The Misanthrope has repeatedly told me he doesn't get it.
My wife tells me that I may to be obsessing over it.
So why can't I stop?
On my desk at work I maintain a stack of library books; the stack remains in continuous flux, as from week to week I proceed leisurely through its various members, returning them from whence they came and then starting anew. This fortnight has seen a change in the usually fiction-heavy, albeit copiously smattered with biographies and science geek tomes, collection. Consider this:
Chris Ware's Quimby the Mouse
Daniel Clowes' Twentieth Century Eightball and David Boring
Will Eisner's 9/11: Artists Respond
Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers
Frank Miller's Sin City
Rich Tommaso's Horror of Collier County
Christophe Blain's Isaac the Pirate
Jason's The Iron Wagon
Pierre Christen's The Town That Didn't Exist
Yes, it's possible that my wife has hit the proverbial nail on the head (actual nails and the hitting thereof is usually relegated to my list of duties); I am temporarily, again, consumed with comics. Comix. The graphic novel. Word balloons and such.
They are, of course, I would argue (and do), worthy of such inspection, obsession, consumption and relishment. The graphic form is well-suited to tale-telling, to pleasant escapism, to adventure and intrigue and excitement and revelry and wonderment and fantastical machinations. And I, as an American, thrive on such rich material.
Comics are the last vestige of the endless frontier. For Americans, there was the West, with its accompanying Manifest Destiny and the baggage contained therewith. We have always looked for more to explore, more to discover, more to consume... And though there are those in the middle of this fine country who have yet to partake in the splendor of the West Coast (and please, don't all come rushing over at once), the truth is that we have reached the Pacific and found ourselves with nowhere else to go. Is this related? No.
Again: Comics are the last vestige of the endless frontier. They represent a world outside of our own, where there are no boundaries between the real and the imagined, and this suits us as Americans. We have had visions of ourselves as a classless, caste-free society, one that leaves behind the mores of the past and the sharp divisiveness of old Europe. Upper class, middle class, lower class... we are all Americans. This is neither the time nor place for a treatise on whether we have failed miserably in the pursuit of such a society or just marginally; this is the time to transition to matters of much less importance.
Comics allows us to imagine more than just achieving the next rung on the social ladder; they allow us to imagine a world in which people can fly, soar even, and become more than human -- superhuman, if you will (and you will; trust me). In comics we can see the worst of ourselves, and hope thereby to avoid such travesty and tragedy, but also the best, and strive mightily to bring it to life.
Comics have helped us escape from our dreary lives, fight (in spirit) alongside the best and bravest of our countrymen as they fought for freedom, memorialize times and people past, and, perhaps most importantly, to enjoy ourselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon under our warm blankets with a flashlight and a cup of hot chocolate.
2 comments:
I'm not sure where I stand on comics as a "last frontier," because that would seem to write off the possibility of innovation in any other medium.
That said, I see your point, and enjoyed the way you've expressed it.
Something else I'll throw out as an idea: comic books and their dominant genre (as much as I hesitate to say this because then we have to get into the "comics > superheroes" equation), are, primarily, an American innovation. Not cartoon illustration, obviously, or the format itself, but the mode of production/distribution of the product, and, in some cases, the omnipresent genre tropes. Why people don't latch onto that aspect of it is beyond me... then again, why people don't embrace, say, jazz or hip-hop for similar reasons is also beyond my ken.
I think your little essay only proves my point about your obsession.
But, are you serious? Comics are entertainment, you read them because you like them and they happen to be what you are obsessing about at the moment. You know that you can read meaning into anything, isn't it enough that you like them ?
Nonetheless, you are very cute. And yes, even I find it interesting that it is an American form of expression.
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