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NYT Magazine: Are Comics The New Mainstream Novels?
securitas writes "The New York Times Magazine cover story this week is a (typically) long feature about the rise of comic books and graphic novels into mainstream culture, with writer Charles McGrath (former editor of the Book Review) stating: 'Comic books are what novels used to be -- an accessible, vernacular form with mass appeal ... perfectly suited to our dumbed-down culture and collective attention deficit.' McGrath cites the mid-1980s birth of a movement that began and fizzled with Maus (Art Spiegelman), Love & Rockets (Hernandez Bros.) Watchmen (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller). The current renaissance in graphic novels include non-fiction Palestine (Sacco), non-fiction Persepolis (Satrapi) which has sold 450,000 copies, Ghost World (Clowes), American Splendor (Pekar), Road to Perdition (Collins) and Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, which won the 2001 Guardian Prize for best first book and has sold 100,000 in hardcover. McGrath interviews Marjane Satrapi, Julie Doucet, Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Alan Moore, among others. The article also has a multimedia interactive feature with many of the graphic novelists (registration required) in the magazine article."
...for all your dumbed down graphic-novel reading needs.
Seriously, if you've never read it, it doesn't get more bloody or offensive than that... my favorite graphic novel by far.
Not only in Japan, but also in Western Europe - most notably in Belgium, France and the Netherlands - have comics been mainstream. Everybody in These countries knows Tintin and most take it serious. Other serious yet popular comics are the comic-version of voyage au bout de la nuit (journey to the end of the night) - the novel by Louis Ferdinand Celine and made into a comic by Tardi. Also in Holland have major novels been turned into comics.
No. Sure, I'm echoing an AC's sentiment, but here, I'm not being a jackass about it.
if Comics really were an influence in American culture, then why is the industry itself in the shits? If it wasn't for comicmovies, Marvel probably would've filed for bankruptcy AGAIN. I'm looking here and seeing bankruptcies in 1996 and 2002. That's not healthy under ANY measure.
Not just that, but I've been observing the comics industry, and I'm sorry to say that it's devouring itself alive. Alternative book saren't selling, so they have to really press on old, rehashed characters, which inturn turns off non-geek types who'd normally be turned on by alternative books.
They're playing only to thier base, which is getting smaller in terms of population percentages rather than try to diversify. I mean, I'd hate to say it, but the American industry could learn a thing or two about the Japanese industry. Not by using big eyes and other cliches(like Marvel did, fucking mangaverse bullshit), but rather, instead by trying to diversify the market to the point where there's a story for everyone, published in a cheap, easy to access form. Japanese monthlies are about 600 yen(about 5 bucks, I think, it's been awhile since i've priced the bigass phonebook style compilations, i'm probably off base here) and come with between 10-20 or so stories. Some publishers even run weeklies. In America, for about that much, you can get two seperate books which probably havee thick, and I mean THICK, continuity. And you're stuck with ONE genre. Super-hero action-adventure. Even though most compilations are typically gender/themed(Nakayoshi comes to mind, where SailorMoon and MKR was published), you tend to get a mix of stories.
Not to mention that those books play to only one group, and those are the comicbook fanboys. As much as comic books are for supposedly for kids, these days they're more for 15-20something fanboys who tend to do poorly socially(my crowd, I never got the whole comic thing though).
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It you liked The Smartest Kid On Earth, you should check out some of Ware's older stuff in The Acme Novelty Library as well. Those things are both hilarious and deeply disturbing at the same time.
They're worth it for some of the twisted advertisements on the edges alone. Also, I think every comic had these elaborate, workable 3D cut-out assemblable projects on the very edges. I guess they meant for people to buy 2 copies of each issue.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Where 'Comic Books' are considered Geeky in the US, Manga is read by everyone from children to housewives to businessmen.
Well, Manga come with their own social baggage here (Tokyo) also: sure, readership cuts across social class, age group, sex, and educational level, but a manga is not a book, it's something you read when you're on the train or having a smoke on your break.
Frankly, people caught reading manga at their desks at work or in social situations are usually snickered at for being pedestrian or purposefully low-brow (much like the reception one would get reading a comic book in the US).
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