The Future of Comics

 It’s fascinating to imagine what the future holds for comics. With the help of the Internet, indie comic book artists have had a chance to popularize their own creations by creating a dedicated readership online. However, with the amount of webcomics out there, I think webcomics have a harder chance achieving the same level of success mainstream comic books have.

I’ve read some brilliantly witty webcomics over the past few years. On the top of my head, I can think of Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton, as one of the more successful webcomics. I also really enjoy Emily Carroll’s beautifully done horror-centric comics – Carroll manages to creep the heck out of me. And if you’re looking to have a nihilistic existentialist crisis, Michael DeForge’s Ant Colony is a webcomic for you.

I tried to read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Strangely enough, I felt more disturbed reading Johnny the Homicidal Maniac than when I had read the underground comics. It was almost as though underground comics were meant to be crude and vulgar, but reading Johnny the Homicidal Maniac was not humorous in the slightest – in fact, I felt as though I was reading into the psyche of a depraved and very angry human being. What’s funny to me is that I later realized that Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac also created Invader Zim, a cartoon I absolutely adored when I was in middle school.

What’s unfortunate to me is that a lot of webcomics will go unappreciated. I can think of several very popular webcomics that may be well-written or witty but don’t hold the same artistic value as I’ve seen with less popular webcomics. As an illustrator, I find the quality of the images to be extremely important as well. For example, xkcd is an extremely popular webcomic. But there’s no artistry in drawing stick figures; anyone is capable of drawing stick figures. And because of that I’ve had a hard time reading xkcd.

Reconsidering the Superhero

Alan Moore is a fascinating guy. I found myself furrowing my brows several times as we watched Mindscape in class. While he initially seemed very strange to me, he had many poignant things to discuss throughout the documentary. I feel that at some points he came across as a bit pretentious. Sometimes people want to enjoy material for the sake of enjoying it.

Considering that Alan Moore’s graphic novel, Watchmen, is also a parody of the superhero genre, I’m not surprised that he finds superheroes to be a “cultural catastrophe.” Watchmen is a fantastic read, but I don’t think anyone could understand the true value of it until you’ve actively read some comic books. It’s very critical, almost jarringly so. I can’t say that I’m an expert when it comes to the superhero genre as well, so I feel like I missed a lot of points Moore was trying to bring about as I read Watchmen. I think there was a lot more to the graphic novel than what was on the surface; and I realize that there was a lot of critical disdain for the movie for this reason. Interestingly enough, I think most movie adaptations of comic books are getting increasingly better because of its growing popularity with mainstream audiences.  Much to the dismay of Alan Moore, I bet. While I enjoy superhero films, I do think that they follow a very similar formula that has been growing more apparent to me with each new movie they release.

Comics by Women

There is still an underwhelming representation of women in comics. While I feel that the comics industry has less of a disparity than the film industry does today, the gap is still very visible, especially in major comic publishers like DC and Marvel. For this reason, I think that it’s especially important to acknowledge the achievements made by women in Western comics… an interesting side note; Japan and Korea have a significantly large percentage of woman comic creators. An argument I often hear being made is that lack of female representation comes from the lack of a female readership. Based on the readership of Asian countries alone, I can confidently say that claim is false. I’ve read many comics by women that have gained critical acclaim; unfortunately, critical acclaim does not necessarily gain financial or mainstream success.

For this week, I read This One Summer by the Tamaki cousins, and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. While I’d read This One Summer before, I don’t think I appreciated how exceptionally bittersweet the comic’s tone was. It was a dark exploration of a girl’s growth from adolescence to adulthood. When I first had read it, I kept expecting an over-the-top action climax that ultimately didn’t’ happen. I was waiting for a clinch that never happened, but I think that’s why the ending was so effectively somber. Fun Home on the other hand was a revealing autobiography of the author, so revealing in fact that it had a voyeuristic quality to it. Bechdel didn’t seem like she held anything back when it came to revealing extremely personal and intimate details of her life, and for that I enjoyed, but I also felt a little uncomfortable at times.  I would say that This One Summer is more relatable, strangely because it felt less personal? Not just relatable to me or to women, but to any reader who’s faced the inevitable shift into adulthood. Hopefully with more female recognition people will come to realize that women are just as capable of creating comics as men are, especially people in the industry.

\

Comics as Contemporary Literature

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli is the type of comic you’ll need to have read several times before fully appreciating how much the comic exemplifies great literature. I’d read Asterios Polyp for the first time a year ago, so it was a nice refresher to reread the comic book and discover the finer details the comic held throughout the story. The amount of finessing Mazzuchelli has achieved in Asterios Polyp proves that comic books should hold the same amount of recognition any work of literature does. Mazzucchelli draws a lot of parallels to classic Greek mythology, and successfully communicates the narrative to readers. What I liked in particular was Mazzucchelli’s differentiation among the characters in the comic; the visual representation is probably one of the more innovative techniques he uses to communicate with us. I really enjoyed that Asterios Polyp wasn’t just another superhero comic. I think a lot of people assume that comic books are meant just for preteens who geek over superheroes.

Another comic I read for this week is Habibi by Craig Thompson. While I adored Blankets, I had myself having a very difficult time getting pass the overwhelming orientalist stereotypes Thompson narrated throughout Habibi. It was a beautifully drawn graphic novel; it’s a shame that the story fell completely flat. I really tried to give this novel a chance too. But being a minority myself, I don’t want to be supportive of comics that negatively portray my culture. And it seems to me that more of the positive reception the book has received has come from people who don’t necessarily have to deal with institutionalized racism or stereotypes.

Manga

All I read in middle school was manga – much to the dismay of my parents. It wasn’t a particularly “cool kid” pastime either; I’d just moved back from Korea, and my fresh-off-the-boat vibe was an unpopular quality for many of my American peers.  I thought manga to be another oriental trait I was supposed to keep locked away. But I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

While I feel that manga still holds a negative connotation among some people, many people my age were obsessing over Death Note to Ouran Host High School Club, especially on the Internet. I had conjured this idea that manga was exclusively catered to Asians. Especially since coming to art school however, I’ve come to realize that manga is read by many people of my age.

This week, I read the fifth volume of Osamu Tezuka’s critically acclaimed Phoenix. What a fantastic read.  “Karma” isn’t just a beautiful work of art – the narrative was immersive and poignant, and I couldn’t help but reflect the philosophical meaning behind Tezuka’s work when I had finished the story. Up until now, the only manga I had read from Tezuka was Astro Boy – while I wasn’t the biggest fan of it, I can appreciate the cultural importance and influence it has had on American audiences.

In my opinion, Phoenix is rightfully hailed as Tezuka’s masterpiece. The themes in Karma reflect the fragile spirituality of the human psyche. While I was a little disturbed at the crude humor Tezuka drew at some points in the story (feces?), the characterizations of the main characters made up for whatever grimacing I did while reading the manga. For the most part, it was a very humbling and bittersweet read, for the most part. I almost felt a little depressed after I had finished “Karma.” I guess I had been expecting Akanemaru not to die and led a Disneyfied happily-ever-after and Gao to get what I initially thought was coming to him. But Gao turned out to be the redeemed good guy who I found myself rooting for in the end. I suppose that’s what Tezuka was trying to get at – not everything is black and white.

On that note, I wish more contemporary manga was like Phoenix today. I feel like manga and anime have been narrowed into a very specific category – lolicon comes to mind. Hayao Miyazaki words it best: “anime is produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans.” But I suppose manga isn’t the only victim to this. I see it in Western comics as well; garbage is everywhere. It’s up to us to find the gold through the rubbage.

A Wide World of Comics

The film we watched for this week’s class was a great summary of what I think encompasses European comics. Sylvian Chomet’s Triplets of Belleville was a beautifully exaggerated (almost disturbingly so) animation. I think a lot of European comics put a lot of artistic consideration in their work. The film is completely free of dialogue, but it still holds up compared to any other animation. I feel that the European art scene wholly accepts a variety of styles in general, at least in comparison to America. The only embraced animation style in America is the Pixar/Disney look, which many of my friends from Computer Animation vehemently despise.

For this week, I read Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. While both creators are Spanish, I’ve come to understand that their target audience was for French audiences. I really appreciate how meticulous Guarnido’s artistry comes into play for the comic. As an illustrator, I really like the variety of art styles that the French market embraces, and Blacksad is no exception.

In class, we also compared Blacksad to Zootopia; where both works of art use animals to portray a human world. Both are also noir-inspired stories that have themes of racism throughout the story. I suppose the difference is that Zootopia is much happier of a story than Blacksad is.