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."

Comments

Mostly about the writers

[erick99]

This is fairly long article at ten pages. I really wanted to know how many words are in a "graphic novel" versus a traditional novel. Do these novels get non-readers to read? Who are readers of these novels? I was disappointed that the article is largely about the writers with some consideration about how the books are laid out. The information about the authors is good, but the other stuff would have been very nice as well.

Cheers!

Erick

You're not far off.

[MisanthropicProgram]

I know this retired film maker. We were talking about "Road to Perdition". I asked, "Since it's a comic book or graphic novel - whatever - , I guess the film makers didn't have to story board the movie, and as a result, saved some money."
He said, "That's right. It make things a lot easier and cheaper."

There you go.

Re:Dumbed-down

[lovecult]

Funny you should say that.
Some of Dickens work as serialized in newspapers, just as comics now are.
Great Expectations was published that way.

Re:Plenty o mainstream authors writing lit w/o com

[surreal-maitland]

that depends on what you're looking for in literature. if you're looking for great prose and a mastery of the english language, you're absolutely right. you're going to find that in umberto eco and toni morrison and not in a graphic novel. however, if, as the previous poster cited, you're interested in a complex, interesting story and character development, you can find that in the watchmen, transmetropolitan, or any of a number of other comics. graphic novels are almost totally a different artform than literature, and i don't think it's fair to compare the two.

Letter I sent to the Times yesterday

[amarodeeps]

Here you go Slashdotters, my two cents. I'm sure you'll have some good criticisms of this letter as well:

Dear NYTimes,

I'm glad to hear that comics are showing a renaissance and newfound respectability right now. It would seem from the piece that this is largely the result of major bookstores assigning more particularly-labeled sections to the 'graphic novel' section, and also the product of indie film adaptations of indie comics gracing our theaters in the last few years; this rather than, say, increased sales of comics, the expanded potential for creation and distribution that software tools and the Internet has brought, or the success of comic-derived or influenced films such as Brian Singer's X-Men series, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man series or the Matrix trilogy (and to a lesser extent manga such as Tezuka Osamu's manga Metropolis or Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell). Point being, with Spider-Man 2 having something of an edge on the recent adaptation of Pekar's American Splendor in terms of viewership, I might argue that Spider-Man would have been worth a mention.

That is, it would have been worth a mention unless the renaissance McGrath speaks of has nothing to do with the volume of "comix" or "sequential art" readership, but only the volume of a certain narrowly defined artistic content that lies within the pages of some comics. It's good to know that, as in mainstream fiction lit, comics with a sci-fi or fantasy theme (especially super-hero comics "churned out in installments by the busy factories at Marvel and D.C.") have escaped the title of 'high-art'--perhaps then those comics will also continue to escape the hubris of mainstream art-lit as sci-fi has. Based on the piece, it would seem as though comics as high art didn't really happen until Mr. Spiegelman put out Maus. Or maybe we should go back to R. Crumb, who seems to provide the alienated loser blueprint for the majority of artists examined in the article (forgive my gross generalization; I recognize their talent and own some of their works). It would seem that in this alternative comic universe, Stan Lee is exclusively a pulp writer with no complexity or lasting impact and Will Eisner doesn't even exist (the omission of any mention of Will Eisner I find to be one of the strangest inconsistencies in the entire piece).

I'd like to point out that writers such as Brian Michael Bendis, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, and Kurt Busiek (among many others, like the incomparables Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore) are all accomplished and talented, and dare I say it, they occasionally make art. The scathing socio-political satire of "Transmetropolitan," the postmodern philosophical complexity of "The Filth," the film noir dialogue and themes of "Alias" and "Powers," the super-hero drama of Astro City--all of these were worth Mr. McGrath's time, especially considering the lack of range of the artists that were profiled--are (semi-)autobiographical alienation stories the best or most important of what comics can express? And while I could go into greater depth on this item, I think Mr. McGrath should consider his implication that the 'assembly line' artists working with such writers are interchangeable. He might also have discussed Neil Gaiman's veering back toward the 'real novel' world with his publication of some books without pictures...but then perhaps we're back at the 'sci-fi ain't literature' dilemma.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in his conclusion Mr. McGrath unbelievably suggests that "this is a medium probably not well suited to lyricism or strong emotion." I find this ironic considering the elegant sample from Seth's "Clyde Fans: Book One" that was included in the piece and especially in regards to the depth and complexity of emotion in the McSweeney's sample from Chris Ware. I've also found the work of Adrian Tomine (whom you profiled two paragraphs above this absurd statement!) to be some of the most gut-wrenching and real stuff I've ever read or seen, in any format--and there's many more writers out there. How could one say something so foolish after reading even a smidgen of the collection of serious work in this medium?

Sincerely,
Dave

bah

[cherokee158]

Video is more likely to replace mainstream novels than comic books.

More people watch TV than read (sadly), and given another decade or two, we should all start having a very portable way to view video directly from the net.

I think comics may well be supplanted by home-brewed animation. A technically literate illustrator can create his own animated short in about the same amount of time as it once took to complete a monthly comic, using today's tools. As the tools evolve, it may become even easier. (Right now, programmers still don't seem to fully grasp what it is artists need from their tools. But more and more traditional artists are finally beginning to cross over into the digital medium, so I expect they will make themselves heard, and the tools...and the content... will improve.) We are also seeing more and more hybrid electronic formats, which look less like comics and more like animation all the time.

Forget dead trees. We will all be publishing ourselves electronically before long.