Comics
Aged
published in Editions Review No.2,
Sydney, 1989
Pick a cliche. Any cliche that would make a good journalistic
headline. How about "Comics grow up"? Or "Comics come of
age"? Or even the line on the back of the new-look RAW "Now
it's safe for adults to read comics"? Better still, try
the editorial of the first issue of COMIX BOOK : "While
the French produce literate cartoons for mass consumption,
we gear our (American) industry to a basically juvenile
audience. But COMIX BOOK breaks the mold. COMIX BOOK deals
with reality." The reality is that editorial was written
in 1974. The neurotic mold of comics culture remains unbroken
fifteen years later.
COMIX
BOOK was a short-lived publication with an interesting story
behind its production. Denis Kitchen approached none other
than Stan Lee to publish a bi-monthly collection of work
from the then-Underground network who produced work for
comics like BIJOU FUNNIES and ZAP. COMIX BOOK was thus intended
as a bridge between generations (the hippie scribblers and
the men-in-tights inkers). However, history prompts me to
point out that by the mid-70s the Underground comics scene
was starting to enjoy a brief period of legitimacy prior
to it sinking into a pre-punk slump for the rest of the
70s. The days of COMIX BOOK were unfortunately numbered
due to the winds of change burning out the counterculture
flame despite Stan Lee's publishing and distribution power.
While
a para-yippie tone clearly dates issues of COMIX BOOK it
serves as a lost and partially submerged sign of the direction
comics culture would continue in for years to come. Two
orientation markings remain visible. Firstly, RAW (first
published in 1981 and edited by Art Speigelman, a contributor
to COMIX BOOK) played a tricky game by catagorising their
publication a "graphix magazine". "Comix" with an `x' was
typical of early-80s new wave chic style, but back in the
forgotten 70s "comix" specifically referred to Underground
comics. RAW learnt from the mistakes that precipitated the
late-70s comics slump (druggy humour, strained perversion,
alternative lifestyles, etc.) and entered the cross-cultural
80s slyly acknowledging its hippie roots while denying them
with punk angst. Secondly, the term `comix book' is uncannily
echoed in another hip term : `graphic novel'.
Many
people have propped up the graphic novel as a new and sophisticated
plateau in the comic medium. I would argue that instead
of promoting intellectual sophistication, the graphic novel
form is symptomatic of the increasingly complicated neuroses
which culturally snare comics culture in contemporary art
and entertainment. Indicative of their epoch, the Underground
comic artists exorcised every acne-ridden ghost from their
post-war teen life in a hedonistic display of taboo teasing.
While some of them either disappeared, drugged-out or found
Christ in the 80s, others remained defiant tokens of the
counterculture - from Robert Crumb (instigator of the neo-Underground
group therapy collection WEIRDO, twenty-five issues since
1981) to Robert Williams (creator of the wonderfully grotesque
ZOMBIE MYSTERY PAINTINGS collected in a book of the same
name, Blackthorn, 1986) to Kim Deitch (and his warm, nostalgic
HOLLYWOODLAND, Fantagraphics, 1987) to Bill Griffith (and
his undyingly analytical ZIPPY THE PINHEAD whose strips
have been reprinted in collections by E.P.Dutton since 1985).
Neurotic as hell, these comic artists wear it well, neither
hiding their festered counter-culturing nor attacking values
they spent years seeking.
The
contemporary graphic novel smacks of a neruotic condition
born from an out-of-hand rejection of both the wacked-out
garbage of the `hippie scribblers' and the puerile attraction
of the interlocking Marvel and DC universe. In other words,
the graphic novel ultimately denies its status as a comic
and bends your eyeballs to read it as literature and appreciate
it as fine art. Frankly, I'm not impressed. Take Jim DeMatteis
& Kent Williams' BLOOD : A TALE (Epic, 1987) - a prime
example of the overly arty graphic novel. It starts with
a turgid quote by Egon Schiele. Subtle. The pseudo-erotic
water colour renderings and fine ink splatterings while
skilled, senuous and scintillating nonetheless fail to block
one's memory of Roger Dean album cover designs. And the
narrative is so painfully poetic one would be hard pushed
to not label the book pretentious in part if not whole.
Some might say BLOOD is - in postmodern fashion - `not a
comic'. Those same people probably also tried to sell you
the one about BLUE VELVET and PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE being
something `other' than cinema. The point is that somewhere
down the line you have to fill in your form and state your
case. You can't escape cinema by making a meta-movie, just
as you can't escape comics by marketing them as graphic
novels. It's neither a hip play with language nor a dishonest
ploy : it simply doesn't work.
It
doesn't work because some graphic novels already accept
that they're not much more than longer comics printed on
better quality pulp - but they're incredible comics all
the same. Like Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS (DC,
1986). Ostensibly a collection of the special four issues
that depicted the return of The Batman to Gotham City, THE
DARK KNIGHT RETURNS utilizes comic devices and employs comic
language and form to construct a highly energized, emotionally
complex narrative. No - it's not literature, but why should
it be? Indeed, why should it want to be? THE DARK NIGHT
RETURNS' sophistication lies in the formal orchestration
of its structural elements and text-image combinations.
One is continually engaged in a giddy deployment, demarcation
and diffusion of borders, panels, letters and splashes that
overlap, entwine and intersect. If comics are a dialectic
medium (ie. involved in the discursive sonarities of shared
speech more than the classical architecture of the written
word) THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS spins a mesmerising tale,
entrapping one with its telling rather than distracting
one with lush images and mushy poetry.
But
THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS is not without its own superficial
trappings of modern tones and contemporary slants. Its media
analogies (corrupt politicians, amoral newscasters, desensitised
youth, urban decay, etc.) set in the displaced present of
the fantastic feed into a continuing lineage of apocalyptic
conspiratorial scenarios, from 2000 AD to RANK ZEROX to
AMERICAN FLAGG to WATCHMEN to CRISIS. While these works
(along with THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS) are hailed for their
`ground-breaking' forays into contemporary politics, I find
them as engaging as songs by Sting and The The. In not too
many years to come, those comics' so-called political outlooks
will appear as comical as films like THE TRIAL OF BILLY
JACK. Then there's the much-touted film noir feel of Miller's
handling of the Batman character. All things considered,
Miller's Batman/Wayne is a pretty corny pastiche whose real
power as a character is derived more from the streamlined
stylization of character traits, with dialogue and thoughts
that are always elipsed, clipped and condensed for total
effect. In these cultish times when everything is film noir,
THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS employs such traits as contextual
detailing for building a dynamic into the Batman figure,
saving him from being either an attempt at a fleshed-out
being or a play with distilled stylistics. (Besides which,
I always thought Stan Lee was acknowledged with transforming
the super hero into a modern neurotic in the 60s with The
Fantastic Four, The Hulk, The Spiderman, Iron Man et al.)
Miller's
Batman clearly draws on a rich history of power plays and
portraits of psychotics within modern post-war comics, refiguring
how Will Eisner's SPIRIT splash pages from the 40s were
copied by French artists during the 50s (the comic correlation
of what Cahiers du Cinema critics were doing with Hollywood
movies) to crystalize a high mode of stylistic artifice
which then influenced Japanese manga (which then serve as
an indirect influence on many contemporary `cyborgpunk'
comic scenarios and formats). The critical success of THE
DARK KNIGHT RETURNS thus set the platform for the two ensuing
Batman graphic novel (or new format) publications : BATMAN
YEAR ONE (DC, 1988) and BATMAN : THE KILLING JOKE (DC, 1988).
While neither is capable of regenerating the power and control
of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, they each pick up on certain
thematics and energies present in the first remake.
BATMAN
: YEAR ONE tells the tale of the Batman's origins, giving
us a complex though at times stereotypical analysis of his
brooding temperament. The story (written by Frank Miller
again) would degenerate into corn noir if it weren't for
some engrossing colour separations by Richmond Lewis. Her
use of colours at once accepts the limitations of the four-colour
process but within them explores hitherto untried tones
and shades, marking BATMAN : YEAR ONE more visually interesting
than Miller and Klaus Janson's deliberately modern line
work in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. BATMAN : THE KILLING JOKE
features an Alan Moore story which provides a detailed picture
of the Joker's psychoses and how they came about (told in
a sequence of flashbacks). Remarkably, both the sleepless
Batman and the tireless Joker evoke equal empathy. While
the colouring is fair, Brian Bolland's (2000 AD) quill-like
drawings detail the visages of Batman and the Joker with
a frightening force that energises Moore's tale of immortal
conflict.
Obviously
BATMAN has for now become the tragic hero upon whose shoulders
rests the mainstream reputation of comics culture's "coming
of age", symbolically carrying the depressing weight of
his fictional world and the financial burden of his industry
- the fan networks, the comic specialists, the printing
trade, etc. Batman's crisis itself is a symbolic spectacle
of the neurotic state comics have been in since the Underground
lost its identity - so spectacular, in fact, that DC pulled
out all the stops when Robin The Boy Wonder was killed off
last year. Batman now has to bear the guilt of being responsible
for his ward's death.
Truth
be told, the killing of Boy Wonder is trumped up. Firstly,
the Boy Wonder in question was not Dick Grayson but Jason
Todd - a streetwise brat with a chip on his shoulder over
his parent's disappearance (not that Bruce Wayne didn't
suffer from a similar syndrome). Secondly, the four special
issues that make up this scenario (collected in A DEATH
IN THE FAMILY, DC, 1988) written by Jim Starlin constitute
a fairly schematic narrative with little dynamic flow apart
from obviously inserted shock plot points. The real interesting
thing is that the death of Robin was decided by a phone-in
poll of regular BATMAN readers. All the news coverage of
this event centered on the `sad indictment of the times'
aspect of kids wanting to kill off a character with glee
(so would I given the opportunity) so the observations drawn
were all pretty predictable, but as an event in comics history
Robin's tombstone will surely be a big footnote.
But
controversy aside, consider the climate, the context and
the pragmatics involved here : the modern Batman needs these
things to happen to happen to him in order for him to be
truly modern. Comic readers are attuned to the complex subtextual
currents of the comic medium. They well know that he new
Batman's hidden eyes stare out from the vast blackness of
comics culture's collective neuroses - about being puerile,
immoral, apolitical, sexist, unartistic, disposable, trivial,
whatever. His new physique - tougher yet older, more sexual
yet more inhuman, wiser yet more tense - both thrives on
and is tired of the iritating stigmas still attached to
reading comics. He is a sign of what comics have become
: displaced, disenchanted, discontinued - but still around.
And that sets the scene for the movie BATMAN (1989) wherein
Tim Burton (an ex-animator for Disney who directed PEE WEE'S
BIG ADVENTURE and BEETLEJUICE) can have Michael Keaton -
recognisably unrecognisable - pick up the dialect spoken
by Miller's DARK KNIGHT to seethe through his teeth - "I'm
Batman." The spittle speaks volumes : I'm everything you've
laughed at and everything you could not possibly imagine
me being capable of. I'm a titanic neurotic.
But
depite all the tacky postmodern schticks fixed to their
apocalyptic scenarios, and all the pretentious claims of
their oh-so-adult view of life, contemporary comics still
will be regarded as kids' stuff and tawdry trash. High-brow
sensibilities are fine as marketing ploys but one shouldn't
believe the advertising, because in the end comics are being
denied their true status, form and nature. Comics are all
the more displaced now because of their cross-cultural successes
and their upwardly-mobile aspirations which cloud the more
pertinent aspects of their continuing development. Comics
haven't come of age - they've aged. From Batman to Zippy.
That's what makes them so interesting and vital now - the
fact that can grow old without neccessarily growing up;
that they can mutate without maturing.
