get into direct comparisons between his "art" and the original works, I want to shoot down the usual counters to these points I'm making. I've already hit on the fact that comics are not "low art" and that the artists behind the originals are worthy of far more praise than they ever have received from the art community, but just keep repeating that because its going in circles in my head.
The other major thing is the idea of Pop Art. One of the other major players in the Pop Art movement was Andy Warhol. Everyone knows his work to some degree. Soup cans, Marilyn Monroe, etc. He stole, too, and while I have a special hatred for some of his work for similar reasons, Lichtenstein was specifically stealing from OTHER artists at the time and essentially taking credit for their work, all the while letting the art world continue to belittle them. But on the idea of Pop Art, the twisting of popular culture into "art" and playing on ideas of mass production and similar themes, Lichtenstein's work STILL doesn't qualify as worthy of praise. Why? Because it is simple plagiarism, at best, and theft, at its worst. Many of the artist he copied were working at the time he was.
This is where the "but all artists steal" comment always comes in. And yes, in many ways, that's true. But that doesn't mean we should condone it, or dismiss the original artists as mere "drawers" as the Lichtenstein Foundation has. But you also have to remember that the only reason Lichtenstein is continued to be seen as such a great artist and thus, can get away with it even after his death, is because he has "historical significance." That's a pathetic way of saying that, yet again, he's better than the original artists despite the fact that doing what he did in any Art School worth its salt would have a student dismissed. You don't get to steal hundreds of pieces of art from other artists and call it your own, especially if you refuse to admit they existed or did anything of significance before you came along and did your thing. That's just called being an asshole.
So suck it up and accept the truth. Lichtenstein was a hack that couldn't paint well even when he copied, and now's the part where I start posting images to show that.
But yet again, one more thing crops up that I must mention. The images I'll be using are from an man named David Barsalou, who's been working for over three decades to find the original sources of many of Lichtenstein's paintings. He has an amazing Flickr page with tons and tons of these, with bits and pieces of info attached to the images and well worth looking through. I'm only going to highlight a few.
So right there is one of Lichtenstein's most famous pieces. He called it "WHAAM!" because of...well, obviously, the sound effect. The original is the top piece, and its from All-American Men at War #89, drawn by a man named Russ Heath. Looking at both side by side, sort of, it should be strikingly obvious which one is a copy and which one is an actual piece of art. Lichtenstein's copy of it is stunted, and badly rendered, despite the fact that he projected the images larger and TRACED them. There is no life to his copy, where as Heath's screams movement and force, emphasized as much be the missile as by a more strongly created and placed sound effect.
And make sure to look at Lichtenstein's attempt at lettering. Not only does he place the caption box in such a way that it looks like a damned flag on the tail of the plane, but his construction of the letters alone is simple sloppy and bad.
Here's another of Lichtenstein's famous pieces, he called it "Drowning Girl." This is, in fact, and obvious if you can read basic English on that image above, actually by an artist named Tony Abruzzo. It is likely from DC's first romance book that started in 1949, called Girls' Love Stories, a title that featured art by many of the great names in comic art.
So what makes Lichtenstien's version of it, the smaller one, art? Nothing. Nothing that wouldn't invalidate them both. All that he did to change it was his usual bad lettering, removing a line of the dialogue, and cropping it just a bit more. So why does Lichtenstein get credit for this and not Abruzzo? Hell, I'll admit, I didn't even know Abruzzo until I hunted information on him, and that is a DAMN shame.
Yes, Lichtenstein even stole from Jack Kirby, the king of comics. No surprise really. Might as well steal from arguably the best, most prolific artists to ever work in comics, right? And hey, if you're going to steal from him, why not bastardize the image as much as possible.
And just in case you can't tell from the extreme close up, the original? That's the X-Men villain, Magneto. And I once again just have to point out how horrible that lettering is. My god. Just take the words out if you can't do it.
And here's a piece called "Reckon Not, Sir!". If you can't tell, Lichtenstein was a master of titling his work. And if you also can't tell, I'm heavily falling into sarcasm the more I do this. Apologies, but its the only way I can cope with it.
This one here isn't nearly as much a direct copy as others, but it still very clearly is a copy. And, again, a horrible attempt. The cowboy hat put on Lichtenstein's character? There's no way that's actually on his head. Hats don't work like that. That's least two different angles, possibly three. THIS is why I get angry. This kind of thing creates that pervasive talk that comic art is, and always has been, bad. That is CLEARLY not the case.
Joe Kubert, the artist of the original piece from DC Comic's Sgt. Rock, is one of the classic artists that has defined what American comics have looked like. That panel alone is gritty, hard, and filled with intense emotion. It is an amazing piece of art, and guess what? Its tiny. Because its a comic book panel. That takes an intense skill that few have.
And to go a little further, Joe Kubert is no slouch either. The man founded The Kubert School, a technically school entirely focused on teach sequential art and the craft of comics. There is a huge list of alumni from the school that have gone on to work in comics and become famous in their own right, including his two sons, both of whom work in comics today.
This is the last image I'm going to attack for this post, and there's a specific reason for it. Lichtenstein called this "Seductive Girl", and as you can see from both of his versions, the title is in every way a lie. The life and emotion in this image only came from Mike Sekowsky, as all of that is gone in Lichtenstein's.
And yet, how many that read this know Mike Sekowsky? He worked on so many comics its almost crazy. From superheros like the Justice League of America and Wonder Woman to romance comics, westerns, and war comics. But we see the image there in the bottom right hand corner, those bright, garish colors and the flatness of it all, and we think that's him. We think that because Lichtenstein has helped to paint the image of American comics as low quality art, but the larger image, Sekwosky's actual art, is never seen.
Yes, I'm not the first to rant and rave on this. No, I won't be the last. And I shouldn't be. There is no justification for putting Lichtenstein in a museum when these artist and tons of others have been treated like trash by the art community, first, and then the public at large, second. We give credit to a hack like Lichtenstein and happily claim how good he is compared to those bad old comics, but most people never look at those originals.
Every single art student should. Especially American art students. Why? Its our history. American comics are a truly American style, and there are great, amazing artists that helped to define it and are still changing it today. That's why this blog exists, because I want other artists to know about them. I want teachers to see them and show their students. And I want hacks like Lichtenstein treated like they deserve to be: Liars and thieves.
Next update...I'll go back to talking about artists I love that we should all love. But this needed to get out.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
An Important Clarification
Okay, a small update to make an important point. I've already begun talking about why comics should be viable as a form of high art and all that fun stuff, and it's going to continue and only get stronger as I rant and rave more. Should be fun.
But I do believe I need to make it known that this is not out of any kind of hatred or dislike of the masterpieces of old. I do not believe that comic art is actually inherently better than any of the classic paintings, sculptures, or other works of art through human history. Instead, I just believe that it deserves the same attention, something that is now beginning to grow in small parts of the art world.
I firmly believe that the likes of Jack Kirby, Osamu Tezuka, John Romita Sr., Bob Kane, Herge, Will Eisner, and Mobius deserve a place in Art History with all the greats we already teach. These great artists deserve much, much more attention than they've gotten through the years, especially in academic settings, and should not be shunned simply because they decided to use their skills to tell stories.
So no, the point of these posts about comic art and the artists is not to throw out the old and ring in the new. It is one of inclusion. My real hope with this is to open the eyes of just a few of the teachers and students and friends I already have to these great artists.
But I do believe I need to make it known that this is not out of any kind of hatred or dislike of the masterpieces of old. I do not believe that comic art is actually inherently better than any of the classic paintings, sculptures, or other works of art through human history. Instead, I just believe that it deserves the same attention, something that is now beginning to grow in small parts of the art world.
I firmly believe that the likes of Jack Kirby, Osamu Tezuka, John Romita Sr., Bob Kane, Herge, Will Eisner, and Mobius deserve a place in Art History with all the greats we already teach. These great artists deserve much, much more attention than they've gotten through the years, especially in academic settings, and should not be shunned simply because they decided to use their skills to tell stories.
So no, the point of these posts about comic art and the artists is not to throw out the old and ring in the new. It is one of inclusion. My real hope with this is to open the eyes of just a few of the teachers and students and friends I already have to these great artists.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Art and Comics
Okay. I've made an introduction, then given a light overview of comics as a whole from my view. Now it's time to get in depth. I've been told by more than one person that I don't ramble here as much as I worry about, so shame is going out the window and this is going to dive straight into it.
It's time for me to hit on a point that, to me, has been one of the largest barriers against comics: The art world. It should be said that, for those that don't know, I graduated from Flagler College's Fine Art program back in 2009, and along with the making of art (and the varying levels of success that comes with when you still haven't figured out what you want to DO with your art) I also spent a lot of time studying History and Art History. I love it. I eat that stuff up. But as I found myself drifting to the world of comics, I ran into a very large problem. In that world, comics are 'low art' at best, and completely ignored at worst.
So what I want to get into here is what I wish I'd had time to get into back then. This is a long diatribe that I firmly believe every single art student and teacher and working artist should hear and absorb, whether they like it or not. Because, as I've touched on before, comics matter. Comics are more than just superheroes and spandex and those terrible sound effects most people think of thanks to the old Adam West Batman show. In fact, those things aren't really comics at all, especially not today.
In that vein, the first thing to do before continuing to read all of this mess is understanding what I mean when I say 'comics'. A good replacement for that is 'sequential art', a term from the wonderful Wil Eisner, but you can go even simpler than that. Not all comics are a sequence of panels to tell a story. Some are just in one panel. A story in a single image. In many ways, that is the same thing that a comic is. Visual storytelling. Cave paintings used multiple images to do this, and many of the painters we think of when we think of so-called 'High Art' only needed the one image. But the best always tell a story, except when they don't, but that's getting into an area of art this isn't concerned with.
For this, I'm going to use something that might be surprising as a comparison. No, I'm not pulling out a beautiful Jack Kirby page or something else that might be expected. Instead, I'm going to use something much, much more modern. This is from S.H.I.E.L.D., the very first issue, that came out back in 2010, and just like above, you need to click this image to appreciate it. Unlike the above painting, this is a modern comic (clearly), and thus not just one artist is credited. The lineart that form the base of the image are by Dustin Weaver and the color is by Christina Strain.
What is so different between these two works of art?
Beyond the obvious differences such as the artist, material, and when it was made, shockingly little. So why does this page not count as art in the same way? Is it the giant, purple man in the distance or the glowing guy flying over 1580s Rome? Is it truly the material? Are oil paints just better and more 'artistic', in the end? Is it simply a case of attributing greatness to something that is old just because of it's age?
In some ways, all of those are at least partially accurate, but also reveal a striking double standard that we apply to the word 'art' and what counts as 'low' and 'high' art.
NO, the presence of a giant, purple and blue-clad man and a flying, glowing humanoid are not enough to discount this as art or worthy of praise. Many paintings and sculptures of divine beings and Classical Gods are just as ridiculous from an academic standpoint. Even the strange machine in the foreground is not enough to damn this piece on content alone.
Despite what many older artistic traditions would teach us, oil paints are not inherently superior. They are difficult to work with, have amazing possibilities once learned, and some of the greatest works of art of all time use them, but that does not make art that uses them better. To claim the material is better than a pencil or a computer or anything else used today would be like claiming that an older piece of literature is stronger than newer stories or books simply due to being handwritten.
How about age? Is that the true factor here? Do we only love many older pieces of work because they are older? In some cases? Probably. As a species, we have a habit of attributing the past with being better than the now, in almost every aspect of our society. This idea is patently ridiculous, and a moment's thought from anyone can prove this. Some people in the art world look down on comics due to multiple artists (pencilers, inkers, colorists) working on them, ignoring the fact that many of the old masters had entire studios assisting in their great paintings that were revere today.
But no, in this case, it is unfair to say that it's age is why The Raft of the Medusa is considered a great work of art. It simply is. There are a thousand reasons why, some insanely technical in regards to art theory and others as simple as how well the paint is handled and the emotion portrayed on the faces of the men on the raft itself. But this page of art from S.H.I.E.L.D. is not lacking in great technical skill, either. Rome of the 1500s is detailed beautifully, with an excellent use of perspective and scale. The detail is in the scope of the page, and it truly is a beautiful page that can be stared at for as long as any painting just finding new things to enjoy.
Just as with The Raft of the Medusa, this page presents a story we are only partially allowed to see. We can infer just as much and speculate in as many wild directions as we wish, and yet this is just a single double-page spread from the comic. But here is something where the comic page suddenly has a clear advantage. It is just a page.
For The Raft of the Medusa, we have but one image in one moment in the story that is being shown. With only the image, we can only speculate as to what could have happened to force those men onto that raft. Are they about to be rescued? We can't know. All we can know is they see something on the horizon, and clearly hope they will be. To learn more, that a shipwreck forced these men onto a hastily constructed raft and only 15 of the 147 men that crewed the ship survived, we must turn to a history book or some other source. In its time, this would have been common knowledge, yet still one would have to turn to another source. The image tells us none of this.
But for this comic page? Now we have the point where comics clearly find an advantage over so-called 'High Art'. This page is has pages before and after it. In page immediately before, we see that this is Rome in 1582, in the workshop of Galileo. This strange machine we see in the foreground was constructed by him, and upon turning the page, we learn why he built such a thing. Clearly, this machine has been built by Galileo to fight back this giant man that. I purposefully used a version of this page without text, as to more easily directly compare the two images, but this is another bit of information where we learn more of what will happen after without another source. Though there is no second page after this, the story moves on, Galileo narrates and tells us that this encounter with the giant is not, as he puts it "...how the world ends."
So why, then, is a comic page with such strong artistic aspects not good enough for most of the art world? It's a very simple thing: Elitism. The one great theme in Art History is the rejection of what is different to the so-called 'Art World'. Time and time again, critics and artists alike have declared what is and isn't art, and always history rolls over them and proves them wrong. In many ways, this is happening now with sequential art. There is a slow acceptance occurring in some sections of the art world, but it is still very small.
As I experienced first hand, even those my age see a comic and roll their eyes, expecting what they consider 'bad art' or something not worthy of their attention, all the while putting together pieces of art that are far more ridiculous. There are many that teach art that share this same problem, and that's why I do this.
I rant and I ramble and I continue on in circles over and over to say to those teachers: Comics are art. Comics are good art. And whether you believe it or not, you already accept many piece of art that are just single-panel comics.
Any good artist knows that art happens everywhere, you just have to look. So here I am, starting my crusade to make it easier for those that wouldn't look so hard. Because like I just said and will continue to say for the course of this blog, and likely the rest of my life...
Comics are art.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Why Comics?
After mulling over where to really start with this blog, I've finally separated the various topics in my mind. Many of the topics I want to hit on require an amount of research that means I need to spread them out and not hit them all in a row. So I'm going to start in a logical place:
Why comics?
What's the point? Why do they matter? Most importantly, why should you care about comics?
Overall, these are fairly simple things to tackle on the surface. That, however, would be too easy, short, and boring. This place exists for me to rant, ramble, and never shut up, so I'm going to go in more detail than is likely necessary. Yes, all of this has been covered before. Hell, it's all been covered by people much wiser than I (Just to name two: Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and pretty much anything from Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art books). In no way do I claim to be more knowledgeable on the subject of comics than these two greats, but I'd like to think that I:
a) have a different, and much smaller, audience to talk to about the subject. Namely, well hopefully, former art teachers and working artists
and
b) maybe, just maybe, I might have something slightly different to say.
So, that's quite a bit of rambling already. What's the point, then? Why do comics exist at all? That one is simple: comics are simply a way to tell a story. Of course, unlike movies and even books, a very strong argument could be made that comics are one of the oldest ways to tell a story, right behind oral history. The idea of still pictures to tell some story has been around since man painted on cave walls, but today it is thought of, instead, as either something for kids, or just for nerds that sit in their basements arguing about whether Superman could beat Thor over the internet.
This dives straight into the real thrust of this post: Why should you care about comics? Yes, there are comics for kids and, yes, there are people that argue those topics on the internet, but the medium itself should not be judged on those things anymore than all novels should be judged by the large section of generally horrid romance novels in any bookstore. Comics are as diverse in subject matter as any form of entertainment, and while that's a plainly obvious statement to some, it is a shocking revelation to many of the people I went to college with. In many ways, this is not their fault at all, thus one of the reasons why I'm writing this right now.
So I circle around again to the why. What do comics brings to entertainment that movies and books can't? The answer isn't superheroes, because while that concept thrives in American comics, it is doable in any form of storytelling. Superheroes is a genre, not a medium. On the most basic level, comics run a middle ground between books and movies. But that is, again, too easy.
The real key to what comics bring is reader control. With panels on a page, no matter the layout, the reader may take as much time as they like lingering on an image. While it may seem that books achieve this, I would argue they don't. To hold a moment in a book, the reader must back up and re-read a passage, arguably turning back time in the story. Obviously, on the other side of things, movies just keep on moving whether the viewer wants them to or not. The presence of the series of still images in comics, however, freezes time in a sense. The story won't move forward or backwards as long as the reader stares at one single panel. It just sits. The best writers and artists learn to manipulate this sense of time, finding techniques to slow the eye and cause a reader to linger longer on a page, or quickly fly through a series of panels in faster paced sections. But even with strong techniques, it's up to the reader to determine how the story is read.
But a less wordy explanation to the question of "Why Comics?" that likely means more to people that don't care about the craft is something I've already touched on. Comics are a medium, just like books, movies, or any other form of entrainment to tell a story. Many times I've been told by people that they just don't read comics because they don't like comics, and I stare baffled. To me, such a statement is as absurd as someone saying they don't like movies or books or any kind of stories.
Just as there is a book for everyone, there is a comic for everyone. So I'm going to end this long, circuitous rambling post with just a few examples that run the gamut.
There are war stories (Sgt. Rock, Captain America, The Other Side), Science Fiction (2000AD, Astro Boy, Flash Gordon, Silver Surfer), Horror (The Walking Dead, 30 Days of Night, Swamp Thing, Hellbazer), Romance (Young Romance, Fruits Basket), Fantasy (Bone, Conan the Barbarian, Fables), Crime (Sin City, Gotham Central, Criminal, 100 Bullets), Humor (Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts), and, of course, Superheroes (Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, The X-Men, and the thousand others you can name).
That's a tiny list of just quick bullet points. That's not even including the explosion of webcomics. There is definitely a comic for everyone, if the person is willing to look.
So why comics? Well, why books? Why movies? Why stories of any kind? Comics matter for the same reason everything else does. There is no reason to write comics off, and hopefully this rambling can expand some thoughts on the subject. I'll likely get more specific soon.
Why comics?
What's the point? Why do they matter? Most importantly, why should you care about comics?
Overall, these are fairly simple things to tackle on the surface. That, however, would be too easy, short, and boring. This place exists for me to rant, ramble, and never shut up, so I'm going to go in more detail than is likely necessary. Yes, all of this has been covered before. Hell, it's all been covered by people much wiser than I (Just to name two: Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and pretty much anything from Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art books). In no way do I claim to be more knowledgeable on the subject of comics than these two greats, but I'd like to think that I:
a) have a different, and much smaller, audience to talk to about the subject. Namely, well hopefully, former art teachers and working artists
and
b) maybe, just maybe, I might have something slightly different to say.
So, that's quite a bit of rambling already. What's the point, then? Why do comics exist at all? That one is simple: comics are simply a way to tell a story. Of course, unlike movies and even books, a very strong argument could be made that comics are one of the oldest ways to tell a story, right behind oral history. The idea of still pictures to tell some story has been around since man painted on cave walls, but today it is thought of, instead, as either something for kids, or just for nerds that sit in their basements arguing about whether Superman could beat Thor over the internet.
This dives straight into the real thrust of this post: Why should you care about comics? Yes, there are comics for kids and, yes, there are people that argue those topics on the internet, but the medium itself should not be judged on those things anymore than all novels should be judged by the large section of generally horrid romance novels in any bookstore. Comics are as diverse in subject matter as any form of entertainment, and while that's a plainly obvious statement to some, it is a shocking revelation to many of the people I went to college with. In many ways, this is not their fault at all, thus one of the reasons why I'm writing this right now.
So I circle around again to the why. What do comics brings to entertainment that movies and books can't? The answer isn't superheroes, because while that concept thrives in American comics, it is doable in any form of storytelling. Superheroes is a genre, not a medium. On the most basic level, comics run a middle ground between books and movies. But that is, again, too easy.
The real key to what comics bring is reader control. With panels on a page, no matter the layout, the reader may take as much time as they like lingering on an image. While it may seem that books achieve this, I would argue they don't. To hold a moment in a book, the reader must back up and re-read a passage, arguably turning back time in the story. Obviously, on the other side of things, movies just keep on moving whether the viewer wants them to or not. The presence of the series of still images in comics, however, freezes time in a sense. The story won't move forward or backwards as long as the reader stares at one single panel. It just sits. The best writers and artists learn to manipulate this sense of time, finding techniques to slow the eye and cause a reader to linger longer on a page, or quickly fly through a series of panels in faster paced sections. But even with strong techniques, it's up to the reader to determine how the story is read.
But a less wordy explanation to the question of "Why Comics?" that likely means more to people that don't care about the craft is something I've already touched on. Comics are a medium, just like books, movies, or any other form of entrainment to tell a story. Many times I've been told by people that they just don't read comics because they don't like comics, and I stare baffled. To me, such a statement is as absurd as someone saying they don't like movies or books or any kind of stories.
Just as there is a book for everyone, there is a comic for everyone. So I'm going to end this long, circuitous rambling post with just a few examples that run the gamut.
There are war stories (Sgt. Rock, Captain America, The Other Side), Science Fiction (2000AD, Astro Boy, Flash Gordon, Silver Surfer), Horror (The Walking Dead, 30 Days of Night, Swamp Thing, Hellbazer), Romance (Young Romance, Fruits Basket), Fantasy (Bone, Conan the Barbarian, Fables), Crime (Sin City, Gotham Central, Criminal, 100 Bullets), Humor (Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts), and, of course, Superheroes (Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, The X-Men, and the thousand others you can name).
That's a tiny list of just quick bullet points. That's not even including the explosion of webcomics. There is definitely a comic for everyone, if the person is willing to look.
So why comics? Well, why books? Why movies? Why stories of any kind? Comics matter for the same reason everything else does. There is no reason to write comics off, and hopefully this rambling can expand some thoughts on the subject. I'll likely get more specific soon.
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