Thierry Groensteen's Why Are Comics Still in Search of Cultural Legitimization?

Why? Because of you and other critics like you, of course...

I'm reading Mississippi Press' A Comics Studies Reader (edited by Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester, 2009, believe it or not). The book's first essay gives this post its title (3 - 11). I had read it already a few years ago in Comics Culture (edited by Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000: 29 - 41). I also read Thierry Groensteen's book La bande dessinée, un object culturel non identifié (comics, an unidentified cultural object; l'An 2, 2006) in which part of this ubiquitous text is integrated in the first chapter: "Une histoire faite d'anomalies" (a history constructed by anomalies: 6 - 19). I'm not writing a critique or a review of said essay and cited book though. I'm just writing my two cents about a few phrases and various name droppings that Groensteen tosses to and fro. I'll start by the bombastic beginning (translation by Shirley Smolderen; 3): "Although comics have been in existence for over a century and a half, they suffer from a considerable lack of legitimacy.

To those who know and love it, the art that has given us Rodolphe Töpffer and Wilhelm Busch, Hergé and Tardi, Winsor McCay and George Herriman, Barks and Gottfredson, Franquin and Moebius, Segar and Spiegelman, Gotlib and Brétecher, Crumb and Mattotti, Hugo Pratt and Alberto Breccia, not to mention The Spirit, Peanuts or Asterix... in short, comic art, has nothing left to prove." Really? Is he serious? I find the notion of someone "loving" an art form somewhat strange. Do we love music?, all music compositions? Or painting?, all paintings? I don't think so. Anyway, picture this paraphrase, please: To those who know and love it, the art that has given us Jonathan Swift and the brothers Grimm, L. Frank Baum and Eric Flint, Enid Blyton and Astrid Lindgren, Roald Dahl and Leo Lionni, Sharon Creech and Laura Numeroff, James Thurber and Helen Epstein, Cavanna and Gerd Brantenberg, Charles Bukowski and Italo Calvino, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jorge Luis Borges, not to mention Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Story of Tracy Beaker or Chroniques de la haine ordinaire... in short, literature, has nothing left to prove.

Some of the above writers are part of any literary canon, I suppose, but where are the real heavyweights like Dostoyevsky, Ogai Mori, Constantine Cavafy? And aren't satirists and children's writers, I don't know?, somewhat overrepresented?

If comics have nothing to prove after this list I would say that the critic has not very high standards. In the end, my point is: what if people have their legitimate reasons to dismiss comics as high art, legitimizing it in the process as Thierry Groensteen seems to want? They are not familiar with the art form's best work in the restrict field (Fabrice Neaud's journals, for instance) because no one champions the stuff. On top of that they don't recognize some great work done in the expanded field as comics.

Another part of Groensteen's text that I have some trouble understanding is his use of the word "great," here (translation by Shirley Smolderen, again; 4): "the great American series (Brick Bradford, Flash Gordon, Mandrake, Popeye, and so many others)." Maybe he has a very loose meaning for the word. These are formulaic, escapist, stories if ever I saw such things, but I'm not going to criticize them (not wanting to engage with the stuff at this point in my life; I'll just add that Popeye's zaniness should have put said series in better company, but, oh well...). I made my point, anyway... methinks...

The icing on the cake has to be the ending though (ditto; 11): "Yes, why not admit it? All of us here in Copenhagen, delivering our clever papers, are probably doing nothing more than holding our hands to the kids we used to be." Gracious! I'm glad that I wasn't there delivering "clever papers" about dumb comics, "holding [my] hands" to the dumb kid that I used to be. I can't sing a victory song just yet though: maybe this largely expanded Peter Pan's syndrome pandemic is contagious and I'll catch it... eventually? Beware of the babymen out there...

Image:
A Comics Studies Reader (Edited by Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester, University Press of Mississippi, 2009; cover by Seth or by some anonymous person ripping him off).

PS On the brighter side of things (for me at least) in the Thank You department: Derik Badman, Joe McCulloch, Chris Mautner, Larry Cruz, James Bucky Carter, David Soares, Steve Holland, Jorge, German.

PPS For a pioneering use of the words "babyman," "babymen," in the comics' milieu's context, see Mike Manley, here:

http://drawman.blogspot.com/2008/06/much-ruffling-of-feathers-and-lot-of.html

http://drawman.blogspot.com/2008/06/philly-wizard-post-babymen-report.html

Yoshiharu Tsuge's Nejishiki - Coda

1.

2.


3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Images:

1., 2., 3. a distinctive trademark in Yoshiharu Tsuge's work are these melancholic lonely characters, viewed from the back, lost in their thoughts and lost in the sometimes inhospitable landscape (remember Fred's Jules Renard?, kindred spirits?); here's what he said in an interview when asked about travelling (Susumu Gondô, interviewer, 1993 [quoted by Béatrice Maréchal: "On Top of the Mountain," The Comics Journal Special Edition, 2005: 26]: "It is not only to get free from daily life, it is also in the relationship with nature to become oneself a point in the landscape."; the above quote talks about pantheism and fits like a glove to image # 3, but the other two also have that unsettling Tsuge's touch: the mark of genius, I would say; disappearance (including suicide) is one of Tsuge's main themes;

4. another travel inspired illo;

5. the real location (transformed, after a couple of decades, I suppose) and its transposition in "Nejishiki" (Garo, June, 1968; image caught, here: http://www.mugendo-web.com/y_tsuge/);

6. a famous "Nejishiki" page as published in 9e art # 10 (April, 2004 [1968]);

7. Sukezô Sukegawa (with son) pisses in the Tama river while trying to sell ornamental stones (that's what's written: "stones)"; Yoshiharu Tsuge's autobio stories are always an invention (he aims at a more profound truth through creation); Sukezô is a misfit character who, among other things, tried to do comics just to discover that personal expression doesn't sell; sounds familiar? All images, except the ones already noted, are from Kusetsu juunenki (a period of ten years' unswerving devotion; Chikuma Shobô, 1994).

Yoshiharu Tsuge's Nejishiki

1.

2.


3.

There are only a fistful of comics anthologies that pulled back the art form from the commercial hell (of children's adventures dreck and silly humor) in which it was imprisoned by the lords of kitsch. I mentioned a couple already, here at The Crib: Madriz (Spain, 1984), Frigorevue and Frigobox (Belgium, 1992, 1994). I'm sure that I will cite a few more in the future: Raw (U.S.A., 1980), Labo and Lapin (France, 1990, 1992), Lápiz Japonés (Argentina, 1993). The first, though (if we don't count satire: Hara-Kiri, France, 1960) is Garo (Japan, 1964).

Postwar in Japan was a period of economical crisis. Tormented by the deadly combo of unemployment and inflation the lower level of the Japanese society found itself in a precarious situation. In such a state of affairs people not only seek, they need to be entertained. The problem is that their entertainment has to be very cheap. That's where pay-libraries enter our picture. Loaning books for a fraction of their price (7 or 8 yen against 30 to 50, according to Béatrice Maréchal in 9e art # 10, April, 2004: 68) these pay-libraries flourished in recession-ridden post war Japan.

Yoshiharu Tsuge was born in Tokyo in 1937. After his father's death in 1942 he lived with his mother, stepfather, two younger brothers and two half-sisters. He always liked to draw and wanted to become a comics artist. Creating comics to the pay-libraries' editors was both an attempt to solve his economical troubles and the accomplishment of a dream. His first comic was published in 1955 showing Osamu Tezuka's influence.

In 1957 Yoshihiro Tatsumi coined the term "gekiga" (drama pictures) to mean more mature, closer to reality, darker stories (before Tatsumi's generation Japanese comics were also mostly aimed at children). On the other hand pay-libraries' editor Katsuichi Nagai published Sampei Shiratô's left wing, historically set stories (Ninja bugeishô). It's mostly for him, and with his help, that he decides to publish Garo magazine (as can be seen on the mag's first issue's cover above). Garo ("fanged wolf", but it also has the word "ga" - image - in there) was so named after one of Shiratô's characters.

From 1964 through 1997 (with a couple of false restarts after its main run) Garo published many important Japanese comics artists. Yoshiharu Tsuge was one of them since the mag's first years, but there were also: Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Seiichi Hayashi, Shinishi Abe, Ôji Suzuki, Kazuichi Hanawa, Yoshikazu Ebisu, Shungicu Uchida, Teruhiko Yumura, Hinako Sugiura, among many others...

In 1966 Yoshiharu Tsuge suffered one of his periodical depressions and stopped drawing his own stories to be Shigeru Mizuki's assistant. It's under his influence that Tsuge becomes partly a Naturalist. From now on his highly detailed backgrounds will be as important as his cartoonish characters.

Mitsuhiro Asakawa published a great overview of Yoshiharu Tsuge's relatively short career in comics in 9e art # 10 (April, 2004: 62 - 68). He classified Tsuge's oeuvre in three different kinds: life stories, travel stories, dream stories (as Béatrice Maréchal called them in "On Top of the Mountain," The Comics Journal Special Edition, Vol. 5, 2005: 22 - 27). Japanese writers distinguish two varieties in autobiography: one that deals with a public persona (jiden) and one that deals with more private affairs (watakuchi). Tsuge's I-comics belong to the latter classification. As Chôkitsu Kurumatani stated (as quoted by Béatrice Maréchal in the above cited text: 24): "I-novels question the root of one self's existence... this ominous and mysteriously unknown part that hides inside the ground of daily life." (This is marvelously put and makes perfect sense to me: I always distinguished between Chester Brown, John Porcellino, Fabrice Neaud, and mostly all the others who did autobiography: the former had the courage to expose themselves doing watakuchi, the others just dealt with daily life's foam.)

"Nejishiki" (screw-style; Garo, June, 1968) is a dream story that, as in "Numa" (marsh; Garo, February, 1966) joins thanatos (including a war ravaged Japan) and eros (a female surgeon solves the main character's health problem performing a strange mix of sexual intercourse / surgery operation). I committed the error of not putting this story in my personal canon. Hoping to come back to Yoshiharu Tsuge's comics... (to all the other stories that I read in English and French, that is: "Ô ba denki mekki kôgyôsho" - Oba's electroplate factory -, Manga Story, April, 1973 [Raw, Vol. 2, # 2, 1990]; "Akai hana" - red flowers -, Garo, October 1967 [Raw Vol. 1, # 7, 1985]; his last series Munô no hito; a useless man, Comic Baku, 1985 - 1987 [L'homme sans talent, Ego Comme X, 2004])... I'm correcting it now.

Images:

1. the cover of ガロ # 1 (Garo, September, 1964): as published in Paul Gravett's Manga (Laurence King, 2004); the image illustrates Shiratô's story "Kamui Den" (the legend of Kamui);

2. according to c. bren (cf. comments): "the center image is Tsuge as portrayed by the actor Shirô Sano in Teruo Ishii's 1993 film Gensenkan Shujin, which is based on several stories of Tsuge's" (image as published in a 1993 poster);

3. Tsuge as a character in one of his stories (with another character: Yanagi inn's owner; Maki Fujiwara?): "Yanagi-ya shujin" (the master of the Yanaga inn) Garo (February, March, 1970): as published in Kusetsu juunenki (which someone translated for me on the Comics Journal messboard, ages ago, as: a period of ten years' unswerving devotion; Chikuma Shobô, 1994).

Here's a relatively recent photo and an impressive list of comics' absolute masterpieces:

https://www.chikumashobo.co.jp/author/000400/result?p=&g=&order=&desc=false

"Nejishiki" (screw-style), as published in The Comics Journal # 250 (February, 2003 [Garo, June, 1968]):

http://www.sonnyliew.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=660&sid=ae8cd46b3390e808990033b31c5f8c1

An older version is included in Concerned Theatre Japan (October, 1969):

http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/publications/michclassics/CTJ.html

Mat Brinkman's Teratoid Heights - Coda

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Images:

1. looking at this still from Mat Brinkman's favorite video game (Victory Road, Arcade, 1986) it's easy to see what inspires him...;

2. Mat Brinkman's playful little characters in Teratoid Heights (Highwater Books, 2003);

3. if Highwater's Teratoid Heights is a small book (6 x 5) this Brinkman's original mini-comic (Crab Claws; reprinted in the aforementioned Teratoid Heights) is five times smaller: roughly 2 x 3; narratively it works a lot better with an image per page until the final surprise (ruined in the faked layout of the reprint);

4. Mat Brinkman's abstract mini-comic color pages as published in The Comics Journal # 256 (October, 2003);

5. part of a "Multi-force" episode (Paper Rodeo tabloid # 6, October, November, 2000);

6. Brian Chippendale's brilliantly textured cover for Paper Rodeo # 4 (August, 2000; detail);

7. semantic noise the Fort Thunder way (detail): Joe Grillo: Paper Rodeo # 18 (August, September, 2004).

PS I thought that it was lost forever, but it's here, after all:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050404113213/www.fortthunder.org/comix/

Mat Brinkman's Teratoid Heights

1.

2.

3.

Fort Thunder was a group of Rhode Island School of Design students living in the second floor of an abandoned 19th century textile factory in Eagle Square, Olneyville. They occupied the place from 1995 through 2001 when the whole premises were demolished. According to Tom Spurgeon (here: http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/commentary/1863/):
"The name "Fort Thunder" was selected by the quartet [Mat Brinkman, Brian Chippendale, Rob Coggeshal, Freddy Jones] almost immediately upon moving in, as the space needed a name in order to advertise its music shows. (Brinkman says its first show was held within a month after opening.) The name is related to the fact that the space, on the outer edge of a sparsely populated neighborhood near downtown, allowed the music to be played as loudly as they wanted. Brinkman also liked the idea of a Fort where "you're there to defend yourself from the quietness of American bullshit.""

Many artists joined the original four (most notably: Brian Ralph, Leif Goldberg, Jim Drain, Paul Lyons) or were influenced by the group's funk aesthetics (Paper Rad - Jacob Ciocci, Jessica Ciocci, Ben Jones -, Sammy Harkham, C. F.:Chris Forgues, being the most obvious examples).

Appart from comics, music, installations (that's what the place really was) and posters were the Fort's forte. Two examples: Drum & bass noise-rock band Lightning Bolt (Brian Chippendale, drums and vocals, Brian Gibson, bass: http://www.myspace.com/laserbeast; http://laserbeast.com/); arts collective, noise band, Forcefield (Matt Brinkman, Jim Drain, Ara Peterson, Leif Goldberg) who showed their installation Third Annual Roggaboggas at the Whitney Biennial in 2002. Jim Drain, as a solo artist, won Basel's Art Fair's award in 2005: http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2005/06/26/knitting_his_way_to_the_top/.

But enough with history. What's Fort Thunder, really? If I had to define it with one word it would be: noise. It gave the name to the artists' group and noise-rock was played there. But is there such a thing as visual noise? Yes, there is: in information theory (Shannon-Weaver model) noise is everything that distorts the transmission of information. (Instead of simply saying "noise" I should have used the more accurate expression "semantic noise", though.) This means that Fort Thunder is some sort of Dada (Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau is the grandfather of the Fort), Funk (Jim Nutt et al - I personally have a soft spot for Roy de Forest and Nicholas Africano), Punk (Gary Panter comes to mind), aesthetic. Not to mention Art Brut, New Image, Figuration Libre, etc... etc...

Nothing new under the sun? It depends: no one cited above invested in comics as the Fort Thunder artists did (except Panter, of course); they brought their generations' imagery (the eighties' video games and other cultural detritus) to the forefront.

Teratoid Eights (Highwater Books, July 2003) is an handsome little tome that reprints Mat Brinkman's remarkable mini-comics. He depicts simple, rocky, slightly menacing, alien worlds populated by goofy monsters. Even if brief, Mat Brinkman's stories contradict the idea that Fort Thunder comics are visual noise only. His ratty line and simple creatures transport us to a primitive world. His imagery may be too playful to truly haunt us, but it is enough to rouse deeply buried feelings, hiding in our primitive brain.

Images and sounds:

1. the Fort holders in a group photo as published in The Comics Journal # 256 (October 2003: 61): top row, left to right: Jim Drain, Leif Goldberg, Rob Coggeshal, Peter Fuller, Mat Brinkman; bottom row, left to right: Andy Estep, Paul Lyons, Eric Talley, Brian Ralph, Brian Chippendale;

2. Brian Chippendale's poster advertising a meeting to discuss the Fort's headquarters' future (the building was known as the Valley Worsted mill and the Americana Flea Market); image caught, here:

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/commentary/5547/;

3. Paper Rad's psychedelic, Fort Thunder inspired, DVD trailer (2006).

Comics Criticism? What's That?

It was inevitable, sooner or later I had to write about comics criticism, or, to be more accurate, I had to write about what passes for comics criticism in the media. Why now, exactly, though? Because we're approaching the end of the year and "best of" lists tend to pop up here and there (preferably at the beginning of December to permit readers the joyful act of penning their gift lists for Christmas). Also, because Marcos Farrajota at Lisbon's Bedeteca (comics library) always asks me to examine the year in comics criticism (this time I'll just translate this post into Portuguese; neat!). Don't laugh, please, but doing such a thing, year after year, reporting nothing, is incredibly tough. Last, but not least, because I read this very finely written and, more importantly, very finely observed, piece of metacriticism by Xavier Guilbert at Du9 (in case you are wondering, the cryptic cypher and letters mean both, "about what's new" and "about comics," the ninth art, according to Claude Beylie - Lettres et médecins magazine, January 1964; in French): http://www.du9.org/Vues-Ephemeres-Decembre-2008

Especially for you, French language impaired people, I'll summarize what Xavier Guilbert says in one sentence: he compares the nominees in literature, film... and comics... for the Globes de Cristal yearly prizes (twelve categories given by the French press to the arts) concluding that the latter, are simply ridiculous. The "ridiculous" part is mine, by the way, but Xavier is a lot less naive than myself. He doesn't believe that the journalists (those who, according to the jury, are the best informed to judge) are aesthetically impaired: he simply noted that the holy elected are the biggest at the box-office. A coincidence, I'm sure...

To add a personal note: it always was with dismay that I used to stumble, while reading the cultural section of the newspaper, with an inane review about some mediocre French mainstream comic (i. e. a comic for children very much liked by babymen also) juxtaposed with real criticism about Paul Celan, for instance. Needless to say that I'm more than happy when, in these days of economical crisis we're living in, there's less and less space to waste with comics criticism in the newspapers. I prefer nothing to inanity.

Anyway, more than a year ago Sean T. Collins wrote an article in The Comics Reporter about the comics criticism panel at SPX 2007: http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_first_person_sean_t_collins_on_the_criticism_panel_at_small_press_expo/

Here are a couple of quotes that may help to explain comics criticism's place in mainstream media: ""fewer words, more bullets, more lists, more entry points," tying reviews into the PR cycle for new releases to the exclusion of works that aren't new or upcoming, tight word counts, limited space for comics coverage" (the inverted commas mean that Collins is quoting Douglas Wolk); "I wish the phrase "the dumbing down of American culture" were removed from this discussion. A look at the top-grossing films and best-selling books during the so-called Golden Age of Criticism indicates that America has always been pretty dumb, a state of affairs not at all unique to America, hey by the way." PR is the mantis that kills criticism after using it for its personal pleasure. Newspapers have a tough time just keeping afloat these days. Dumbing down is, perhaps, a necessary strategy in order to survive. This pet theory of mine tells me that things never change... Collins is right: fortunes are made in these barbaric days we're living in, selling what's dumb, not what's difficult, challenges our preconceptions, confronts us with the real world. What he doesn't seem to acknowledge is that critics back then weren't tied to PRing what sells like they do today. If that doesn't happen to older, more established criticism fields, like literature, yet, I dread the day in which babymen critics will laud Harry Potter as the greatest book ever written.

Image:

If asked, I would elect this book as winner of the Globe de Cristal for comics (Un voyage by Philippe de Pierpont - w - and Éric Lambé - a -, Futuropolis, 2008).

PS This post has nothing to do with comics criticism in academia. I just received the latest International Journal of Comic Art and it's huge with 872 pages. I'm sure that I'm going to enjoy every one of them.

Philippe Druillet's and Moebius' Approche Sur Centauri - Coda

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Images:

1., 2. Moebius' high tech, clean, controlled environment ("Approche sur Centauri"'s first page) contrasts with Druillet's monsters ("Approche sur Centauri"'s fifth page); as Alan Moore put it in his character William Gull's mouth (From Hell volume 7, April 1995): "With all your shimmering numbers and your lights, think not to be inured to history. It's black root succours you. it is inside you." Druillet's and Moebius' character confronts an irrational, dark, world inside himself;

3., 4. in "Cauchemar blanc" another confrontation occurs, between a dream (the nightmare of a racist: him and his pals try to kill an Arab and fail miserably because people do the right thing)...;

5. ...and reality (in which they don't fail and people act cowardly).

The title in white over black mirrors the paradox that's the story's subtext: it's reality that is nightmarish, not the dream world (the nightmare of a racist can only be a good thing: a white nightmare). In Métal Hurlant # 4 (October, 1975) Moebius said (my translation): "there's no reason why a story has to be like a house, with a door to go in, windows to look at the trees outside and a chimney to let smoke out... We can imagine a story like an elephant, like a wheat field or the flame of a match." "Cauchemar blanc" has the form of a möbius strip.
Finally: I have some reservations about the reading order of the inserts in number four: how come we see Barjout with a gun in his hand before seeing him picking it up from the glove compartment?

All images as published in Moebius, Oeuvres completes tome 1, Le Bandard fou, John Watercolor, Cauchemar blanc (Les Humanoïdes Associés, June, 1980).

"Cauchemar blanc," with its contemporary setting and "fait divers" content, is an anomaly in this sci-fi author's oeuvre (a mix of the EC tradition and the underground, according to Bruno Lecigne and Jean-Pierre Tamine: Fac-simile, 1983, Futuropolis: 59). Nonetheless it was highly influential during the seventies in France. It inspired Jacques Tardi, for instance. For that alone it deserves a place in comics history.