New York Times Magazine: Not Funnies. Last weekend the New York Times magazine ran a cover story surveying the current state of comics.
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They mostly stuck to top-tier (Fantagraphics, Drawn/Quarterly) North American comics (with a brief stop to drop by Gaiman and Alan Moore).
The article is amazing. Whoever wrote it really did their research. I highly recommend it to both fans and to people who are looking to pick up something new. It also hammers out two very important points, which I'd like to comment on:
1) The Decline of Robert Crumb – For most of the 90s, you couldn't discuss comic books without trying to make them all seem like descendents of Robert Crumb, the misogynistic, disturbed 60s comic book artist portrayed in the excellent Terry Zwigoff movie. Everything followed from him; Clowes and Ware and everyone else couldn't talk about what they were doing without bringing him up.
The problem was that it didn't fit. If you actually read the output of Crumb it's very limited and not all together great. I'm going to break with a lot of people in that I consider it mostly crap. Sure it's misogynistic and self-loathing (and something the movie only hints at, but unbearably racist); what's worse is how repetitive it is. Once you've gotten though about 10 comics of his you know what you are in store for. So why are people like Clowes, who has had one of the most expansive careers in comics, with every project varied and rich, going to bat for this guy?
The magazine points out that all these people, even Sacco, go through an intense self-loathing period in their comic art.
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Their comics reflect their otherness, their sexual misadventures, and their problems with other people. Crumb gives them the ability to say "this is ok.
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Keep doing this." And these comic artists keep working at it and don't give up; they eventually get the rawer edges of it out of their system, and can go off in exciting new directions. It's a shame Crumb never was able.
2) The Rise of Art Spiegelman The real focus point for looking at these new artists is art Spiegelman. Like a lot of indie musicians of the time period, comic book artists aren't just comic book artists. They are salesmen, producers, advertisers, promoters and a hundred other things. As late as 6 years ago, there wasn't a real industry to nurture your talent – so you had to create one yourself. And nobody has done this quite like Spiegelman. "He's as important as he thinks he is" is an excellent quote, because it's true on both accounds.
3) Diversity in Comics I was a little worried when I first saw that picture. Sure they are some of my favorite comic book creators, but at the end of the day they are guys with poor eyesight complaining about how awkward they are. Then I noticed Joe Sacco was in it. Sacco has been doing amazing work with journalistic comics – it really blows away anything like it. And the writeup they do of him is the best I've seen.
They have so many comics covered than just the normal run-of-the-mill Crumb descendents – "Persepolis" and "Blankets" are by far the two best comics of the past year, and they both get writeups. People should be throwing copies of "Persepolis" from the rooftops; the memoir of an Iranian girl growing up during the revolution is about as far from a 'typical' comic book as you can get.
So read the article. And then read some comics. And then let's discuss.
