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NYT Magazine: Are Comics The New Mainstream Novels?
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Jul 12, 2004 08:01 AM
from the well-duh-yes dept.
from the well-duh-yes dept.
securitas writes "The New York Times Magazine cover story this week is a (typically) long feature about the rise of comic books and graphic novels into mainstream culture, with writer Charles McGrath (former editor of the Book Review) stating: 'Comic books are what novels used to be -- an accessible, vernacular form with mass appeal ... perfectly suited to our dumbed-down culture and collective attention deficit.' McGrath cites the mid-1980s birth of a movement that began and fizzled with Maus (Art Spiegelman), Love & Rockets (Hernandez Bros.) Watchmen (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller). The current renaissance in graphic novels include non-fiction Palestine (Sacco), non-fiction Persepolis (Satrapi) which has sold 450,000 copies, Ghost World (Clowes), American Splendor (Pekar), Road to Perdition (Collins) and Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, which won the 2001 Guardian Prize for best first book and has sold 100,000 in hardcover. McGrath interviews Marjane Satrapi, Julie Doucet, Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Alan Moore, among others. The article also has a multimedia interactive feature with many of the graphic novelists (registration required) in the magazine article."
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Manga? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time we started catching up...
Re:Manga? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Actually, much of Europe in general. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we should thank Heavy Metal magazine for bringing attention to quality European comics and graphic novels, even if what we see in Heavy Metal is strongly adult-oriented. I remember reading an English-translated Barbarella serial there, and it was vastly more interesting than the movie.
By the way, Disney comics published by their Disney Worldwide Publishing (Italia) division are extremely popular and well-regarded in its nativ
Re:Manga? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Manga come with their own social baggage here (Tokyo) also: sure, readership cuts across social class, age group, sex, and educational level, but a manga is not a book, it's something you read when you're on the train or having a smoke on your break.
Frankly, people caught reading manga at their desks at work or in social situations are usually snickered at for being pedestrian or purposefully low-brow (much like the reception one would get reading a comic book in the US).
Parent
Re:Manga? (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever considered that the higher production values of American comics is what's holding them back from becoming the "Everyman's" novel in America? The high production quality, slick graphics, and glossy paper of American comics transl
Adams (Score:5, Insightful)
This may be true, although I have a slightly different perspective. I think we just really like the people who make comics, because they are expressive people; these same people could do anything else and we would like it just as much. For example, take Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. I have been holding out for the next Scott Adams novel (not comic, read: handbook). I was greatly amused, and felt better protected against the weasels in society, after reading "The Way of the Weasel." This was a fantastic read, filled with cynical, yet practical knowledge, to help combat the weasels ruining our workplaces and our private lives. Sure Dilbert comics make an appearances in TWotW, to illustrate concise points, but they only accent the rest of the book and support points raised with classic Dilbert humour. His writing is stunning -- and wholly useful. I can only hope he writes another one of these because I found it totally useful, as I'm sure many of you have.
I'd recommend Preacher... (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, if you've never read it, it doesn't get more bloody or offensive than that... my favorite graphic novel by far.
Re:I'd recommend Preacher... (Score:3, Informative)
I'd recommend Preacher...
I was going to recommend The Invisibles [amazon.com] but, dammit, you just can't top the boy Ennis. Preacher [amazon.com] rocks.
Good Old New York Times (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, good old New York Times, never missing a chance to sneer at popular culture.
After all, if people actually like it, it can't possibly be good.
Re:Good Old New York Times (Score:5, Insightful)
1) My impression is that the growth of novels was driven by the availability of affordable mass printing, rather than an inability of readers to handle poetry.
2) The ongoing disappearance of poetry is mostly a consequence of poets' writing for each other rather for an audience. The readers haven't gotten dumber; the poems have become inaccessible and ugly.
That said, graphic novels are still dweeb candy.
Parent
Re:Good Old New York Times (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at Dylan. He is more a poet than a singer...as he can hardly carry a tune, but so what? His words are powerful! These are simple tunes with simple chord changes with simple melodies yet very complex and beautiful words and ideas.
Re:Good Old New York Times (Score:4, Funny)
(Turning back to my copy of Radioactive Commander Tacoman Comics.)
Parent
Dumbed-down (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's a bit harsh for novels and graphic novels. Some of the comics cited above are difficult, intelligent stories with involved character development and a good story to tell.
Calling that dumbed-down undersells the artists and the readership.
I'm pretty sure someone was saying that about Dickens in his day.
Re:Dumbed-down (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of Dickens work as serialized in newspapers, just as comics now are.
Great Expectations was published that way.
Parent
Re:Dumbed-down (Score:4, Informative)
There is definitely something wrong as far as commercialization is concerned. There is definitely someting wrong in dumbing everything down and making everything at the intellectual level of a marvel comic though...
Parent
Plenty o mainstream authors writing lit w/o comics (Score:3, Interesting)
Please, are you kidding us? I read Batman: The Dark Knight Returns which was okay, but at the back it already admitted they basically made up the last two parts on the fly under pretty intense deadline pressure. And it shows, similar to the way Coleridge's Kubla Khan [virginia.edu] took something of a dive after he was bothered out of h [virginia.edu]
Re:Plenty o mainstream authors writing lit w/o com (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Dumbed-down (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dumbed-down (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe, who's gonna RTFA to find out?
Re:Dumbed-down (Score:3, Insightful)
It's marketing. (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't a failure of "the American conception" of anything, it's a failure of Marvel Entertainment's marketing department. It's their job to explain to potential advertisers the target market for their product, and to solicit advertiseme
Mostly about the writers (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheers!
Erick
No way (Score:3, Funny)
Not to mention cathy, someone shoot the creator already
I kninda fell in love with Wulff Morgenthaler [wulffmorgenthaler.com] though, humour that's sick enough for me.
Did you notice that the article implies... (Score:3, Interesting)
sigh--cap it all.
"dumbed down" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure many of we lovers of the medium of comics will object to the "dumbed-down" comment"
Comic reading implies a different kind of literacy.
Not an illiteracy.
We know many people who don't read comics because, as they say, "we don't get it".
I pity the comic-illiterate, for the unique joy that they lose out on.
And I question the implication that comics are "dumb".
Many literary works of great sophistication, not to mention beauty, happen to be comics.
Re:"dumbed down" (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Comic Book the Movie (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I do realize those guys are prolly mods on
I'll go ahead and say it...Sandman? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, this is some of the most amazing stuff ever to come out, both with respect to storyline and art. Gaiman is a master wordsmith and weaves elements of ancient religion, existential philosophy, and wry british humor into his works. More here [spray.se], here [holycow.com], and at Gaiman's Blog [neilgaiman.com].
Seriously, check it out. This stuff is awesome
-JT
Re:I'll go ahead and say it...Sandman? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Smartest Kid On Earth (Score:3, Insightful)
Mucho recommended
Re:The Smartest Kid On Earth (Score:5, Informative)
They're worth it for some of the twisted advertisements on the edges alone. Also, I think every comic had these elaborate, workable 3D cut-out assemblable projects on the very edges. I guess they meant for people to buy 2 copies of each issue.
Parent
One flaw... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong: I'm a lifelong fan and reader of the medium, I've done a little on the creative end of it as well, and continue to do so as an avocation. But it is not (yet) a phenomenon of mainstream media.
Cherry on top (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance many new shows star vampires, dead people, are set in space or have oodles of compuers and special effects lathered all over them. Which isn't to say that some aren't good. Similarly, there arn't a lot of comics just about regular joe bloggs action. Much more likley to find mutants or flying superheroes than cops and robbers. Dick Tracey was phased out for superman, MacGuyver for Star Trek.
Personally I think people prefer to have the added spice of exotic setting or characters. It's OK, but I think a lot of modern pop culture is being sold on the cherry topping alone by exec types catering to the L.C.D. Which isn't to say good stuff isn't there. It's just that old signal to noise ratio falling again.
It still enjoy a good old fashioned detective story, complete with mudane setting and plot. I just gets more riveting!
Literary Snobbery (Score:4, Insightful)
There is also the fact that the graphic novels are usually serialised, thus keeping the interest from one issue to the next - not a constant build-up and single climax as with most "modern fiction".
It also seems easier to spot reused plots in graphic novels
Re:Literary Snobbery (Score:3, Insightful)
great writers can. so what you're saying is that authors of graphic novels can be crap and still get their point across. woohoo....
also, often what makes something more powerful isn't what the author says, but what they don't say - what is left to the immagination, the blanks the reader fills in with personal details which leads to a kind of bond.
No (Score:3, Insightful)
What's happening is that comics are becoming more popular while novels are declining in popularity.
Blame Hollywood (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it that comics are growing in popularity for our "dumbed-down culture", or that Hollywood - having run out of new ideas long ago - has renewed interested in comics because they're remaking so many comics - both new and old - into movies?
In a word... (Score:5, Informative)
if Comics really were an influence in American culture, then why is the industry itself in the shits? If it wasn't for comicmovies, Marvel probably would've filed for bankruptcy AGAIN. I'm looking here and seeing bankruptcies in 1996 and 2002. That's not healthy under ANY measure.
Not just that, but I've been observing the comics industry, and I'm sorry to say that it's devouring itself alive. Alternative book saren't selling, so they have to really press on old, rehashed characters, which inturn turns off non-geek types who'd normally be turned on by alternative books.
They're playing only to thier base, which is getting smaller in terms of population percentages rather than try to diversify. I mean, I'd hate to say it, but the American industry could learn a thing or two about the Japanese industry. Not by using big eyes and other cliches(like Marvel did, fucking mangaverse bullshit), but rather, instead by trying to diversify the market to the point where there's a story for everyone, published in a cheap, easy to access form. Japanese monthlies are about 600 yen(about 5 bucks, I think, it's been awhile since i've priced the bigass phonebook style compilations, i'm probably off base here) and come with between 10-20 or so stories. Some publishers even run weeklies. In America, for about that much, you can get two seperate books which probably havee thick, and I mean THICK, continuity. And you're stuck with ONE genre. Super-hero action-adventure. Even though most compilations are typically gender/themed(Nakayoshi comes to mind, where SailorMoon and MKR was published), you tend to get a mix of stories.
Not to mention that those books play to only one group, and those are the comicbook fanboys. As much as comic books are for supposedly for kids, these days they're more for 15-20something fanboys who tend to do poorly socially(my crowd, I never got the whole comic thing though).
Visual media is not DUMBed down (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one to believe this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly I find our culture is all about working too much and not having enough free time to have a real culture. No wonder we have an attention deficit, we can't even sit down and have fun that the week end is already long gone.
Comics are more difficult than a novel to write (Score:3, Interesting)
A novel, let's say has 100 to 200 thousand words, and about 400 to 600 pages, all text. It's in a readable language (for instance, English) and has characters, development, a plot (one hopes), evokes moods (like anger or sadness or joy). It's a difficult thing to write a good novel.
By comparison, a graphic novel has to accomplish roughly the same thing in fewer pages (ususally there are 22 pages in a single issue, and usually no more than 20 issues in a miniseries, thereby making the number of pages no more than 440 pages, at the very most.) This, naturally, will not be all text, but mostly images with some sparse text and narration bubbles. The mood of the comic is depicted not by a paragraph of words, but by imagery. Choosing good words in a nvoel is hard, yes, but an image is worth, as they say, a thousand words--you have to get it right. And you have to get it right every page, every panel, every frame. In a written text, you can be given leniency in word choice, you can break the mood for narration purposes, or as a flashback--in a graphic novel, you can't ever break the mood or you lose the story and potentially the reader.
In a way, you have to deal with style and substance instead of style over substance, that a tratitional novel has as a restriction.
Plus to make a good graphic novel you have to have a good writer and a good artist. With a traditional novel, you need only a good writer (which sometimes is hard enough.) Combinations of good writer and good artist are magical when it comes together, and an abomination when it does not.
Finally, a traditional novel, if it sells 100000 copies is a pretty good deal, but that few comics can mean the death of an entire series--millions are printed and many more need to be sold just to make the publisher more happy. And on top of that, the creativity of a comic has to be repeatable throughout the entirety of the storyline, over months of work; a traditional novel only needs to be initially creative and not necessarily creative throughout. (How many of you read a novel that started great, then immediately became a rehash of some other, better, idea? I know I have. Sure, comics fall prey to this as well--as is evidenced by the amount of crud out there--but by far they're a more creative and vibrant force than the "real" authors in the bookstore.)
That's my 2-cents anyway...
Not dumb! (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... It all really depends on where you are reading comics. Am leaving in Ireland now. And here, it's impossible to get people to realize that comics is not just for kids, silly simple minded stuff. To be honest I failed systematicaly in trying to explain that. I am actually from France. In that place the main stream of comic sale is targeted to adults. Not always light easy-goi'n stuff, meaningless, efortless.
I strongly disagry with this idea it's necessarily easy. One example only. Read the Meta-Baron caste by Jorodovski and Jimenez. Read especially the out-of-serie issue of this saga. You will notice that comic scenario can be quite complex, deeply rooted into theories (psycho-analysis, social...). The drawings are nothiong fare from art. Read about the way Jimenez things about front pages as paintings before starting. The inspiration he got from samurai times, mixed with soap-opera style... I discovered in amsterdam he draws the nun after Brugel. I think it's quite interesting.
No. Sorry, no, comics can be rather demanding in understanding. About previous example, I'd say you probably need a 3 reads before you kind a get an overall picture. And this is just one example. Right now I think about others comics dealing with human being identity, genetics, cloning... I can't help thinking for some BD's (comics in french), as pieces of art, with the same insight that SF can have.
A bit the same way information is turned into something ridiculous on TV, comics can be as well. It's just up to us no to make crap out'a good things. Likely as well, if you'r brain-dead with not an inch of background stuff, you won't even see the richness, the references...
I don't know why in france, comics are considered as adult material as valid as any other books can be.
Maybe the article author is dumbed-down? Or else he's making a paper on sales, which is pretty irrelevent to what comics are.
Ciao ciao.
Letter I sent to the Times yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)
Here you go Slashdotters, my two cents. I'm sure you'll have some good criticisms of this letter as well:
Literary bias (Score:4, Insightful)
It is about time people like Bendis and Stan Lee get credit for creating the wonderful works. If I compare comics to the numerous trash magazines, I'll take a good comic any day.
"Maus" and "Dumbed-Down?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Maus (which won the PULITZER prize) is one of the most powerful books EVER written about history's worst crime, The Holocaust.
Just because it's a "comic-book" does not mean it is "dumbed-down" or any less than a novel. Is "The Godfather," "Gone with the Wind," "Lord of the Rings" or "Shrek" any less of an art form because it is in motion picture form as opposed to the written word?
Maus is amazing. My dad got it for me in 7th grade and I have re-read it more than any other book is history.
bah (Score:5, Interesting)
More people watch TV than read (sadly), and given another decade or two, we should all start having a very portable way to view video directly from the net.
I think comics may well be supplanted by home-brewed animation. A technically literate illustrator can create his own animated short in about the same amount of time as it once took to complete a monthly comic, using today's tools. As the tools evolve, it may become even easier. (Right now, programmers still don't seem to fully grasp what it is artists need from their tools. But more and more traditional artists are finally beginning to cross over into the digital medium, so I expect they will make themselves heard, and the tools...and the content... will improve.) We are also seeing more and more hybrid electronic formats, which look less like comics and more like animation all the time.
Forget dead trees. We will all be publishing ourselves electronically before long.
Masturbatory Power Fantasy (Score:3, Interesting)
Looking at movie storyboards (and by extension movies), it's curious why they're so varied in content while comics come no where near that level of diversity. As much as I like Alan Moore's Watchmen and Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, they aren't really groundbreaking. They use some variations of the suparearo genre that aren't typically allowed (aging characters, indifference to humanity, continuity ended).
There is a spark left with titles like In the Shadow of No Towers [forward.com], 52 Timil Deeps [timildeeps.com], Larry Gonnick's Cartoon History series [larrygonick.com].
I just wish it didn't seem like the whole of mainstream comics was awash with variations on the 47 plotlines dealing with superpowers.
None, of course... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
You're not far off. (Score:3, Interesting)
He said, "That's right. It make things a lot easier and cheaper."
There you go.
Re: NYT Magazine: Are Comics The New Mainstream No (Score:3, Informative)
Heh. [sarcasm]Most comics nowadays are done in full digital colour (usually with Photoshop), so if you consider an attention span of the full CMYK range to be short, you've got high standards indeed...[/sarcasm]
(grrr..stupid bloody slashcode doesn't allow entities...I can't use angle brackets, dammit)