comics are not stupid, please do not send me hate mail*
A friend of mine recently argued that comic books are stupid: that no matter how intelligent the plotline laid on top of the pictures, the pictures are an inherent distraction from the text, and the text merely an attempt to compensate for the infantilism of the form.
Now, I knew this idea would really piss off a lot of people I know, so I emailed one of them, my Wonder Woman co-blogger Syd, who responded, in part:
*Unless it were an actual hate-comic, which I would kind of relish for its novelty and the sheer effort put into its pretty little hate-production.
Now, I knew this idea would really piss off a lot of people I know, so I emailed one of them, my Wonder Woman co-blogger Syd, who responded, in part:
(Not to imply that my original friend couldn't develop an argumentatively sound reply on the matter, which he could; however, Syd's answer is funny, and I'm going to leave off this discussion at its point of maximal humor value, much as one slaughters livestock in the animal's infancy, before the dropoff in the ratio of grain feed converted to meat).The problem with most comics has nothing to do with how "intelligent" they are - it has to do with the fact that they can generally be categorized as action/adventure, science fiction, fantasy, and horror, which are genres that often require a certain suspension of disbelief and are pretty much looked down upon even in non-graphic form.
However, if you are willing to accept comics as they are, I know of many that are as intelligent if not moreso than almost any book-without-pictures, but you have to be aware that they can be picked apart pretty easily. Have you ever really examined any novels - their word choice, how well the plot works, how much logical sense it makes, what the overall message is, how believable the characters are, etc.? The fact is that any book can be called stupid, because very few writers are really geniuses and almost none of them take everything into account. I love Shakespeare's plays, but if you sit down and look at what the basic plots are and how the characters are developed, you might have to admit to yourself that a lot of it is pretty stupid. That's why you should probably try to avoid arguments like this.
On the other hand, I totally agree with [so-and-so's] idea that the more pictures something has, the stupider it is. I was at an art gallery the other day, and there were pictures everywhere! They hardly had any words at all! I can only imagine the kind of moron who finds that entertaining. Then later I saw this movie called "Citizen Kane." If you can believe it, there were about 30 pictures every second! It was one of the stupidest things I have ever seen.
*Unless it were an actual hate-comic, which I would kind of relish for its novelty and the sheer effort put into its pretty little hate-production.
posted by JenIsFamous at 11/26/2006 07:33:00 PM
2 Comments:
What would/does said comic hater say about "World War 3" illustrated...
http://www.worldwar3illustrated.org/
World War 3 Illustrated, Issue 36Welcome to the website of World War 3 Illustrated, a semiannual political comix magazine. Since 1980, we have made it our mission to shine a little reality on the fantasy world of the American kleptocracy.
(my ex was one of the one co-founders)
Say, does the name Art Spiegelman ring any bells? Well, if not, perhaps it bears mentioning that Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. For a comic book. About the Holocaust.
Hey, here's a name with which you might be more familiar: Theodore Geisel. No? Well, that's all right. T.S. Geisel, like T.S. Eliot, is dead--not that it's stopped him from retaining greater popularity than Eliot, mind you--and, in any case, I can't blame anyone for not recognizing the name. Sure, Ted Geisel was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times, but his best works were published under a pseudonym. Maybe if he had cured polio rather than scribbled "The Butter Battle Book" or "Horton Hears a Who", DR. SEUSS might have won.
Now, I know that neither Robert Zimmerman nor Paul Hewson is a "comic artist" in the sense in which that term is here intended. But what about them--ever heard of either? No, they are not the inspiration for Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" (2001), about the birth of Marvel Comics--that, of course, would be literary titans Stan Lee and Jack Kirby--but good guess.
Let's see here: If memory serves, Zimmerman, like Thomas Stearns Eliot and Theodore Seuss Geisel, also was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Too bad he decided to team up with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison, rather than with Benny Andersen and Bjorn Ulvaeus. Maybe if BOB DYLAN had been a member of ABBA, or just an anti-semite, he would have won. You think?
Paul Hewson, for his part, was Time magazine's Person of the Year (along with Bill and Melinda Gates) last year. Hewson tends to be more articulate when speaking about third world debt than when fronting the Irish rock band U2. But even if you don't agree with me on that point, you might acknowledge that Bono is a lot more knowledgeable of his subject matter than a former president who compares Israeli domestic policy to Apartheid. To my mind, Bono is no less deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than Jimmy Carter. Or Yasser Arafat.
(But what do I know? I'm the guy who's at a loss to understand what Nobel Laureate Wiliam "Lord of the Flies" Golding ever contributed to our understanding of the human condition, that, say, the prolific Michael Crichton didn't.)
Anyway. . .
You were saying something about pop culture, I believe. Sorry to have interrupted.
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