Totally not going to have time tonight for my next article. In lieu, here is the next portion of my thesis, The Art of Webcomics.

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.

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[i] Conducted on the Comic Genesis’ forums over a period of three weeks, answered by over a hundred creators.

[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.