Comics,
RAW, Topps, Kids & Dinosaurs
published in Art & Text No.33, Sydney,
1989
The past five years have seen many changes in comic culture
worldwide. While these changes are too complex and detailed
to present here, it can be noted that a certain upwardly
intellectual push in comic production has garnered a new
respect hitherto undirected at the industry's craft and
culture. Three major currents can be cited: (a) the Anglo
American trend toward graphic novels (as previously established
in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium, countries where comics
have always been accepted as a valid form and publishing
venture); (b) the successful push (particularly by British
comic writers like Frank Miller and Alan Moore) to infuse
the super hero and sci fi genres with global commentary,
sexual politics, and socio economic analysis; and (c) the
cultural mergers and artistic crossovers of American independent
publishers like Raw and Fantagraphics, where comics, graphics,
illustration and painting are simultaneously confused and
celebrated.
But
the new comic respectability of the 1980S is not without
its suspect tendencies. The 'politically aware' projections
of the sci fi or 'conspiratorialist' genres are generally
obvious in their scenarios and often tiresomely neurotic
about being located within the purile tradition of DC and
Marvel super heroes, while the much-touted graphic novel
is basically an attempt to extend the comic market into
an over intellectualised (and comic-prejudiced) audience
by marketing the comic 'object' in bookish avenues of literature.
The anarchic energy of comics their anti social drive, their
intensity of depiction, their disregard for certain standards
in word and image production or language has been overlooked,
dismissed, disregarded, and ultimately stifled by their
acceptance in a new cultural configuration of art/philosophy/politics/literature,
to whom comics have come bearing a changed status and signs
of maturity. Fortunately, such configurations have not been
overlooked by the spread - part visible, part invisible
- of Raw Publications.
Raw
Publications - perhaps the most well known and most influential
figure in this contemporary change fit comic culture - was
formed in 1980 in New York by Francois Mouly and Art Spiegelman.
Since then, Raw has basically set the fine art standards
by which many crossover publications (comics/graphics/art)
are measured; and while the nine issues of their magazine,
plus their set of six One Shot solo publications, consciously
steer away from the ambiguous crassness of the comic medium,
the work they publish generally embraces the length and
breadth of comic history, form and culture, complete with
all its aesthetic problematics of taste, value, and meaning.
In particular, Spiegelman's 'bipartisan' background (underground
and mainstream) has been important in shaping the broader
view on comic culture that has enlivened the Raw oeuvre.
Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, he worked in
the comic underground scene in San Francisco, and later
went on to lecture in comic history and production at New
York's School of Visual Arts. Parallel to this, Spiegelman
has worked for many years as creative consultant at Topps
Bubblegum Company one of the largest swap card gum manufacturers
in America.
Perhaps
the most notorious and best known of Spiegelman's work at
Topps is the project he devised with Raw artist Mark Newgarden:
The Garbage Pail Kids series, which was a violent attack
on the phenomenon of the Cabbage Patch Dolls, designed and
marketed by Xavier Roberts. The suspect humanism of such
an innocent toy (which you officially had to 'adopt') was
brought to the fore when the fad peaked during the 1983
Christmas rush, with scenes of mass hysteria across America
as fights broke out in numerous department stores over the
dwindling number of these "limited edition" handmade dolls.
With their overtly anti social appeal, The Garbage Pail
Kids was a huge success among kids in the 1980s, just as
EC Comics were in the 1950s and Mad magazine in the 1960s.
Spiegelman and Newgarden were deliberately attempting to
bring back something that would disgust parents while at
the same time appealing to kids a generational gap which
the 1970s worked very hard to overcome. The Garbage Pail
Kids series attained new heights of grossness, and became
seminal to the recent 'gross out' genre of toys (which parents
like to label "victim toys").
I
would have no qualms in claiming that The Garbage Pail Kids
series provides most vital, interesting, and complex sociocultural
commentary for the visual arts. The fact that they happen
to be bubblegum cards aimed at kids not Only makes the project
more confounding or fascinating, but it also prompts one
to rethink the political boundaries continually retraced
in the area of interventionist image production in both
comics and fine art. While 'serious' comics insist on painting
political allegories about great 'global conflicts', and
bemoan the shifting instability of Third World cultures,
they too often end up schematising and sloganeering their
messages, not surprisingly, in hyper critical terms. In
their drive to achieve the maturity of the adult world,
they end up spreading political impotency in the guise of
making the reader 'aware' of such things. On the other hand,
the outwardly semiotic approach to image production in some
contemporary art is ultimately alienated by its own imagery,
understanding little of its cultural background and becoming
instead a self centered 'artistic' interpretation of what
its practitioners speciously label "image codes".
The
'gross out' tactic of The Garbage Pail Kids is more confrontational
in its total outlook, mainly because it communicates to
the youth market in their terms of ,address. That address
is largely incapable of being translated to any other discursive
level: these horrific images of kids coming to terms with
their own bodies as an expression of adolescent feelings
of putrescence and abjection speak volumes on corporeality,
sexuality, and the morality of taste. Stich images are reinforced
when one remembers that The Garbage Pail Kids are the refuse
of that beautiful world deliriously suggested in the 'adoption'
and consumption of the Cabbage Patch dolls, whose sex is
disguised as 'nature' (babies come from the garden), whose
acceptance is overidden by the investment of desire (the
dolls adhere to universalising notions of cuteness), and
whose identity is erased by socialisation (the child becomes
a parent by ,adopting' the doll). The socio political stance
of Spiegelman and Newgarden is invigorated by their wide
knowledge of comic culture and toy consumption over the
past three decades clearly, The Garbage Pail Kids are heirs
to the EC brand of horror, and the Mad style of lunacy.
In other words, the discourse of these artists is versed
in the dialect of their Subject. Nor is their project a
one dimensional exercise. The fact that they also produce
work under the banner of Raw, with its fine art bias, testifies
to the broad base from which they work.
The
latest 'gross out' production from Topps is a one off series
of swap cards called Dinosaurs Attack! (1988, 55 cards).
Though uncredited, Newgarden's work is clearly echoed in
the neo Japanese, modernillustration style, exhibiting the
same sort of extensive knowledge of comic, toy, and movie
history as has Spiegelman. Although Topps is attempting
to reach a new and younger generation with this series,
it is actually a remake of its infamous Mars Attacks! series
of the early 1960s. Basically, Mars Attacks! was a knowing
pastiche of late 1950s 'red scare' sci fi movies. The controversy
surrounding Mars Attacks! was the result of their graphic
depictions of violence and terror, with Martians continually
zapping human beings: the series shattered almost every
social convention and political belief of the time.. The
cards very quickly met with resistance from distributors
and proved financially unsuccessful, repeating the fate
of EC Comics and certain issues of Mad after the introduction
of the paternalistic Comics Code in the late 1950s (a self
regulating Board within the comic industry able to exert
pressure on distributors to carry only material that would
not cause bad publicity for the industry).
The
success of Dinosaurs Attack! is more guaranteed because
it plugs into the current popular fixation with dinosaurs,
best demonstrated by the huge success of toys like Dino
Riders. Like most instances of horror in media entertainment,
the Dinosaurs Attack! series portrays the more repulsive
and adverse aspects of our societies, attracting dread and
awe as its stories are located on the fault line between
the acceptable and the abject. For example, three major
social institutions are attacked in vivid pictorial detail
before the series reaches its tenth card: Homeroom Horror
(No. 5) shows a teacher torn in half by an Allosaur while
she is setting homework on the history of dinosaurs; Police
Precinct A ssa tilted (No. 6) shows that institution being
stampeeded by a herd of Stegosauri, while a police sergeant
gets his eye ripped out by one of their spiked tails; and
D.C. Holocaust (No. 7) shows the White House being demolished
with the first lady and her C.I.A. attache being masticated
by a flock of Pteranodons. The cynicism of these scenes
is highlighted by the narratives on the back of the cards,
laid out like front page headlines. As the series progresses,
one begins to wonder what respected institutions remain
to be demolished. The wonderful irony of the cards is that
they always give factual information oil the habits, dimensions,
and lineage of each species of dinosaur just the thing to
placate teacher and parents alike. (Moreover, the heroes
in the serial are a small girl and female scientist, while
the scientific experiments are directly attributed to monetary
greed.) But apart from the implicit positivism of such a
scenario and contrary to the usual pedagogical function
of most 'progressive' toys these cards fully demonstrate
the antisocial drive upon which all comic history and culture
is founded. Their gross character is their grace.
But
is it art? Of course not and that's precisely why the cards
are so powerful. Not that Spiegelman, Newgarden, Raw or
Topps take a reactionary or revisionist anti art stance,
but that works like The Garbage Pail Kids and Dinosaurs
Attack! generate culture for a populace to whom art is of
little concern. The success of these cards in popular culture
based on a transcultural concept of art , aesthetics, sociology
and mass media is something to which the museographic intentions
of fine art and the pseudo political designs of contemporary
art can only aspire. While various Raw artists (like Sue
Coe, Gary Panter and Charles Burns) have also become exhibiting
artists, producing a set of conflicts which will make their
work over the next few years even more interesting to watch,
one suspects that the Topps cards like their predecessors
in social satire, EC Comics and Mad will be hard pushed
to find acceptance in legitimised cultural spheres. Their
base appeal, however exploitative, is a threshold which
to this day despite Al 'popular culture, 'mass media', 'working
class' and 'low grade' post Pop proselytisations art has
not managed to cross.
SUGGESTED
READING:
Raw One Shots (solo publications by Raw artists) 1983-86:
Sue Coe, How To Commit Suicide In South Africa, No. 2 1983.
Jerry Moriarty, Jack Survives, No 3, 1983. Gary Panter,
Invasion Of The Elvis Zombies, No. 4, 1984. Charles Burns,
Big Baby, No. 5, 1986. Sue Coe, X, No.6, 1986.
Rate
A Magazine Nos 1-9, New York, Raw Books And Graphics, 1980-88.
Maus,
Art Spiegelman, Pantheon, 1986.
Defective
Stories, CharIes Burns, Pantheon, 1987.
Agony,
Mark Beyer, Pantheon, 1988.
Any
Similarity To Persons Living Or Dead Is Purely Coincidental,
Drew and Josh Friedman, Fantagraphics Books, 1986.
Hollywoodland,
Kim Deitch, Fantagraphics Books, 1987.
Neat
Stuff, Peter Bagge, Fantagraphics Books, 1988.
Lloyd
Llewellyn, Dan Clowes. Fantagraphics Books, 1988.
The
Comics Journal, Gary G. Groth (ed.), monthly publication,
Fantagraphics Books since 1978.
The
Garbage Pail Kids, 14 series of 60 bubblegum cards, Topps
Bubblegum Company, 1984-88.
Dinosaurs
Attack!, I series of 55 cards, Topps Bubblegum Company,
1988,
Blab.!.
Monte Beauchamp (ed.), fanzine (No. 2 contains an interview
with Len Brown of Topps on the making of the original Mars
Attacks!), Chicago, EC, 1986-88.
Legend
Of The Cabbage Patch Kids, Xavier Roberts, Texas, Taylor
Publishing, 1994.
