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From: soren@reed.UUCP (Soren Petersen)
Newsgroups: net.comics
Subject: Re: Comics as a Creative Medium
Message-ID: <2249@reed.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Dec-85 07:16:45 EST
Article-I.D.: reed.2249
Posted: Sun Dec  8 07:16:45 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Dec-85 11:05:09 EST
References: <3554@pur-ee.UUCP>
Reply-To: soren@reed.UUCP (Soren Petersen)
Distribution: na
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 76
Summary: 

In article <3554@pur-ee.UUCP> hsut@pur-ee.UUCP (Bill Hsu) writes:
>
>	It is perhaps because of this "comics are for kids" stigma
>that comics as a creative medium are seen to be far inferior to
>books and movies. I see comics as an excellent middle ground between
>books and movies, with the potential to benefit from the strengths
>of either medium while avoiding the weaknesses. Comics can provide
>the visual impact approximating the film medium that is difficult to
>achieve with pure text. It also allows dramatic soliloquys and subtle
>psychological discourses which do not come off well in the cinema
>It is a good compromise between the static quality of another visual
>medium, painting/sculpture, while it also has the ability to depict
>movement, one of the strengths of the cinema. Good comics utilize
>some (or all) of the strengths of literature/cinema/painting. Cerebus
>is almost cinematic in its panel sequencing, while there is room
>for Sim to fill us in on the background by inserting page-size panels
>with lots of text. This will not work well in a movie. Swamp Thing
>is another good example of an almost perfect marriage of the subtleties
>of text and the visual impact of the cinema. 
>
>	It is obviously difficult for creators in comics to escape
>their status as second class citizens because of their medium. It is
>also difficult for comics to escape being almost exclusively 
>superhero funnybooks. My hope is that eventually the market will change
>sufficiently that comic books will have to change, that more adults
>will become interested in good comics or enough comic buyers will
>grow up and demand better comics (unfortunately, there will also be more
>kids demanding more trashy Secret Wars IIIIIIIIIIII...) A big effort
>has to be made to "sell" comics to adults (I've seen isolated attempts).
>I certainly hope the more adventurous Independents will survive long
>enough to help change things.
>

Welllllll, I was a kid once, and I certainly hope that, for the sake
of future kids, that some comics will still be kids stuff--heck, I started
reading them because they were fun, and because they taught me a a lot.
All those Marvel morality plays about what being human was all about, or
Mutant hysteria, which we all think are so trite nowadays was new and
important stuff once.  My reaction when I read Secret Wars I was that
I would have loved it when I was 10--and why not?  I have been rereading
a lot of my childhood favorites and dislikes and I find that I have in
many ways totally reversed my opinions on a good number of them.  My 
favorite title when I was 10 was Daredevil (this was pre-Miller, and
terribly bland), and the ones I like now, like the Starlin Captain
Marvel and the Englehart Dr. Strange I found totally incomprehensible,
and Howard the Duck just plain puzzled me.  Indeed one problem I have
with today's society is the contempt with which Children's entertainment
is held.  It has, I admit been a while since I've seriously looked,
but I have seen nothing for kids lately that wasn't simultaneously a 
series of books, a TV series, a line of toys, a video game, and a
candy (I'm serious, I just saw Gummi Transformers at 7-11).  Certainly
the sensitivity of most comic fans to charges of reading "kid's stuff"
does nothing to change this.  I have nothing against adult comics,
but I am worried that what is going to happen is that there will be
a specialized adult market of fair quality and a kid's Ghetto.  I 
personally think this would be a tragedy--comics get a lot of their
appeal from the fact that they originally had to be written in such a
way that they could be understood by your average 9 year old and thus
were forced to be less sophisticated and flashier than adult material.     

I should maybe get off my pulpit here, since I do agree with what 
Mr. Hsu said.  Comics do have potential as an art form.  They are the
most malleable form of narrative, being both more graphic than prose
and more controllable than cinema (which has to operate in real time,
limiting its effectiveness).  My favorite example of the effectiveness
of comic art is in the X-Men graphic novel where Xavier reaches out his
hand to Magneto, which Magneto starts to take, but in the end refuses.
This happens over three of four horizontal panels where we see only the
hands.  I believe that this portrays the tension and the symbolism of
the moment, much more directly and economically than either prose or
cinema could.

It's getting late, and I am running out of things to say. . .

				Have a Nice Day,
					Soren Petersen