The New York Times Magazine ran a fantastic 10-(internet-)page piece on Sunday about comics (a.k.a. comix, graphic novels, sequential art, etc.) Not Funnies (free registration required; try BugMeNot; link via Kottke.org) does a thorough job of covering every aspect of the genre, from the struggles that comics are having as they try to gain a foothold in the literary world, all the way to mundane daily life of a comic artist, toiling away at their drafting table. It covers all the big-wigs– names I’ve heard and artists I’ve read: Ware, Spiegelman, Clowes, Sacco, Seth, etc.; and it covers artists I haven’t heard of or people who I know about, but I haven’t read yet (a shopping list, perhaps?)
(art by Seth)
The author, Charles McGrath, does focus a bit on one school of comics that owe a lot to Robert Crumb, and in doing so he misses some of the “smaller” names that don’t seem to be following the same path, as I see it. Crumb’s precedent takes the artist through a phase of stark autobiography centered on lonliness, social awkwardness, troubled youths, and often sexual quirks and excessive masturbation. The article details Chris Ware’s and Dan Clowes’s backgrounds as they relate to these patterns, and paints the life of a comic artist as a dark and hermetic world, though it does offer Joe Sacco as a counterpoint.
One of my favorite discoveries recently is Jordan Crane. Though I haven’t read everything he has done, I haven’t seen anything that indicates a troubled youth or broken home from Jordan Crane, and I definately haven’t seen gratuitous masturbation and unprotected premarital sex. What I have seen is a really touching, mature, contemporary collection of stories that happen to be told in the medium of comics. I have Keeping Two, parts 1 & 2, Col-Dee, and the Shortcut. Keeping Two and Col-Dee are rooted in reality, though they appear to be works of fiction. Both deftly weave parallel stories together to paint a picture of the characters’ lives that is bigger than what we see on the pages. The Shortcut incorporates the fantastic as a boy and his talking cat try to find the shortest way from home to school, and encounter some evil beasties in the shrubbery. My point here is that people can tell compelling stories in the medium of comics, and they don’t have to draw on memories of a broken home or resort to fetishistic sex to keep an audience.
(art by Chris Ware)
On the other hand, I am a huge fan of Chris Ware, as I have mentioned before, and I think Dan Clowes is awesome. Including all the sex and masturbation. What can I say? I’m a cheap laugh.
P.S. Read another reaction to the article on Robot Johnny.
Hey thanks for the link! I like Jordan Crane’s comics as well… And, of course, if you want healthy optimism in your comics, there’s always James Kochalka.
<sarcasm>Ah, yes– James “Fancy Froglin” Kochalka certainly doesn’t have any issues with sex and depravity</sarcasm>, but you are right, he doesn’t seem to have the same kind of background as the rest of them.