For an explanation of The Art of Webcomics, my college thesis from 2008, click the “thesis” link in the page menu, sidebar top left.

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Part III: Strengths of the Digital Medium

Outside of the webcomic world—the digital medium—the freedom to create an independent work and display it, regardless of artistic or literary merit, nearly vanishes. I do not contest that one can draw what one likes in one’s own home, but when it comes to sharing that drawing on a large scale, that is where the challenges become nearly insurmountable. The internet destroys the middleman, but the middleman—the publisher, printer, distributor—rules the print business off the internet.  In Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud discusses twelve revolutions that must take place before comics as an art and business can be revitalized, and a large portion of his book is devoted to one revolution in particular, “the digital delivery.”[i] By publishing online, a comic creator allows his or her work to be delivered digitally as pixels rather than physically as a book or strip, which circumvents the middleman, or middlemen, in this case.  This delivery is instantaneous and free, containing no mark-up for costs of production.  Many webcomickers may desire to have their work printed sometime in the future, but that does not change the fact that their work is foremost displayed through a computer monitor, and secondarily, if at all, available for purchase in a physical format.  The first strength of the digital medium is therefore its inherent freedom-from creative control, and from the price tag.

Independent cartoonists and illustrators seeking publication with established publishing houses soon realize the near hopelessness of ever breaking into the business, and it has only become harder through the years as the print industry continues to decline.  Not only are quality, content, and story regulated in the print world, but so too is the diversity of comic creators themselves, and their creative rights to their work. Apart from McCloud’s digital revolution, he also writes of the need for the print industry to diversify and appeal to, not to mention be authored by, more than middle-class, white men.  He repeatedly states that the only way diverse stories can be made into comics is to hire diverse comic creators, but the industry itself resists the necessary change[ii].  It is not too large of a stretch of the imagination to realize that comics as an industry is declining due to the ubiquitous nature of the superhero comic.  The freedom of the internet, however, circumvents the control of the publishing houses, and no webcomicker need be hired (or not hired) due to gender, creed, race or sexual orientation. If comic creators are diverse, so too will be their works, and no one will have to give up control of content to be selected either on a rack in a comic book shop, or more appropriately in this case, in a list of links on a webpage. In this way, “…digital delivery isn’t just about improving selection, it’s about the elimination of the very idea of selection.”[iii]

Going still further into the notion of freedom on the internet is the webcomicker’s ability to maintain total creative control of his or her work, and receive 100% monetary compensation for sold works.  Yet another of McCloud’s revolutions details the fight for creators’ rights, which often are signed away in return for a publishing deal.  Recent events at this time in history (2008), such as the Writers’ Guild of America strike, prove that these creative individuals are frustrated at having to give away the creative control of their work, receiving little recognition or compensation.  The outcome of the Writers’ strike proves that change is occurring, however, and favoring the creator—not the publishers or producers—of creative work.  “Over the last fifteen years or so…the big American comics companies have realized that…Superman and Spider-Man don’t really sell comics anymore: the lines of Brian Michael Bendis and Joss Whedon and Jim Lee do,”[iv] writes Wolk, citing popular comic creators. But giving credit where credit is due has been slow in coming to all lucrative art forms.  If one considers the reason why reasonable recompense and recognition is not given in exchange for use of a creative work, it is a small step to believe that lack of recognition is a grim marker of how little control artists or writers have maintained over their own creations, and is in my opinion, an issue worthy of much discussion.  Creative control implies that the originator of the work is recompensed and given credit for it.  But, when a creator is not given enough of either, yet is still having his or her creation published without a proper control of what is being drawn, so that the publishing company receives maximum credit and income, that is where, as McCloud puts it, “…screwing the ‘talent’ is practically an American tradition!”[v]

[ii] Reinventing Comics, 96-125.

[iii] Reinventing Comics, 198.

[iv] Wolk, 36.

[v] Reinventing Comics, 58.

Post 1, Post 2, Post 3

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[sic]

…Webcomics may possess such variety and potential, but webcomics also have a reputation both on and off the internet which causes this new art form to devalue itself.  Webcomics are associated with the image of a scrawny, fourteen-year-old, socially-inept boy who scrawls bad gag comics on lined notebook paper in his basement room. This image is only applicable to a minority of webcomic creators, yet has so pervaded the thought behind the word that it is now indelible. Contrary to this stereotype, polls of webcomic creators[i]—or self-titled “webcomickers”—show that majority of them were adults between the ages 18-24, and were either employed or pursuing higher education. Many of the larger, more established webcomics were created by married individuals with one or two children. Only one-tenth of poll participants were in high school. The fact is, most webcomics are created by talented, young adults who treat webcomicking as a beloved hobby, who enjoy their honing artistic and writing skills, and who are constantly testing the limits of a new art form.

Once one can overcome the stereotypical image of the webcomic creator, then comes the pejorative baggage attached to the word “comic,” which is also carried over to the word “webcomic.” As discussed earlier, comics as sequential art have a lineage that predates the written word.  Scott McCloud argues that writing forms such as cuneiform and hieroglyphics evolved from pictures representing the environment, and that the first forms of non-verbal communication occurred as sequential, visual characterization, pre-dating any alphabet.[ii] Wolk laments that comics have such a lack of published, distinguished history that he does not even have the right words with which to write about comics:

“…it’s not a bad idea, exactly, to talk about comics using some of the same language we use to talk about prose and film and non-narrative visual art; sometimes it fits (In fact, we have to, because the language of comics criticism is still young and scrawny-it’s so underdeveloped there’s no good adjective that means ‘comics-ish.’).”[iii]

Unfortunately to many, a “comic” is merely an illustrated joke, found perhaps on the inner leaf of any newspaper doomed to the recycling bin the following day; it is considered a doodle, meaningless but for a second or two of entertainment and often thought to be of little significance. However, as with the best, most influential, literary works, comics as an art form can incorporate ideas and concepts just as meaningful to either an individual or an entire civilization, perhaps in a manner far more easily assimilated by the reader through the use of images, and far more inviting than a thousand-page work of purely literary greatness, such as Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.  The problem as prescribed by McCloud is that comics creators often choose to have subject matter of little cultural significance, believing perhaps that all comics as a form is meant to convey is superhero stories or jokes about the workplace.  This is not to say that mainstream comics have not a large impact on entire generations of youth, simply that there is far more comics can and is exploring, and not all comics are meant for children—as mentioned previously, award-winning comics like Sacco’s Palestine and Spiegelman’s Maus prove that the art form is growing and maturing, even if most people who read comics have never even heard of them.  Ever since comics were recognized as an art form, it has held this stigma that it is worthless, or at best, a corruptor of youth starting in the 1950’s—though it is at least a partial compliment that to be considered a corruptor, comics had to contain new, strange or influential ideas.[iv]

Today, professional comic creators often call themselves illustrators, artists, or graphic novelists rather than cartoonists, and never, ever, comickers. However, even in the 1800’s, some recognized the vast potential a marriage of words and images provided; McCloud quotes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as chastising Rudolphe Töpffer’s early comics, “If for the future he would choose a less frivolous subject and restrict himself a little, he would produce things beyond all conception.”[v] McCloud himself states in Reinventing Comics, “We can only guess how many potential masters of the form [comics] never put pen to paper because of the utter absence of official recognition.”[vi] Yet, rarely since then has comics dealt with subjects that, in any literary work, would be deemed of note: some of the more recent examples being Persepolis, a graphic novel about a Persian girl and her family living in post-revolution Iran (recently animated into a movie); and Pride of Baghdad, a single volume, graphic novel featuring a main cast of an escaped pride of lions in war-torn Baghdad after the start of the Iraq War.  One must make the distinction here between content, style, and characters, and how they relate to significance; simply because a style is simplistic does not mean the content is not serious; because characters are animals instead of people, does not mean significance of plot, events or contemporary messages are lost. Wolk makes the distinction between “pretty” mainstream art and “competent” art:

But there are also extraordinary cartoonists who don’t fit either of those categories [storytelling and communication]. Gary Panter, for instance, couldn’t even begin to pull off a Wonder Woman or X-Men story, and I can’t imagine him having any interest in trying; his drawings are vehemently unpretty, barbed and gnarled, and he has no aspirations to realism or hyperrealism or conventional narrative. Even so, Jimbo in Purgatory, his fantasia on structure of Dante’s ‘Purgatory,’ is a knockdown masterpiece of cartooning, so clever and complicated and beautifully executed that it takes ages to sink in fully. Shall we call him ‘technically competent,’ then, since he’s able to realize his own vision? (How can we not?)[vii]

Comic art need not be pretty or sexually appealing; all it must do is match and further the content, as Panter’s work was able to do: give us a universal theme rendered in an astonishingly new way.  Again, comics are joined at the hip when discussing art and narrative, and industry standards for what is “good” can be far different than what is meaningful or significant, and true art—visual and literary—should never be judged by how much money it brings at the market.

[ii] Understanding Comics, 10-15, 131, 142.

[iii] Wolk, 16.

[iv] Scott McCloud, Reinventing Comics, (New York, NY: Perennial, 2000) 87-88; Wolk, Douglas, 39. 

[v] Understanding Comics, 17.

[vi] Reinventing Comics, 93.

[vii] Wolk, 33.