In Response to NPR and Their Story on "Graphic Novels"

Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi wrote a novel titled A Shore Thing.  Say what you will about the art, the craft of her novel, the story, the cover, the state of literature, humanity, etc. etc., one thing no one debates is what to call it.  Her creation is without question a novel.  A good novel?  Probably not.  But, it will be shelved in the fiction section of your local bookstores somewhere near Chuck Palahniuk and Thomas Pynchon.  As much as it would be an insult to compare her novel to, say, Gravity's Rainbow or The Crying of Lot 149, no one can deny that Snooki created a story using fictional characters and fictional situations (sort of), and presented that story using words that made sentences, sentences that made paragraphs, paragraphs that made chapters, and so on.  It might not be the same quality as other novels, but it is still a novel.

Glasses = Author (photo: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images) 

Similar comparisons can be made in other forms of art.  Regardless of whether it's hung in a gallery or stored in a box in the basement, a photograph is called a photograph.  Paint on canvas is always called a painting.  Moving pictures are always films.  The terms - photograph, film, painting - are divorced from the content and are concerned with the means of communication.  

Photo by Walker Evans of a Depression Era family (Alabama, 1936)

Photo by me of my dog (2008)

Then we come to comics.  Or are they graphic novels?  Or comix?  Sequential art, art comics, independent comics, mainstream comics, superhero comics, and so on and so on.  Comics, as a form, suffers from a proliferation of labels.  Unlike the difference between, say a photograph and a painting which one could claim are both branches of a visually representative medium, the different comic labels separate and divide the medium not by its use of materials or means of information conveyance; these different labels divide the medium hierarchically by content.  There is good, edgy, interesting content (graphic novels, comix, art comics, independant comics) and then there is vapid, mass-produced, flat content (comics, mainstream comics, superhero comics).  One is good, adult art, and the other is cheap, disposable trash.  

This divide within comics comes both from outside and within the comic industry.  Bookstores, media coverage, and comic critics all seem to be keenly interested in separating and labeling the good from the crap.  NPR recently had a story about Daniel Clowes and his art exhibit in the Oakland Museum of California.  The story, titled "The Serious Comic Art of Daniel Clowes", is both telling and problematic.  

While the title is a cute pun on the less-than-funny nature of Clowes work (which is fabulous, by the by; I really...REALLY...loved Caricatures and Ghost World), it seems to suggest that "comics" as a medium seldom create serious content.  The question here, then, is what is serious content?  Clowes work is often humorous, so comedy is not what separates serious from not serious.  The article is keen to draw attention to the dark and sometimes unlikable characters in Clowes work, calling them "unmotivated and cranky" people who don't "like to play by the rules," or as Clowes himself says in the associated interview: " my characters are like the worst customers I could imagine".  

Ghost World and other Clowes books use these characters to "skewer[...] everything, from televangelists to fashionistas."  Through these characters and their skewed, cranky outlooks on life, Clowes claims that a truth about humanity becomes apparent.  He says of Wilson, more specifically: "[He] really just wants to connect with people by being his exact true self, which is something none of us ever do, and he's not interested in changing himself to connect with people, which is what all of us do do. It made him seem much more noble when I figured that out about him."  Again, Clowes is right about his work.  The dark, sometimes horrible characters in his books do help shed light on some of the more materialistic and inauthentic parts of ourselves.  

My problem, here, is not with Clowes' work (or even his assessment of his own agendas), or the deserved space in an Art Museum (the article claims the exhibit will be coming through Chicago this summer when I return home; I will be one of the first in line to get tickets); my problem is that all of what NPR is describing here reminds me of someone else.  Chris Ware?  Certainly.  Robert Crumb?  Definitely.  Jessica Abel, Matt Madden, Jason Lutes, Peter Bagge, Posy Simmonds, Anders Nilsen: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.  

Also: Deadpool.  

Awesome AND Canadian: a possible paradox.

It's not as far-fetched as it seems: Deadpool is a cranky, unlikable, mouthy mercenary (by definition a loner) who has trouble fitting in society.  Deadpool is tricky because he is not a "hero" in the sense that he does good deeds for the good of mankind (see: Captain America), but he seems to have some sort of moral compass.  It just points to a different North than most other people's compasses.  Unlike other anti-heroes in the Marvel Universe, like Wolverine, Hulk or Punisher, Deadpool doesn't seem to suffer from long brooding periods where we struggles with his past.  He is true to his "exact self" and is uninterested in "changing himself to be with other people."  He is, in short, Wilson.  But in tights and shooting people for money.  And he can't die (or at least not easily).  

Batman, Rorschach, Swamp Thing, Hulk, most of the X-Men: these are all characters that don't bend to the will of others and sit on the fringes of society.   Like Deadpool, these characters wear tights (or with Swamp Thing, plants; and Hulk, tattered pants) and spend more of their time fighting than walking around record shops and vintage clothing stores.  Their agendas, though, are the same as Clowes' characters, both as individuals and as larger metaphors: they are designed to show the reader that sometimes the way things are is not the way things should be.  The superheroes just make that point with their fists.  

Some critics will claim that the slick, glossy superhero/mainstream franchised comics aren't as authentic as the creator-owned books (Douglas Wolk stops just short of saying exactly that in Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean).  The smaller houses like Drawn & Quarterly or Fantagraphics give more control and agency to their authors and artists, restricting them less with editorial constraints and lacking any "house style".  Others will claim that the art is less stylized and more authentic to the artist's vision - not run through the editorial staff to create a certain look. No one can argue that the royalty schemes by smaller-houses certainly seems to benefit the authors and artists more than the shady deals that have marred the larger publishers (see, the controversy surrounding Before Watchmen).  The other claims, though, are more dubious.    

It's true that Marvel and DC have a certain "look" and a certain "type" of story they like to publish, and usually that is anatomically distorted men and women with superpowers (or cool weapons) debating with punches and kicks. It is also true that Marvel and DC hire a stock of editors to ensure that these stories meet retain continuity and the standard established by previous authors and artists, which could be seen as restrictive.  If I wanted to write a story where Superman lost his powers, decided to become a farmer, and fixed and traded antique cars in his spare time (Superman: The Farmer Mechanic), DC would reject it out-of-hand, regardless of how good that story is.  This is because they have a product they want to continue to sell, and any adjustments made to that product need to be done with attention paid to the future.  It would be like if I walked into Hersey and wanted to change the formula of the candy bar to feature nougat; they would reject that idea immediately.  No one wants to open a Hersey bar and find something that is not Hersey, much like no one wants to open Superman and find he is suddenly and totally vincible.  DC and Marvel, like Hersey, are striving for consistency.  However, if I suggest a new bar, Hersey might listen, in the same way that DC and Marvel have tried out new characters in their own Universe (this is even more true with publishing off-shoots like Vertigo and Wildstorm).  

You could argue, then, that you get the same blandness from Marvel and DC that comes from fast food and processed goods, and comparatively, smaller publishers are like Mom-and-Pop bakeries.  True: smaller houses tend to have a more rapidly changing stock, and more freedom to experiment with new flavors.  The smaller houses make their money not from long running characters but from authors and artists.  Drawn & Quarterly is not tied to Berlin as a recurring story line; they are tied to Jason Lutes.  But smaller houses also have smaller consumer bases with more easily manageable expectations.  I have seen some really incredible cupcakes out of some small bakeries.  And sometimes, that is really good.  But sometimes, I want a Little Debbie.  Still, though, both Little Debbie, and smaller bakeries (like Bellaria Cookies out of Plano, TX) call their confectioneries by the same name, be it cookies or cupcakes.

And in reality, Drawn & Quarterly, :01 Second, Fantagraphics and other smaller publishers have a certain "look" or "style" they are going for, what one might call a consistent "house style" - the much-maligned term for the publishing standards of DC and Marvel.  True, what the smaller houses tend to publish tends to be more varied than Marvel and DC, but it is not infinitely expansive.  If I had an episodic book about a dude that could fly, and a really slick art work featuring muscled men and women in spandex, none of the above publishers would be quick to take it unless it was heavily satirical or the art was heavily caricatured (see Death Ray by Clowes, for example).  That sort of story would be better suited at a publisher interested in those sorts of stories.  Just like a brooding, introspective book is better suited for the above-listed publishers.  This idea that Marvel and DC are stifling creativity because they only publish superhero stories is a little unfair.  It's like getting mad that McDonalds doesn't carry steak on the menu.  It never suggested that it did.  Or that it wants to.  

I might argue, though, that Marvel and DC, within their chosen focus, are much more experimental than the smaller houses, and it is their size and volume of publication that can allow for this.  At their core, even the  most idealistic publishers have to turn a profit.  No matter what type of story and art the publisher wants to push, it has to sell in order for that business to be viable, and to claim that Drawn & Quarterly are any less of a business than Marvel or DC is a faulty comparison.  In fact, because smaller houses must sell what they have, with little room for returned product, they can only publish what they feel reasonably sure will sell.  DC and Marvel will sometimes (though, not all that often) give chances to books or characters.  Watchmen, for example, or Marvel's Alias, are both experimental titles (Alias even has a different style of art than Marvel usually will publish) that did well and pushed the limits of what a superhero book could do.  

I don't want to completely blur the distinction, though.  Clowes work has a different agenda and approach towards his narrative than Deadpool, in the same way that Pynchon and Raymond Chandler had different approaches to the novel.  But what I want to do is raise this question: why label them differently?  Why call Clowes work a graphic novel, an alternative comic or part of the comix movement, and call Deadpool a comic or a mainstream comic?  No other medium has different labels based on the content or publisher, so why is it that comics feel it necessary to divide  the form (sometimes divide themselves) based claims about content?

This, I feel, is the biggest problem facing comic criticism.  Having media labels that are divorced from content is essential for the criticism of an art form.  So many books have to wade into the debate over what to call the artifact at the center of the study before any salient points can be made.  It's a debate that will never have a winner.

The only way forward, I feel, is to agree on a term and label the entire medium in that way.  There is no perfect answer here, and each camp will argue vociferously for their favorite, but I intrepidly suggest that we call them all comics (now defining comics is a debate for another time...just go with me here).

It's not a perfect fit, and it feels wrong to suggest the work of people like Clowes, Ware (especially Ware), or even Batman is in anyway comic.  But, I would argue that a lot of labels have overcome the initial denotations and evolved with new, better fitting connotations.  Romantic poetry, for one, is not always about the love felt for another person (The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner here being the best example...though there is a wedding in that bleak, bleak poem).  Sir Philip Sidney's prose romance Arcadia does feature romance in it, but it does more than just explore the feelings between a deluded man and the fiction of a woman he imagines (it is also a densely wrought political statement, and there is a lion fight, I think).  It is true that a lot of the original comic strips in newspapers were funny, but the humor in Hogan's Alley was sometimes quite cutting, and certainly not comic in nature.  Similarly, the term comic can become any work that used framed images and words arranged with purpose on the page to convey information regardless of the content of that information.

I shy away from graphic novel for a few reasons: 

1) The connection to the novel - comics aren't prose novels.  They use a completely different set of communicative signs, convey information differently (though, as I argue in my thesis, not as differently as one might think), but most importantly encode information differently.  The only connection between comics and novels is the narrative aspect of the medium.  It would be quite restrictive to claim that all comics tell stories (see: Abstract Comics edited by Andrei Molitiu and published by Drawn & Quarterly).  But also, films are not called moving-image novels, nor are concept albums called musical novels.  Or plays called staged novels.  Or ballet called dancing novels...

2) It does not allow for comics to be their own medium - The connection to the novel will always lead to a comparison with the novel, which is a well-established and critically acceptable medium.  This will mean that comics are never seen as their own medium - their own art form, really - but rather the bastard off-shoot of the more grown up novel.  It will be impossible for comics to ever achieve any recognition (not to say anything about that horrible legitimacy argument) in the shadow of the novel, which is especially problematic since the two operate so differently.

3) Graphic novel, as a term, has a history built on division - Comics have been published for a long-time, and in the battle for legitimacy, a lengthy history never hurts.  Depending on how liberal you want to be, things like comics have existed since Hogarth in the 18th century, or tapestries since...well...people made tapestries.  More conservative critics generally settle on Rudolph Töpffer as the first to publish a comic, though the Swiss called it something else, in the early 19th century.  There is a history extending from Töpffer through European and US newspaper comics to the comicbook (both short-form magazines and book-length works).  In contrast, the term Graphic Novel has been kicked around since sometime in the 1970s when, as rumor has it, Will Eisner wanted to separate A Contract with God from his better known Spirit comic.  This would suggest that those works called graphic novels are separate from the history of comics, which is patently untrue.  No matter how different Clowes looks and feels from Deadpool, the two can both trace their history back to Töpffer.  

Töpffer doing his best Neil Gaiman impersonation

4) Graphic novels suggest not only artistic merit, but also length - Some of the most interesting comics not featuring superheroes are really short.  Anders Nilsen's Big Questions comic, an existential work examining what it is to be a person, was an annually published short piece.  It was later collected and published in a MASSIVE brick of a book (which is quite good, though it took a lot for me to get it home from Comic Con last year), but it would be inauthentic to claim that these short pieces published on fairly flimsy card-stock, or the massive collection, qualify as a novel.  There is a lack of cohesion to the collection that is necessary for anything to be novel-like.  Likewise,collections of contained story arcs from DC and Marvel would hardly be like the novel, which has a beginning and an end which any book in DC and Marvel lacks.  These collected volumes would be more akin to excerpts (though I shudder to imagine what a complete collected Spider-Man novel would look like...probably something like Garth Marenghi's collected novels...which I can't find a clip of because it's a really obscure reference, but find Man to Man with Dean Learner episode 1...it's funny).

More than anything, I find the term graphic novel to be problematic because it does to itself what other media has done to the comic medium (including vaunted titles like Maus and Persepolis): it devalues a form based on outward appearances.  Comics are just starting to be comfortable on the shelf next to other "great" works of literature and art, it would be a shame to celebrate some while marginalizing others.  

In short, comic criticism needs to stop bickering in these fruitless hierarchical debates over labels.  I find that comics is the best as it is most attached to history, least attached to divisive connotations, and the most flexible term available.  There are lots of interesting comics that push the boundaries and make the reader think; some render life in a more brooding, starkly realist fashion (like Daniel Clowes), others like to give the reader an escapist fantasy where the heroes can leap tall buildings in a single bound (like Deadpool).  The two are really just opposite ends of the same spectrum.

Self-Perpetuating Trends and the Perpetual Motion

Last night, Floyd Mayweather improved to 43-0 by unanimously beating the Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto. The scores were close-ish, but Mayweather, who everyone would like to see fight Manny Pacquiao once Mayweather's domestic violence case is behind him, was the clear winner. Probably someone who knows more about boxing could tell you the implications of this fight, but from my seat, until he squares off against Pacquiao in the ring, I have trouble working up interest.

The fight was not what the general public noticed.  When I typed Floyd Mayweather into Google this morning (looking for information about the impending Pacquiao fight), this article from TMZ came up.  It seems Justin Bieber was part of Mayweather's entourage, and from the pictures it would seem Mayweather was happy to have him there.  It could be because Mayweather is no idiot, and having Bieber there instantly makes this a news story, and many people who might not have even known boxing still exists will read about Mayweather's fight.  It could be that Bieber is the hardcore boxing fan he purports to be.  There are a lot of possible reasons for Bieber to be there both cynical and sincere.

What seems to have caught a lot of people's attention, though, was that 50 Cent, who has been critical of Bieber, was also part of the entourage.  There is a lot that can be said about this intersection of American culture.  Is this the bridging of a gap between two ideologically disperate music camps, like when Dylan went electric, Eminem covered "Stan" with Elton John, or when Aerosmith and Run DMC did a duet of "Walk This Way"?  Probably not, though Bieber has had or has discussed collaborations as far reaching as Ludacris, Mariah Carey, Taylor Swift, Usher, Busta Rhymes, Ke$ha, and Chris Brown.  Has 50 Cent buried the hatchet and decided that Bieber is okay?   Back in 2010, 50 Cent demanded, in no uncertain language, that fans of Bieber (or as he said, Justin Beaver) disengage from 50 Cent (though he tried to back peddle some, it created quite a stir among Bieber's often rabid fans).  It could be likely since 50 Cent had some unkind words to say about fellow entourage member Lil' Wayne around the same time, and no one seemed to upset in the ring that night.  Or, and maybe most likely, it could be that everyone is literally witnessing the maturation of a young Bieber as he moves from teenage heart throb to full-grown adulthood, taking interest in blood sports to rebrand himself as a more masculine celebrity.

The interesting cultural talking-points abound.  But what I found most interesting was not so much the moment itself, but how people talk about the moment, particularly on my newest interest: Twitter.

I'll admit it: I'm late to the Twitter-wagon.  Truthfully, I still don't quite "get it", which is code for how apathetic I am concerning social media outlets.  Facebook works well for me, and until I started trying to create an on-line, professional personality, I didn't think everyone wanted to be inundated with updates concerning what brand of toothpaste I was currently using (Colgate MaxFresh).  But this morning, when I thought about what sort of thing Academic Keegan would post about, I noticed that "50 Cent and Justin Bieber" was trending.  That's odd, I thought, which is the same reaction I would have if someone told me melons and handguns were on a buy one get one free offer.

Later in the afternoon, though, it was still trending.  Maybe there was a fight, I thought, and I tried imagining something that could kill 50 Cent.  This is not because I think about that often; more because so many have tried and failed before.  He was shot nine times and lived.  The man just doesn't go down.  A swarm of angry Beiber fans, I thought, taking him on like Hydra battles The Avengers...that might work.

Still later (I'm on British time, so it's evening now), the headline was still on the "Worldwide Trends" list, so I caved on clicked the link.  The list of posts that contained that exact phrase was at first alarming, but then became quite confusing.  It seemed that most of the posts read like this:

50 Cent and Justin Bieber have been trending for hours
— 12:56 (@iBieberProud) May 6, 2012

 Or like this.

50 Cent and Justin Bieber has been trending for 14 hours. Why are people even still talking about it.
— Glen Coco, ya dιg? (@CantBeliebIt) May 6, 2012

(To be fair, the posts seemed equally divided between people in disbelief and people posting this picture).

This was a really interesting phenomenon.  It seemed that Twitter was self-perpetuating a trend.  The more people idly posted about how they couldn't believe Justin Bieber and 50 Cent were a trending topic, the more that topic was forced onto the consciousness of the Twitter users.

Lots of search engines use this idea of "trending."  Google+, Facebook, and the ill-fated Yahoo all seem to be interested in suggesting what the reader should be interested in.  I'll admit it: sometimes I find this to be really useful.  I found out a lot of people have died because Yahoo puts it into the top news stories when I log in to check my mail.  And the "What's Hot on Google+" has been a good way to waste time with pictures of cats or woefully misguided "facts" about the Universe.

What is interesting about Twitter is how, unlike with the other sites mention, the topic trends are generated by user input.  That is, when you go to Yahoo and search for a story, it stores all of those search terms.  Their list of story trends tends to be what people have searched for.  This is a good cross-section of what people are thinking about at any one given time.  The content, though, is not just from Yahoo users, but from anyone who has a website.  Yahoo doesn't just search itself for a phrase, but it searches a good section of the internet including news sources, blogs, Wikipedia and so on.  Google+ searches for user created content that has been shared or "+1"ed often within a certain amount of time.  Reddit probably has the most useful rating algorithm, created by Randall Monroe of xkcd fame and best described it here.  

Twitter, though, just searches it's source material all generated from with Twitter itself.  So whenever someone posted anything with the phrase "50 Cent and Justin Bieber" (that phrasing alone is a gold mine of rhetorical analysis as to who is listed first, and why they are listed this way), even if to say they couldn't believe it, that was registered as a post.  The more people post that they can't believe something, and the more real that something becomes (Peter Pan had a similar technique when trying to revitalize Tinker Bell).  No one has shed much light on why people are interested in that pairing, or what was really happening, or what it means for the landscape of popular music; most people wanted to talk about how they just couldn't believe that other people wanted to talk about 50 Cent and Justin Bieber.

This is perpetual motion: something triggers a chain reaction that eventually starts to feed that same reaction.  50 Cent and Bieber did something that caused a reaction (some people posting about it).  That reaction (the first salvo of posts) caused another reaction (the phrase growing in popularity).  That second reaction creates more reactions (posting in disbelief), and so on and so on (rising and continuing popularity fueling further posts in disbelief, etc. etc.).  The reactions no long need the initial stimulus (two people doing something) to continue creating more reactions.  The trend is fueling it's own trendiness.

If only we could harness this in some way to create energy in the Universe.  And maybe that's what can come of this: finding someway to use Justin Bieber's star power like the power from an actual star.

Impact and Commercial Education

There have been mummers around departments regarding "impact" and research.  The idea being that our research needs to reach a wider audience, and a good academic will have some way to quantify how their research has been impacting the general public.  As with any changes to policy, there has been some resistance.  After all, the impact academia has on the general public cannot be empirically measured.  How can you compare the values of two disparate fields?  Of course medicine will help humanity live longer, but without an English department to teach the doctors how to communicate, or a History department to teach the doctors about the past mistakes and successes, the field will be unable to advance.  There is no way to quantify one's ability to think, and those attempts that have been made to do such are shown to be either heavily biased towards one learning style (IQ tests) or heavily biased towards one sect of society (standardized tests).  Impact, it would seem, is just another attempt to funnel funding away from seemingly unnecessary humanities departments for the more easily quantifiable sciences and business departments (CEO X graduated from University Y's Business and Economics Department so clearly that makes more valuable contributions to the greater good of mankind).

I don't know that I buy the above argument.  Like with most things, there is certainly a note of truth to it, and especially in America, there has been a move by right wing politicians to de-emphasize the importance of college education while also making it difficult for all but the wealthy to go.  This could spiral quickly into discussions of class-warfare and arguments about the relative merits of the economy today, but that's not the central point I want to make.

The thing is: I understand why people are saying that the Humanities, particularly English, History, Art, and Culture Studies are unimportant.  There have been several opportunities for me to mix with research students from other departments over the course of my tenure at Aberystwyth, and every time I walk away feeling slightly inadequate.  I meet someone who is helping grow soy in sand and looking for practical ways to implement this new process in developing countries.   This weekend, a woman has spent her time in Aberystwyth studying sheep burps and farts, and the impact this release of gas has on the environment; it was suggested that her research might shed light on the how climate is changing and what people can do about it.  This is some seriously valuable research that will have an immediate effect on society.  

These are easy sells, though.  These are the durable, four door sedans on the car lot of academia.  Everyone knows where they are going, what they are going to do, how they will perform, and there is an inherent, immediate value to them.  Humanities are more like the cross-over, station wagon-looking hybrids.  They look and seem flimsy and untested.  There is a hypothetical value to them, and maybe over time with some more rigorous research and trial and error experiments, a more durable sedan will come of it.  But until then, people are hesitant to invest.  

A good academic, like a good car salesperson, needs to sell the value of their commodity to the consumer.  

There are going to be a lot of other academics that might take issue with my rhetoric here.  The commercial model of education is not the most popular one.  Even scientists with research directly applicable to the general public find the grant writing process a hurdle in the way of interesting research and get bristly when asked to validate their work.  The idea that people are buying education, or that the ability to think critically can be purchased in the same way that people buy shirts or hamburgers, is certainly uncomfortable from both ends.  After all, the consumer model suggests that there is a thing, a t-shirt or a hamburger for instance, that the consumer can walk away with.  It also suggests that there is a product I have to sell, something tangible that they can walk away with.  This is what has lead to a rise in students demanding that they deserve an A for paying the tuition (or parents demanding that their kid get an A because the tuition was paid).  After all, they put the money into the machine, a pretty sheet of paper with gold lettering should come out the other end.  This conception of the educational exchange is not quite accurate, and it needs some deeper consideration.  

Firstly, what I am selling is not the paper diploma, but an experience, like going to Disney World...but for the mind.  In this way, the consumer bears the responsibility of making the most of the experience.  If I go to Disney World, or rather Great America because I tend to dislike costumed monstrosities and overpriced souvenirs, I would never dream of complaining that I had a bad time because I spent my entire time sleeping in the arcade, and when I staggered out around closing time to try and get on one of the rides, the attendants were rude to me and wouldn't let me go.  That is my fault for not making the most of the opportunity I purchased, and the owners of Disney World would never apologize if I spent my whole vacation in the hotel eating the overpriced food and getting drunk on the overpriced booze.  The rides and attractions were there, just outside the doors, and it's up to me to get on those rides and enjoy myself.

Now, one could suggest that in this way people could find fault if the experience is not worth the price (and this is certainly a concern for the very costly American Universities).  This is a fair complaint.  After all, no one would go to Disney World if the experience did not seem worth the price.  Or, maybe more importantly, if the consumer was not convinced that the experience was worth the price.  Yet, Disney World is constantly packed, and some colleges are struggling to put students in the seats.  What Disney, Chevrolet, Hersey and other titans of industry do better than Academia is sell their product to the masses.  For years, Universities and Colleges have been stuffed to the brim because they were sold as stepping stones to the next stage of life.  Places to go until your life started for real.  Because of this, students went to college thinking that if they just made it through, a good job was waiting for them on the other side.

This is where the analogy with Disney World breaks down: unlike other commodified experiences, Disney World does not give out a certificate that details how well the Disney Corporation thinks you spent your time.  Imagine that: when checking out of a hotel, the clerk hands you a table that rates how well you used the minibar and if you were successful in navigating the halls to the pool.  You would then have to take this certificate to the next hotel and they would judge which type of room you could get.  It would make you think twice of clogging up the toilet or leaving the soaking towels on the bed.

But my point still holds: academics need to be better salespeople.  We cannot expect to sit in our Ivory Towers, or as is the case with Aberyswyth, our brutalist architecture and expect everyone to see the value in our work.  I work with intangible ideas and concepts.  No one can see the changes I make in society, but the work I do is valuable.  

But it's my job to show people that.  

Just like with Disney World or Great America, I need to line my experience with bright lights, loud noises and bold colors.  I need to show people that reading and understanding comics is not just interesting to comic readers, people interested in narrative theory or semioticians.  This has relevance to everyone's life.  I am not just talking about the interesting narratological aspects of juxtaposed framed image/text combinations, I am talking about how people conceptualize stories.  How people communicate and understand their own life.  True, it is theoretical, but it is my job to explain in the best way possible how these theories about reading literature apply to people.  The claim that academia is self-perpetuating and navel gazing is often leveled at researchers.  There is the assumption that we spend our time writing papers no one will read that will get published in journals read by a few students or other scholars.  Essentially, humanities departments make more humanities scholars that in turn cycle back into the University and make more scholars.    

There is good reason for that.  For a long time, there was a certain snobbishness about academia that refused to talk down or explain in simple terms what we were doing.  One of my favorite professors here, Prof Damian Walford Davies was talking about his favorite answer given at an academic conference.  At the conference, the speaker gave a densely analytic reading, and someone asked if he might restate it again in simpler terms (I'm paraphrasing here).  The answer was, "No. What I write about exists on the edges of human consciousness."  We all had a good laugh, but that idea is unironically prevalent in a lot of academics. I was reading the introduction to a book on functional grammars, and the author talked about how discussions about the oddities of language were not of interest to him (or, by extension, any academic linguist) and that this book was more to his liking.  He used some phrase like "academic tour guide" or something to explain how tiring he found it, relating his research to people that were only interested in grammar, and not experts in it.  

I was appalled.  That, I thought to myself, is exactly what I am meant to be doing.  That is not all that I am meant to be doing, but that certainly is a part of my job.  People are interested in oddities, and as an expert in the field, I should be happy and able to talk about these oddities to the curious masses. I also need to clearly express to them how the more theoretical aspects of my research are applicable to their lives.  If I don't, I can't expect them to think they need to pay for the opportunity to hear me talk.  

But, like people who go to Disney World, the consumer is left to make the most of this experience.  By agreeing to pay for this opportunity, I reserve the right to tell other people whether they made the most of it, or whether they wasted their time.

Building Castles on the Sand

Writing a PhD thesis, I have come to find, is a lot like building a castle on sand. Not, "castles made of sand," like the Jimi Hendrix song, but actually building a stronghold structure on sand. A castle's purpose is to withstand sieges from outside forces, to stand up to a raging army that wants to pillage the land. This is similar to my thesis, which needs to withstand a barrage of questions from examiners, both internally and externally.

Good castles, as evidenced by those still standing, are built on a solid foundation: a hillside of stone, somewhere high that allows for an excellent vantage point of the surrounding areas, close enough to the shore to disrupt water-based attacks, but far enough away to avoid water-based attacks, etc. No structures that are meant to be lasting are ever built on sand because, as a foundation, it is constantly in flux, constantly shifting. Stand on the beach for any given time and one will find oneself sinking. When trying to lean on sand, it moves away.

This is why no one builds houses or castles on sand: the foundation needs to be constant, unmoving.

My thesis should be built on a strong theoretical foundation, something that can be used as a defense against the rabid hordes of examiners at the gate. Unfortunately, the more I read, the less sure, the more shaky, my foundation seems. My argument, then, begins to fall apart, cracks form in the walls, the roof starts to slant, rain gets in, and so on.

Couple this issue with the sheer amount of time between beginning and ending, and further instability starts to form. Certainly, as I am working now, my theory might hold water, but with the mass of criticism constantly published, the vessel that carries my ideas might have holes poked into it, allowing for my argument to leak out the side, leaving behind a dessicated, empty shell, full of holes. And, of course, my own ideas develop over time, refining and changing the original ideas.

I have found at this point, with my topic shifted innumerable already, that I have begun to patch the holes and cracks. I just hope that by the end of this process, my structure looks like a mighty, impregnable castle, and not like a patchwork lean-to held together by Spackle and duct-tape.

A Case for Russian Formalism

The Russian Formalist school of criticism has, for several decades now, been greatly discredited. There is good reason for this: at their worst, they totally ignored the role that the reader, society and history played, making claims, as Vladamir Propp made about fairy tales, that there is no difference between novels other than their use of the device.

Clearly, this is problematic. What differences there are stems from the culture that surrounds the work. It would be impossible to claim that the work is completely divorced from the place where it came.

That said, the claim that device (the form used, the structure of the work) and materials (the words and content) are inseparable when searching for meaning is not a baby that should be thrown out with the more asinine bathwater. There is something valuable to examining the device used.

An anology might help here: image that the material (the ideas) of an artists are people, and that the device (the structure of the work) is a building. Once the material is seen in the device, there becomes an order, a manageable collection the the material. That is not to say that anything is fixed; the material is people, milling about the device. But there is only so far that the material can wander. Even in the most architecturally postmodern building, there is a limit to where people can go; so it is true for literature: even in the works that most challenge their form, there is a limit to the pushing.

Taken without the device, though, you just have a group of people milling around, not going anywhere, wandering in free space.

To push the image even further, it begs the question of whether you can have people without a space? If the work building here is to stand for a space that occupies, then clearly there would never be a time when people just stand in open space. Even in a field, there are boundaries to where that field starts and stops.

In essence, you can never have materials without a device. Sometimes the device is less present (people in a field); other times, the device has a more intrusive meaning that requires the reader to notice (people standing in the Guggenheim Art Museum). Regardless, the device, the place where the material is found, needs critical attention.

The immediate problem here, though is defining these devices. Since Structuralism, there has been a constant attack on definitional arguments, and some of this comes with good reason. A definition to tightly wound would limit the number of works, especially those that experiment with the form. In this post-structuralist, postmodernist, deconstructionist era, the definition needs to be able to stretch around those prime examples, as well as the more experimental version, but still say something that is worthwhile.

Here again, it might help to re-imagine the construction of genres. Often times people want to claim a genre exists separate of the work (see my note on Genre Criticism in Comic below), and this approach will always fall apart under scrutiny. Instead, the critic should build the genre from the work upwards. From the works, what family similarities can be found.

Here is where (Russian) Formalism becomes helpful as a means of talking about genre. The formalist were interested in finding the smallest bits of structural meaning (signs of meaning). These small parts could be collected as genre resemblances.

For example, with long and short form comics, what sort of similarities exist in the device? Clearly, short-form comics tends to be published in other mediums, such as a newspaper, comic anthology or magazine. Long-form comics are free-standing publications. That device difference is important to distinguish. If we understand everything to be a sign, the sign of the production are clearly different, and thus need examination. There are also narratological elements that are inherent in the devices, such as type of diegetic. Most comics tend to be heterodiegetic, in that the narrator is completely absent from the narrative. There are a few ways to bring the narrator into the narrative, but these methods require more space than the short-form comic is allowed. Because of this, the narrative type tends to be strictly heterodiegetic for short from comics, while long-form comics can move between hetero- and homodiegetic narrative instances. This is not to say that all long-form comic blend the diegetics, but long-form comics have the space to do so.

There is more to say here, but my mind is piling up with ideas, so I will stop now. More later.

A Word on Writing

Approaching this dissertation was initially terrifying. Will described it as, simply, 100,000 words. Some perspective on that number, which made my head go numb: a double-space page typed in Times New Roman, size 12, with the margins at an inch will hold roughly 300 to 350 words. Even if I write only in small words, cramming 350 per page, this dissertation will be about 280 - 300 pages. To further put this into perspective: the longest sustained piece that I have written in my life was 22 pages, or roughly 5,000 to 7,000 words.

Having said that, I am not sure I have ever written 100,000 words in my life. Maybe if I compile all the short and long papers written between 1998 (the start of my undergraduate career) and now, I would be close, but not too much more.

As I sat in my room, mulling this over, I had to change my pants often, leaving the window open. Oh that, I say to my disgusted roommates, I don't know why my room smells like shit.

The sheer amount of time it was going to take to write more than I have ever written cumulatively was baffling. I honestly didn't think I would even know how to set on the path of writing anything approaching that long. Luckily, Will is a smarter man than I am.

He asked me first to read something about genre theory and just review it. This is a waste of my time, I thought. I should be reading all these great books about comics I have. I read the book (most of it) and wrote the review, noting the problems with genre theory. Will liked it, said my review voice was good (which I feel is slightly better than saying, you are really good at not presenting original ideas; a better backhanded compliment there is not), and sent me home to write a paper about how genre theory mixes with comics.

This paper I liked a little more as it got me to think about what I was doing, though my comic studies books were collecting dust, getting lonely. Nonetheless, 10 pages later, and it looked like I had the beginning of an intro, a tiny bit of introductory primordial ooze brewing something longer, and more interesting. Will and I discussed it; read: Will sat down with a chisel and a hammer, and began asking questions while whittling down what I considered to be an airtight argument. He again, sent me home to revise this, adding a little more to it, expanding sections, and trying to add something about narrative theory.

I have begun expanding some sections, and incredibly, I have written 15 pages and some change (4,600 words). This chapter, if it works, will nicely introduce all my key concepts, establish a baseline for my criticism, and the genres definitions I will use. All in four weeks. Finally, I got to use some of my cool comics criticism books, and feel a little better on that end.

So, in the manner of so many 80's sitcoms, cue the slow, tinkling piano music: today I learned a valuable lesson. Not just in humility, facing the fact that I don't know everything about everything; more than that I learned the value to slow, steady prewriting and continuous revision. See, before this, I was a single draft writer, never being able to put words on the page until I was certain I had read everything I needed to, had all my ideas, and could bang out 10 pages in a few hours. Now, I can see that I need to let my ideas incubate, that I need to write before I lose the good ideas I had early, and that I don't, in fact, know everything about everything.

The Role of Genre in Comic Criticism

The first question one needs to deal with when writing about comics (especially for this long a venture) is that of genre. What, exactly, am I writing about?

Immediately, the mind wants to run to comic book, graphic novel, comic, comix, sequential narrative or visual story-telling. This is a difficult question to answer, mostly because the terms above are so heavily weighted. Graphic novel, for instance, suggests a certain gravitas about the work. One critic suggested that graphic novels are books written for adults by adults with adult themes that make use of the more expensive publishing resources available than the comic book counter part. This is problematic as many traditionally understood graphic novels were at one point comic books. The prime example being Watchmen. Now, go into almost any book store and there will be a stack of glossy covered Watchmen graphic novels, printed in explosive color (as explosive as a reproduction of 1987 comic color can be) and on expensive paper. The book has a lasting weight to it, one that belies that publication past of Watchmen, when Alan Moore released the story line in twelve separate comic books over the span of a year. The same can be said of Batman: the Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, Berlin books 1 and 2 by Jason Lutes, La Perdida by Jessica Abel, Dogs and Water by Andres Nilsen or Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth (all deemed important graphic novels). But these are really collections of comic books. So, then, is the graphic novel just a collection of comic books? A novel in graphic stories?

Plus, terms like graphic novel (sequential narration or visual storytelling likewise fall into this problem) of making the work seem like more than it is. As if to say, "this is no mere comic; this is sequential narration." It would seem to me, as has been found before, that serious work can come from baser forms. One just needs to look at the scatological poems of Swift, highly anthologized but talking about fecal matter, nonetheless. Or Sir Philip Sidney's The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Here, a genre bending work, mixing prose romance, poetry and other forms, features cross-dressing and a plot straight out of Three's Company. Gothic novels were once considered trash literature, the Nora Roberts of post-Restoration England, and now are considered great works of literature (see: Caleb Williams by William Godwin or The Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe). To change the name to suggest a more serious tone would be disingenuous for the form that, at it's heart, may want to be comic.

Plus, the other terms deny the tradition that comes before the work. Comic books were just that: books of the comics (which, back in the day before newspapers trimmed out the fat to save a dollar, were given a lot more attention than they are relegated now). Graphic novels suggests that this form developed independently of the newspaper strip.

So, it would seem to me, the only authentic way to talk about this form is comic book (or, for brevity, comics). I tend to disregard the alternative spelling, comix because this stems from a desire to separate one variety from another. Again, this sort of distancing, while important in its time, is just not necessary. As I will argue later, regardless of content, the comic book creates a specific narratological condition; that is, whether it features men in capes and masks or crudely drawn characters dealing with their feelings, a comic book creates a certain reading environment that is unique to it's form, and which can be manipulated for interesting results.

But wait, the next question begs to be answered: is there a difference between 'alternative comics' and 'superhero comics'? Initially I believed so, but after reading Alastair Fowler's Kinds of Literature: an Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes it would seem to me that any further distinction is going to raise more problems than it solves.

The main question there is how does one define alternative comics? By it's name alone, it suggests that this comic is alternative to something. What is that something? Superhero comics? This would then give us two strangely disprortionate groups: those that deal with masked heroes and villans; and those that don't. This second group would contain such vastly different comics as Torso by Brian Michael Bendis and Blankets by Craig Thompson. Neither deals with superheroes, but one deals with a true crime narrative while the other is an autobiography of the author/writer's life. One is extremely violent with jaring images and tons of blank, empty space on the page. The other is sparsely shaded with gentle curving lines and a deep exploration of feelings. If we are going to split comics, then does grouping these together make any more sense?

By breaking down the genre further, it begs the question about those alternative comics that do feature superheroes (Wonder Wart-Hog for instances) or those superhero comics that look at things in a more 'alternative' light (Miller's run on Daredevil shares more in common with crime comics than it does with later Daredevil story lines). Where do these fall in? Is it only the visual images that we consider to make this break? Is it the style that the artist uses as well? There are a vast number of styles used in superhero comics from Tim Sale's strangely bright and oddly disprortionate work on Spider-Man: Blue to the dark, shadowy, and sketchy art of David Aja for The Immortal Iron-Fist to Adrian Alphona's very cartoony work on Brian K. Vaughan's Runaways (which, itself, pushes the limit of the genre). Plus, some comics that are considered 'alternative' are highly stylistic. And then what do you do with Lynda Barry?

Under examination, it would seem that, at least narratologically, this is an unnecessary dichotomy. These two seemingly disparate forms construct their narrative in familiar ways and rely on series of semiotic codes that are not that dissimilar.

So, in short: I think I'll call them comic books and leave it at that.