Comic books were a fond part of growing up for me. My oldest brother kept these huge collector’s boxes in our basement, packed neatly to the brim with slim, carefully sealed stories. I used to read them in secret (sorry, bro) and came to love the medium. I’ve always drawn cartoons, but I think my biggest influence were comic books.
For the sake of the format, the mainstream never really considered it an art form. Strange really, for a medium that combines two of the oldest art forms: the visual aesthetic and the written word. An art form that allows for a seamless stoppage of time at any desired point in a story to examine intricacies of the landscape, facial expressions, and even titles of books that guide the story softly along. How many of us remember “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies,” the ominous phrase scrawled on brick walls and bathroom stalls that bids the fateful question: Who watches the Watchmen?
In recent years something has accounted greatly for the wider appreciation of comic books: the film adaptation. Stories such as V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Iron Man and Hellboy undoubtedly enjoyed a significant bump in their readership months after their cinematic counterparts left the box office (in the case of Watchmen, months prior). Somehow this has both helped and hurt. For many people who are experiencing these tales for the first time, they’re encouraged to seek out more stories in their original incarnation. While the rough corners of sequential art are smoothed over with generous special effects, they tend to lose their faithfulness to their original tales.
There is still a wide following of dyed-in-the-wool comic book fans, many of them taking interesting perspectives on the state of the medium in today’s cinematically dominated media. Karen Healy, a feminist fan, runs a blog called “Girls Read Comics And They’re Pissed,” wherein she not only reviews comics, but interviews artists and writers and poses fascinating arguments on feminist issues in comic books and comic book adaptations. Aaron Albert of About.com just recently published an article on today’s social issues addressed in comic books, a redeeming element for those who dismiss them all together.
The internet has also played a significant role in the history of sequential art, with the birth of the web comic. Artist and writers such as Randall Munroe (Xkcd), Aaron Diaz (Dresden Codak), John Campbell (Pictures For Sad Children), Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics), and Emily Horne and Joey Comeau (A Softer World), are constantly testing and redefining the limits of the medium, the format, the art and the writing. These are things that have been characteristic of comics for the past few decades. They are also making comics more accessible, more identifiable, and more available. On their end, the field has become less exclusive. People are now able to throw their hat into the ring without worrying about publishing, marketing and the business end of what is ultimately, in conception and consumption, a fun art form.
Think about how pervasive something like comics have become. They’ve been used for everything from advertising to education. Can any of you go a Sunday without picking up the funnies?
We even had our own comic in the magazine for the past few years, courtesy of Andrew Godshalk, our former production manager. The New Yorker has comics. Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Artvoice. It’s too easy to ignore all that history when we glaze over that trite strip for a quick giggle on the way to an article on Amy Winehouse.
Cartoons have followed more or less the same vein in history. As they’re commonly thought of something reserved solely for children (as Cap’n Crunch and Spongebob Squarepants will readily remind us), shows such as The Simpsons and Family Guy are still seen as sensational because of the heightened opportunity for the fantastic. So all of us grown-ups that had allegedly long outgrown our fondest fictions like Looney-Toons and Jem still find it acceptable to go into hysterics at the antics of Peter Griffin or Master Shake.
Many motifs have flashed brightly and briefly throughout the illustrative world. We most vividly recall the capes, the funny names, the superpowers or the silliest of dues ex machina (kryptonite. What the fuck.). We tend to forget the moments that define the fearlessness of the medium. How the Comedian earned the long thin scar on his face. The lengths to which the Nazis go to provoke the services of Hellboy. The dire conditions under which Tony Stark crafted his crude suit of armor, and thus planting the seeds of a new hero. One of our greatest testaments to the fictive text must sometimes don spandex and tight tights to keep the ideas of heroics and such-easily won greatness alive and well.
