British Journal of Aesthetics Vol 49
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COMICS AS LITERATURE? | 221 autobiographical graphic novels ( Persepolis and Persepolis 2 ) are full of rich characterization, and Jeffrey Brown’s Unlikely explores a fi rst relationship in painstaking detail. What about moral seriousness? Do any comics tackle those humanly interesting themes? Certainly Maus does, but it is not the only comic that does so. Moore’s Watchmen addresses issues of moral responsibility. Chris Ware’s work addresses loneliness and alienation. Posy Simmonds deals with love, sex, and social relations in her literary-infl uenced Tamara Drewe . Jessica Abel’s story of a naïve young American woman in Mexico, La Perdida , deals with the dangers of self-decep- tion. And George Herriman’s Krazy Kat strips brilliantly tackle the tragedy (and potential comedy) of unrequited love. Moreover, these themes need not be merely superfi cially ad- dressed as Lamarque and Olsen suggest is the case when perennial or universal themes appear in non-literary fi ction. 7 The best comics — ones like those mentioned above — develop their themes. That is, readers are not simply confronted with clichés — they are encouraged to work out themes, contemplate them, and make sense of the comics in light of them. Finally, careful and intelligent plotting is a central part of many of the best comics. As a reviewer of Tamara Drewe in The Times Literary Supplement put it: ‘ its single most impressive attribute is the brilliant management of what would be termed, in a purely literary context, the plot ’ . 8
As is made plain by this last quote, the reader need not rely solely on my testimony about the values to be found in comics. There are, for example, the various art and literary awards that comics and comics artists have received in recent years. Maus famously won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. In 2005, two critics for Time magazine named Watchmen as one of the top 100 English- language novels published since the magazine’s founding, and the graphic novel also won a Hugo Award in 1988. Bechdel’s Fun Home was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and Time named it one of the ten best books of 2006. Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan won the 2001 Guardian First Book Award and an American Book Award. American Book Awards were also given to Gary Panter’s Jimbo’s Inferno and Joe Sacco’s Palestine . Gene Luen Yang’s American
Katchor, author of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District was the recipi- ent of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (i.e. a “ Genius Grant ” ) in 2000. And although, as I have suggested above, there is something of a dearth of serious criticism of comics, there is evidence for the signifi cant value to be found in some comics in some extant examples of criticism. Goethe famously praised Rodolphe Töpffer’s picture stories which were, on some accounts, the earliest comics. 9 The essayist and critic Gilbert Seldes’s defence of com- ics in general, and Krazy Kat in particular, in his The Seven Lively Arts (1924) is fairly well known: With those who hold a comic strip cannot be a work of art I shall not traffi c. The qualities of Krazy Kat are irony and fantasy. . . . It happens that in America irony and fantasy are practiced in the major arts by only one or two men, producing high class trash; and Mr Herriman, working in a despised medium, without an atom of preten- tiousness, is day after day producing something essentially fi ne. 10
7 Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction and Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 434 – 436. 8 Mick Imlah, ‘ Tamara Drewe’s Wessex ’ , The Times Literary Supplement , 14 November 2007. 9 David Kunzle, Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), pp. 49 – 56. 10
Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts (New York: Harper, 1924), p. 231. at University of Athens on June 19, 2011 bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org Downloaded from 222 | AARON MESKIN Much of the contemporary criticism of comics to be found in English appears in newspa- pers. In the United Kingdom, The Guardian regularly covers graphic novels in its Saturday Review section. In the United States, the New York Times semi-regularly reviews graphic novels. In 2002 Nick Hornsby published a review of a number of graphic novels in The
Moreover, these reviews, and those by other well-known authorities on the subject such as Paul Gravett and Roger Sabin, amount to more than reports of preferences. This is fully fl edged criticism — albeit in compact form. Here, for example, is Hornsby on Kim Deitch’s recent graphic novel The Boulevard of Broken Dreams : [H]is drawings are comparable to R. Crumb’s in their feverish, angry energy . . . and come as something of a shock after the clean lines of his younger colleagues. But his experience and sophistication allow him to do things that the youngsters are not yet capable of: ‘ The Boulevard of Broken Dreams ’ is full of metaphor and imagery that shift meaning, fl ashbacks and fl ash-forwards and a bagful of tricks that give the book heft. What is particularly impressive is the way that Deitch juggles the personal — his artist hero is plagued by a cartoon demon that simultaneously inspires and destroys him — - and the cultural dimensions of his narrative: his book is just as much about the neuter- ing and Disneyfi cation of animation as it is about the self-destructiveness of genius. 11
The reader may have noted that I have said little in defence of superhero comics to this point. That is no accident. I do not believe that mainstream superhero comics typically possess much in the way of substantive literary value(s). There are exceptions of course — superhero comics by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison among others do possess some of the values that I have discussed above. But for the most part superhero comics are not especially rich in theme, characterization, language, or sophisticated plotting. I suspect it is this fact — that superhero comics (and, perhaps, daily newspaper comic strips or ‘ funnies ’ ) do not generally possess much in the way of literary or artistic values — that underwrites much across-the-board scepticism about the art of comics. But this is a misguided scepticism. For although it may be the case that the best-known comics in English fall into these categories, there are a very large number of comics that do not.
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Finally, is it the case that the categorial question really is less important than the question about value? It is plausible that warranted critical evaluation of works of art depends on their proper categorization. 13 If so, then categorial questions are of utmost importance. Matters of value and evaluation may be our ultimate concern, but dealing with these mat- ters depends on settling categorial issues. 11 Nick Hornsby, ‘ Draw What You Know, ’ New York Times , 22 December 2002. 12 For discussion of more examples of non-superhero comics, see Wolk, Reading Comics and Charles Hatfi eld, Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2005). For a useful anthology which contains relevant examples, see Ivan Brunetti (ed.), An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories (New Haven, CT: Yale U.P., 2006). See also the various volumes in the Best American Comics Series (Boston, MA: Houghton Miffl in). 13
Kendall Walton, ‘ Categories of Art’, Philosophical Review , vol. 79 (1970), pp. 334 – 367; Noël Carroll, On Criticism (New York: Routledge, 2009). at University of Athens on June 19, 2011 bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org Downloaded from
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