firby5@yale-comix.UUCP (Jim Firby) (06/16/84)
There has been a lot of discussion lately, here and in the 'zines, about the "abysmal state of comics today". I would like to examine this complaint, and show that it simply ain't so. I have been studying forms of fiction for many years, and if I have learned only one thing, it would be this: each form must be accepted on its own terms, and on those terms alone. There is no such thing as an absolute standard to be applied across the board. Each form is unique, although there may be some over lap. This is the problem with most of those doomsaying articles. They want to apply standards to comics which comics never intended meeting. Due to the almost ince stuous nature of comics and fandom today, some comics are trying to give these n oisy fans what they think the fans think they want, and that's when we really get bad comics. Let's face it. If I want Hamlet, I'll read Shakespeare. If I need a bit of existential angst, I'll go to Camus, or Sartre. Why should I read Ms. Tree or Sommerset Holmes when I can find the same thing done better in Greene? One of the most embarassing bit of comics I can remember is Eisner's "proof" that you could indeed do Hamlet in comics. This is easily the worst thing he has ever produced, and it seems to me rather sad that the man who gave us P'gell and Denny Colt, the Octopus and that charming man who could fly felt obligated to prove that his chosen form of fiction was just as respectable as Shakespeare's. Well, I seem to have said what comics are not for in this article. Tune in next time for part 2, where I will reveal what comics are really for (I hope). from the airtight garage of joanne f.
hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) (06/21/84)
<See you in the funny pages, boys - Burma> | Let's face it. If I want Hamlet, I'll read Shakespeare. If I need a | bit of existential angst, I'll go to Camus, or Sartre. Why should I | read Ms. Tree or Sommerset Holmes when I can find the same thing done | better in Greene? One of the most embarassing bit of comics I can | remember is Eisner's "proof" that you could indeed do Hamlet in comics. | This is easily the worst thing he has ever produced, and it seems to me | rather sad that the man who gave us P'gell and Denny Colt, the Octopus | and that charming man who could fly felt obligated to prove that his | chosen form of fiction was just as respectable as Shakespeare's. | -- Joanne F I disagree on at least three points. First, comics are a medium of communication. They are not "toy entertainment" and by insisting that they must only be trivial amusements to be discarded, you insist that the artists and writers must only present triviality. What Eisner was trying to do was NOT a proof that his chosen form of fiction was as respectable as Shakespeare's; he was trying to show that Shakespeare's work could be adapted in a new way to the medium of comics. He was successful, although he probably should have chosen Macbeth or Midsummer Night's Dream instead; Hamlet is so pretentious and gloomy that it barely comes off anyway. If you were embarrassed it was due entirely to your own shortcoming: a limited view of how "art" can be expressed. I can enjoy reading Ms Tree or Somerset Holmes precisely because I CAN'T find the SAME thing done better in Greene. That is, a graphical depiction communicating in images and a few words of a sort of other world, where everything is in shades of ochre and grey, suffocating yet intriguing. Writers have to use thousands of words to communicate the same thing that these pictures communicate in a few pages. For a real eye-opener, examine the comics medium in Japan. They have no silly pretentious Western ideas about "ahht" and no feelings of cultural inferiority to inspire the existance of slugs like Gary Groth. (Slugs, for those of you who are not resident in the Pacific Northwest, are large snails without shells, which destroy gardens and which, when salt is poured on them, become even more disgusting than before, as they dissolve into slime.) They DO have a strong fan movement. In fact, comics artists in Japan are given the kind of acclaim that rock stars are given in America. Hutch (I recommend "I Saw It" to anyone who wants to read REAL angst.)