One of my favorite films is a video work by Peter Rose called The Pressures of the Text. In the beginning, a professor in tweed decides to tell the viewers about language, as clearly and concisely as he can. At first, things go well, and his langua ge is clear, if abstract. Before too long, however, the language becomes more abstract and impenetrable, full of the cliches of modern literary criticism, until ultimately it descends into completely ridiculous gibberish. The professor then starts again, using a completely made-up language that makes even less sense, then brings on a sign language interpreter, and finally a voice-over narrator, each more ridiculous than the last.
The point, of course, is that language is a difficult, abstract thing that destroys itself when applied to the wrong task. Having suffered through years of impenetrable academic criticism of film, Rose simply turned it around. Instead of turning language loose on film, he turns film loose on language, with predictably hilarious results.
I bring this up not only because there is a lot of nonsense written about film, and about avant-garde film in particular, but also to carry Rose's argument a bit further. The best film critics are those who make independent films. The medium itself has pr oduced more than sufficient critique of itself, and continues to do so without the aid of literature professors. Films are the best critics of other films. The same is true of any other art. The best critique of French academic painting is Picasso's Le s demoiselles d'Avignon. The best critique of George Shearing or Bill Evans is the music of Cecil Taylor or Thelonious Monk. The best critique of the sterile Marvel Comics production line psychodrama is Dave Sim's Cerebus or Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill's Marshal Law.
As Monk put it, "Writing about music is like dancing about painting" and certainly writing about any art other than writing is at best dicey. So what is the purpose of writing about art, then? This is a difficult question. It has no easy answer. The obvio us answer is that writing should concentrate on what it can do that another means of communication cannot. If a message can be conveyed better visually, then it should. If a message can be conveyed better musically, then it should. This seems fairly obvio us, but its obviousness has not been apparent to most people who write.
Why do I write about visual art? Partly because someone must. But more, I write about visual art because the one thing writing can do is indicate where something may be found and what it is. Visual communication, I think, shows better. Writing explains be tter. It also informs a person of what they can, yet do not see. In this sense, writing about art is to direct a reader's attention to go look at the damned thing, and to state a clear attitude about one's own way of seeing. When writing oversteps that bo undary it becomes as absurd as Peter Rose's professor.
Too much writing about visual art crosses that boundary. Too much writing in visual art also crosses that boundary. The fate of the contemporary comic strip, for instance, is a direct result of too much writing and not enough drawing: too much explaining and not enough showing. Why create cartoons that do nothing but illustrate a completely verbal joke? Because it is easy. Because no one pauses to think how ridiculous it is.
I have dedicated this issue to those who think that writers need to step back and witness the demolition. The print version of this issue included two completely visual essays, which show their points, without needless explanation. I left readers to draw their own conclusions from the visual evidence. After all, Lines of Sight is a visual sequential art magazine. But, as this is a different version, I cannot ethically include the visual essays. You'll have to pick up the print version. They are ava ilable from me. Send me a request at tmaker@aa.net, and I'll gladly send you one.
In a time of empty glitz--pretentious, wordy writing and artwork from the St. Vitus method of hatching, the time has come to return to the roots of comics. Writing about should do what it can do best, and let the pictures do the rest. If they cannot coope rate, let them separate. But let them be somewhere else other than in comic form. In order to survive and thrive, comics need cooperation and standards. Artists who cannot accept either should go find a job in magazines.
You've all read The Sandman. Probably you've read Watchmen, in spite of the fact that you probably have no idea what Alan Moore really did for (and to) the craft of comic book writing. You may even have a passing familiarity with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, though surely it is not on your list of comic book classics. No, you prefer of course to be hip. Your idea of the paragon of comics writing is the work of Neil Gaiman and Garth Ennis.
Allow me to burst your goddamned bubble of illusion, and send you hurtling back to some semblance of reality.
As a quick literature history lesson, it might interest you to know that British novels are notoriously un-great. To any scholars of world literature whose work I have read (and I've read a few), British fiction is rather minor. (Concerning poetry, the di ametrical opinion holds.) Ask virtually any teacher of literature for a list of ten of the greatest novels, and you will not hear an English novel among them. You will hear several Russian names. You will hear a few German names. You may hear one or two F rench novels mentioned, and you will certainly hear an American novel, whether it be Nightwood, V, Moby Dick, Invisible Man or The Sound and the Fury. You will hear a similar list whether you ask a Brit or a Yankee. Even if you confine the s pectrum to the novel written in English, American novels will dominate by far. If you turn the discussion to short fiction, the British short story will not even begin to compete with the American. American short stories have dominated English short stori es throughout the century, and will continue to do so.
You doubt me, still? Take a look at the list of Nobel Prize winners for literature. I will even allow you to count T.S. Eliot as British. (Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill don't count--and at any rate, they wrote no great fiction, except maybe Russe ll's PrincipiaÉ.)
I am not going to lecture about why this is so. But it is so, nevertheless. British critics will agree, and have agreed since the time of E. M. Forster. (See Forster's Aspects of the Novel, or the writings of Robert Graves, Malcolm Bradbury or Davi d Lodge if you are so inclined.)
Why, then, should this not be the case in comic books? Ask any legitimate critic or artist of comics, and you will find the roles--weak British fiction, powerful American fiction--reversed. Who are the strongest and best writers working today in comic boo ks? Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Alan Moore, and the much-ballyhooed Neil Gaiman. Or so the conventional wisdom says. Occasionally you will hear an American writer mentioned, such as Kurt Busiek or Matt Wagner or Frank Miller, but this is rare.
The time has come to pull the veil of maya off this subject. British comic book writers are far inferior to American comic book writers. American comics overwhelm British in quality as well as quantity. Even leaving out the extraordinary Canadian a rtists of the North American continent, this remains the fact.
I say this as an admirer of Hunt Emerson, Suzy Varty and Bryan Talbot.
I say this as a person who grew up reading Viz, 2000 A.D. and the Beano, and the books of Raymond Briggs.
I say this as a writer whose favorite graphic novels include From Hell, Cages and The Tale of One Bad Rat. I say this because, for too long, America's latent and blatant Anglophilia has blinded artists, writers, publishers and readers to the strengths of American art.
One of the reasons why no one seems to have noticed the obvious superiority of American comics writing over British is because most people's understanding of comics is confined to the commercial products of the big three publishers. There is, however, no comparison when the subject turns to underground and independent/alternative publishers. American comix so far outstep British as to be embarassing to Anglophiles. Though the English certainly have their fine comix artists, American comix stand out in num ber, content and idea. I say this to point out how little artists stand to gain from slavish imitation of British writers. A far deeper, richer vein of ideas and styles is purely American, as in the work of Chris Ware and Art Spiegelman.
The main weakness of British prose fiction is its obsession with characterization a la Dickens, and its primary lack of concern with philosophical ideas: people take precedence over ideas, always, in British literature. This defect in British fiction appa rently becomes an asset in your comic book writing. Allow me to hazard a guess and say that holds true largely because comic book readers aren't very bright. But then, that's your audience for imported British writing: the not-too-bright, pseudo-literate reader.
By far, however, the most annoying aspect of British writing is its prolix, flatulent quality. This tendency, most obvious in Victorian literature, never really has left British writing. It has merely been modified to include colloquialism. It is still qu ite common to run across pages of your British comics (and certainly in straight prose fiction) in which the narrative tends toward quasi-poetic nonsense. In the hands of Alan Moore, this used to be meaningful. It was a sensible, distinct approach to his subject. But Moore is an exception. In the hands of most British writers, it's positively annoying.
Let me take Neil Gaiman as an example. Find any two consecutive pages in Neil Gaiman's work where captions do not dominate the page. And this is no small fault. Not only are the captions too goddamned long-winded, they are bathetic. They tend toward an ex tremely bogus sort of poetry, the kind that one might find in Duran Duran lyrics. Simple statement never seems to enter into Gaiman's mind. Certainly the idea that the story should be told in pictures doesn't enter into it. Text dominates; pictures are su bordinate. This problem is present in Mr. Punch, Signal to Noise and everywhere else, but is most obvious in what people think is his best work: The Sandman. I defy any reasonable humanoid to read more than twenty words from the mouth of Mor pheus without slipping into narcolepsy or jumping out of the chair exclaiming, "Shut the fuck up!"
And that's exactly it. You British writers don't know how to shut the fuck up. Dick Foreman, Garth Ennis--all of you share the same flaw. It is not a minor one.
The other truly annoying aspect of your semi-intellectual comics writing is its incessant morbidity. Everything has to be dark, grim, futile. Nihilism is the order of the day. Doubtless part of this stems from a protracted adolescence of screaming, "No fu ture! No future!" But this is no excuse. Because of all this nihilistic crap, thousands of budding writers are under the illusion that in order to be "serious" one has to write from the point of view of one with absolutely no real values. How truly worthw hile of you to contribute that brilliant idea to our lives.
Until now, I've picked on the Pommies, but you American writers are no less culpable. In fact, with your more flippant concern with character and obsession on the action of the plot, you American writers are often the worst. At your best, American comix e mbarass English comics, and make the transatlantic product seem simplistic by comparison. At your worst, however, American comics are so bad nothing can save them, short of a good bonfire.
Bad American comics tend to come in two types. Either they mindlessly ape recent British comics, or they emphasize action, action, action at the expense of character, drama or idea. Probably the latter fault stems from watching far too many Hollywood movi es. Regardless of its origin, this tendency stains American comics like vomit on silk. It allows for no exploration of mood, no depth of emotion, and no probity of thought. Human reactions to dialogue and other moments of reflection are sacrificed to a pu erile interest in gunfights, punches, explosions and so on. In this environment, anything subtle or genuine struggles for its life, and generally dies. It is small wonder, then, that the British style of endless "moanologue" seems preferable by comparison --even though this device stems originally from American comics (Stan Lee's writing especially).
Of course, many bad writers combine both tendencies, and blend endless "moanologue" with an adolescent idea of "action." Mark Waid's writing is a fine recent example. Other than the sheer absurdity of dealing with over fifty characters in about one hundre d pages, Waid's use of captions borders on burlesque. First, he sets a scene as an "objective" third person narrator. Then he sets the scene again. And again. Then the narrator describes the action occurring in the pictures with more semi-literary verbiag e (villains "rushing forth like the Marabanda" is classically bad), as if the pictures weren't sufficient. Then one of the minor characters, heretofore unintroduced, takes over the voice of the narrator, and more captions ensue as we listen to this charac ter blather on and on. The "objective" narrator comes back to blather some more about what the minor character (and no one else) can possibly see or know and to deliver a moral, then the minor character blathers on some more in captions, and ties everythi ng neatly together.
Fuck that.
The time has come to say that the writer is not God. Sartre said that about French naturalism and its narrative intrusions forty years ago. If you haven't learned that lesson by now, go find another business.
All of your comics writing has degenerated sharply since 1986. All new writing that comes along tends to be a poor bastard hybrid of Chris Claremont's (another writer who doesn't know when to shut the fuck up) and Alan Moore's from that period. Endless th ought balloons of self-analysis a la Claremont combine with endless doggerel captions from conflicting narrators (none of whom have a consistent point of view) a la Moore.
The most pathetic part of it all is that none of this "inspiration" is even first-hand anymore. You writers don't go back to the original source. You don't take from Claremont's God Loves, Man Kills stories directly, but rather from Todd McFarlane' s or Ron Marz's regurgitated versions. You don't take directly from Moore's "Anatomy Lesson" anymore, but rather from Neil Gaiman's ill-digested and meandering folktale retellings. This is known as the Law of Diminishing Returns. The original loses its me aning through third- and fourth- and fifth-generation imitations that have neither the purpose nor the potency of the original. Joe Blow writing like Jennifer Smith writing like Chris Claremont writing like Len Wein writing like Stan Lee is not very imagi native. In fact, it's insulting.
Enough is enough.
At the risk of stating the obvious yet again, you ought to know a few things.
Comics is a visual medium. Yes, it does use text and pictures together. But never was text meant to bear the major portion of the story. If you want to use a bunch of words, go write prose fiction. Text is meant to assist the pictures, not to drown them o ut. The story must not be killed by the text. Artists are subordinate to your story. They spend all their skill telling your story visually. Surely it is not too much to ask of yourself to tell your own story visually.
Even if I believed that British comics writing were superior to American comics writing (which I obviously do not), that would still be no excuse for American writers to try to write like Brits. Reading an American writer aping Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman i s not unlike hearing a suburban whiteboy rattling off ghetto slang. The result is generally pompous and as affected as a pince-nez.
In spite of what you may have been told, writing is a moral act. That doesn't mean you need to preach the gospel. You do not need to explain your ethical view of the world, nor use your characters as mouthpieces for THE ONE TRUTH. You do, however, need to deal with situations that go beyond the obviously simplistic morality you have shown so far. I'm sick of nihilistic naturalism. Do you honestly have nothing else in your souls? Go work it out on a guitar for awhile. Write some bad punk tunes. Then come b ack when you have something real to say.
Readers of comic books may not be devotees of literature. Then again, they may. You really ought to stop treating them like they are morons. If you were filmmakers, you would all have a voice-over narration to explain the plot. Absurd? What is absurd in f ilm is no less absurd in comics. Both are visual. Both are primarily narrative. Readers have imaginations. They do not need every minutia explained for them. Let readers draw their own connections, and save yourself some exposition.
And speaking of exposition, I would like to remind you that storytelling is narrative and not expository. If I want exposition, I'll pick up a goddamned essay by Thomas Carlyle. In other words, shut the fuck up. Let the pictures do the talking. Go study Steve Ditko's pantomime Mr. A stories, or Steranko, or, hell, Matt Wagner's Grendel, where you can actually see a writer create a twenty-four page story without a si ngle thought balloon or caption. Then go thou, and do likewise. You may not create a masterpiece, but at least you'll be reminded what comics are: a formal, visual storytelling medium.
It's pretty simple, really. And it is great in its simplicity. Don't complicate it further.
This seems sensible enough. After all, I do think comics are worthy of preservation. Preserving them and making them available to everyone can only strengthen the art. In spite of this, I have routinely suffered refusal, denial and cynicism in my attempts to complete the project. Now, being a film producer, I am quite used to the rejection. That is not what bothers me. What does bother me is that the people most reluctant to participate have been comic book collectors. I have been told by one collector th at he didn't want his collection made public. I have been told by at least four others that they were afraid the value of their collection would go down if "anybody off the street could read them on a computer screen."
If it is noble to refuse a simple request to help make comics more widely available, to preserve what is great and vital in art from certain destruction, then these Golden Age collectors are a noble lot indeed. I can only imagine the depths of their noble social consciences.
I am not in the least materialistic, and so the need to make fetish of objects completely escapes me. Consequently, I am no fan of collectors. I tend to be opposed ethically to the very act of collecting, but a good portion of my dislike for collectors is interpersonal, and stems from years of vapid conversation with the lower primates who pass for collectors. Of all the people I've run across in my years of reading comics, apart from artists by far the most smug, self-righteous bunch I have met are those who collect "Golden Age" comics. Granted, collectors of all sorts tend to be extremely dull, just as most people who read comics. One group of people collects superhero comics only. Another reads only Vertigo comics, written by some semi-erudite British punk who finds it impossible to re solve any story without a death. Still another collects comics with women in various states of undress, preferably while carrying an obviously phallic-looking sword or gun, and a bicycle pump to keep their breasts up. I could name others. But even compare d to these losers, collectors of "Golden Age" comics tend to be even more provincial. Their collecting activity is often restricted to a single title. One collector collects nothing but Dell Four Color titles, another collects only Police Comics, a nother collects only movie westerns, and on and on and on.
Part of the reason Golden Age comic collectors tend to be narrow-minded is financial. Almost no one can afford to collect such comics. Their scarcity makes them extremely expensive; casual collectors need not apply. Collecting every issue of More Fun C omics, for instance, would be preposterous for most middle class Americans who have any other interests. Of course this brings up another issue. Since Golden Age comics are expensive to collect, they are the first to attract the eyes of Money magazine nouveau riche who are looking for their next hot investment. This sort of absurdity peaked about three years ago, and quite directly led to many of the current problems of the comic book "industry." Any given auction at Sotheby's has enough of a depressi ng effect to substitute for a month of codeine. I've never seen, as I have at Sotheby's, so many suckers outside of an orgy. Embarassing, really.
Often these collectors of Golden Age comics would have others believe that their collecting does something fine and noble for culture. Some say they are preserving a valuable part of American history. Others claim they are saving classic American literatu re from history. I think most of these people are full of crap. Their real motives are much more base and egotistical. Most collectors I have met don't give a damn about literature, history, culture or much of anything outside of their narrow realm of int erest. I know hundreds of people, for instance, who collect only Marvel superhero comics from 1962 to the present. Now, given that there is no paucity of such titles, and that myriad other collectors have amassed similar collections, where is the "cultura l" value of such collecting? What it really boils down to is that these collectors want to hold on to Romanticized versions of their youth, and nothing more. They don't give a plug nickel for comics' cultural value. Collectors of Golden Age comics are no different. If anything, they tend to be even more bourgeois and pretentious.
Perhaps I am being too difficult, but this comes of experience. If these Golden Age collectors are indeed as noble as they think, why have none of them bothered to ensure that the wider distribution of Golden Age comics? In fact, the contrary has happened . Golden Age comics have become less accessible. More and more, fewer and fewer people control public access to this part of comics history. To my knowledge, none of the members of this coterie has opened up his (since they are virtually all men) collecti on for public perusal. Very few of them can be bothered to help fund a museum or archive of such work, leaving the preservation of comics history in the hands of a select few academics.
It takes very little imagination to see that this is precisely what happened to painting, sculpture, poetry, photography, music--you name it. And the same problems that plague these arts continue in the collecting of comics. Only "qualified researchers" o r curators have access to all of the work in these archives or museums. This in turn contributes not only to the great public indifference to art, it also creates a clique of snobs who feel it is their right, if not duty, to force their version of art his tory on the laity. This is not a good situation. It has corrupted nearly every art. Without a broader, easier public access to Golden Age comics, its history too will become corrupt.
But, of course, none of the people "in the know" care a whit about this. The people "in the know" are generally wealthy. They have no desire to do anything for anyone's benefit but their own. At least a destitute painter or historian can go to a public mu seum, see the work, and form opinions based on experience and not mere dictum. The destitute comics artist or historian has no such recourse. There is nowhere to see Marvel Mystery #2 or Pep #26--certainly not in your average American city-- unless you are willing and able to shell out several thousand dollars. This makes it very hard to sort out the bullshit that often comes of an art cabal providing all rules for history and interpretation. In turn, this mystifies the art and makes it even less palatable to the public than it is now. It also contributes to the myth that comics are meant for a narrow range of readers, i.e. fans of superhero comics.
For instance, the notion that superhero comics are the dominant genre of the art is silly. It is also wholly untrue. Over the history of the American comic, for instance, the percentage of superhero comics produced is rather small. This is a wild thesis. It is also a thesis that can be neither tested nor verified unless the information of comics history is available. The reader who thinks I am absolutely off my rocker to propose that, within the history of comics, superheroes are not only a recent develop ment but a minor one cannot challenge the veracity of my statement without information. Having access to the body of comic work published before 1962 is vital to the discussion. If no one has access except arbitrarily qualified researchers, no discussion can take place. No one learns anything. No preconceptions are open to challenge, no circumstantial evidence is allowable, no theories are viable. Without public discussion, comics will never become a serious art. Not, at least, to the public at large. It will remain the final, pathetic refuge of aging, sterile men, vainly clutching the mouldering remnants of their imaginary childhood.
And that is precisely where the public perception of comics remains. The laity see comic collectors quite often as being an aging, sterile, inbred boy's club. To the extent that all decisions of artists, publishers, distributors and retailers rely upon th e collectors' market, comics are a pasttime for rich white male dilletantes. To the degree comics are commodities, they are to the same degree unworthy of consideration as art.
The only members of the more "respectable" public who take interest in comics have been mercenary speculators, hardly interested in comics as anything more than a short-term investment. They come into comic shops, feed on the dung of publishers' public re lations squads, and leave their eggs like so many roaches. Between the greed of Money magazine speculators and the avarice of Golden Age collectors, the difference is small. Golden Age collectors have only the advantage that they occasionally do care abou t the quality of the comics they collect, but only occasionally. Mainly they collect for nostalgia. This is hardly the ticket toward respectability for the art form. It is no wonder the public continues to scoff.
I am realistic to know that comic book collectors are here to stay. America is a puerile, consumerist culture. It is a culture that makes objets d'art out of Stretch Armstrong dolls, Quisp cereal boxes, beer cans, Trolls and used denim. Comics are not exe mpt from this stupidity. But they are not merely bric-a-brac. Comics are, whether anyone wishes it or not, a powerful art form that has only just begun to reach maturity. It is necessary to preserve comics history, that artists of the present and future m ay build on it. But if their history is rendered inaccessible to the public, and consequently to future artists, comics will have a very brief future, if one at all. The world will see yet another generation of comics whose work outdoes even Image Comics' awfulness. Collectors of Golden Age comics need to put aside their own egotism and bunk nostalgia, pool their resources and make that history available. Merely collecting titles because one read them as a child or because a book is more than twenty years old is shameful. Grow up. Share those comics you love so much with the world; perhaps new readers will find them worthwhile, too. They may learn something about quality. And maybe, just maybe, we can live the rest of our lives with a little less crap. Go d knows there is enough.
Throughout all the discussions in my life about women and comics, I have heard many absurd reasons why women do not read comic books, but by far my favorite is the pseudo-scientific notion that men are more "visual" than women. Oddly enough, this ridiculo us idea cannot account for the number of women who go to the theaters, cinemas and galleries around the world. It also fails to account for the rather obvious fact that women's fashion--a well-known feminine compunction--is completely a visual matter. Vis ual art appeals to women as well as men, girls as well as boys. For many reasons, however, the unpleasant truth remains that comic books do not appeal to most women. Conscientious artists, publishers and retailers all want a more equal readership of males and females. This is perfectly sensible. Yet for all the talk about attracting more female readers, the numbers seldom change: Comics remain largely the province of 10-15 year old boys.
This need not be so. I believe there are many ways to attract female readers to the world of comics. I also think the task is quite simple. The greatest obstruction to attracting female readers directly results, I think, from two very qualities that comic s people seem generally to share. The first is ignorance. The second is more subtle and more serious because it is harder to notice. What it reduces to, quite simply, is patronage. The conventional means that comics people use to attract women readers pat ronize the women they are supposed to attract.
One particularly amusing notion is that if more women produce comics, then more women will be interested in comics. This may sound like a great idea. Actually it obscures a larger issue. At the height of comic books' popularity, readership was rather even ly divided between male and female. But virtually none of the comic books women read then had been written by other women. Romance comics were the creations of male writers and artists, as were the funny animal comics that girls read. Even the feminists' favorite superheroines, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Mary Marvel, were male creations. Whether or not the same characters would have been better if created by women, written by women, drawn by women et cetera is irrelevant. Women read the comics regardless of who produced them. The identities of the individuals who created the comics were impossible in many cases to track, anyway, so clearly the issue was unimportant on that level. The thought behind the idea that having more women artists will attract mor e women readers, I think, is that women will create something that other women will be interested in reading. Often when people bring up this idea, the unspoken corollary is that men cannot create something of interest to women. I think it is fairly easy to see how silly that notion is. It is historically untrue, and rather morally offensive. Who creates the comics is not the real issue.
Another tactic publishers and artists use to attract more female readers is to introduce a female character into a conventional, generic story. Sadly, this sometimes works. But it does not touch the real issue. The mere introduction of yet another two dim ensional character, male or female, does not make stories any more interesting or art any less wretched. In narrative comics, the entire purpose is to tell a story. The story is the locus of all the reader's meaning, and the focus of all the reader's atte ntion. A bad story does not improve simply because a female character appears in it. Yet there are numerous bad stories told every month, and many of them feature women, in some vain attempt to attract more readers. I find nothing noble about such attempt s. I simply find them dull and occasionally offensive, not unlike watching a Hollywood movie and waiting for the token Black man to appear (who of course is always the first to die). The presence of a female character in comics is not the real issue.
It may be heresy to say, but I honestly think that there is plenty of material available for women to read. The problem is that the material simply is not getting out to the readers. Creators can make as many female-oriented comics as they want. They do, anyway. If the comics don't get out to their audience, however, nothing changes. New readers need to know the books are available. New readers need the opportunity to read the books. Of course in a quandary like this, the first fingers point to the retailer. It is easy to say that these neat, swell books for all ages, boys and girls, do not get out to their audience because the retailers are unhelpful. This is largely true, of course. Most retailers have a minuscule selection of alternative and children's comics. Selection is lacking. Also, most retailers make no attempt to read alternative or children's comics; after all, the exciting superhero books retain far more interest for them . Retailer knowledge is often lacking. Furthermore, neither the alternative nor children's comics have a distinctly marked section in almost every shop I have entered. In a regular magazine shop or bookstore this would be ridiculous. Books and magazines n eed to be grouped by subject, in an orderly manner. Retailers have some obvious work to do to improve their shops.
But retailers cannot accept the entire blame. The other links in the chain of distribution are just as weak, and often more of an obstacle. While it is not terribly difficult to get a single retailer to clean up his shop, convincing an artist or publisher or distributor to do something about their own messes is far more difficult.
It is easy to blame a retailer for selling crap. But, with all due respect, crap has sold for years. In film, in theater, in television, in newspapers, in galleries, crap reigns. The retailer does not manufacture the crap. Crap peddlers are further up the chain. DC Comics peddles crap. Wizard Magazine peddles crap. Randy Queen peddles crap. Adam Hughes peddles crap. Gary Groth peddles crap. The list is nearly endless. Crap is here to stay. Women are not immune, and anyone who doubts it needs to check the ten top-grossing films of last year, the number of Barbara Cartland books in print, the circulation numbers of Martha Stewart Living and the ratings of The X-Files. Though women are said to read more than men, women read crap just as men do.
Furthermore, unlike many pundits, I happen to think crap is a good thing. Harold Clurman once suggested that Broadway did not need less bad theater, but rather that it needed more bad theater. He was not being polemical. To him, bad theater was the fertil izer in which good theater grew to bloom. The same applies to comics. Had it not been for so many truly dismal attempts at literature in the medium, many artists would never have considered that comics could be better, but would have stayed satisfied with their mediocrity. Bad art has its place. As long as it stays in that place, it does immense good for the medium of comics.
Now, it would be very easy to say that the solution to the problem is that people need to stop making crap. Too easy, in fact. It is also too easy to say people need to stop reading crap. Neither of those obvious statements changes anything. A less obviou s statement is to note that making or selling crap intentionally is seriously immoral, sinful as well as shameful, but no one would believe a person who said so. Businessmen are not known for their morality. It is equally unhelpful to assume that the pres ence of more women in the industry of comics will make it more friendly for women readers. Even if that were the case, it would not happen instantaneously. The discussion needs to take place on another level.
The major problem of comics today is that they seldom reach their intended audience. Comics like Threshold, The Furies, and Lethargic Lad would surely appeal to female and male readers who used to like (and may still like) reading superhero comics but have burned out on their often generic, repetitive writing. Judging from the sales of superhero comics over the past five years, I would say that audience is probably at least one million readers strong. Given that the sales of those three titl es added together would still not break into the 100 top-selling comics list, which bottoms out around 40,000 copies, the comics are clearly not getting out to their readers. Weirdsville, a comic that would surely appeal to far more readers than it reaches, seldom even finds a place on retail shelves, though it potentially appeals to every X-Files viewer in the country. The most obvious example of this phenomenon, I think, lies in "licensed product" comics. Babylon 5, for instance, has a rather large and devoted following on television. I have yet to see a person I know who watches Babylon 5 reading the com ic books, even though the series' creator and producer often write the scripts for the comics. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine must surely have an audience of several million people every week. Neither of the two comic book series ever sold 50,000 copie s in a month. The same goes for many other TV/movie adaptations. I can only surmise that Paramount Pictures has no qualms about failing to make a few million dollars more per month.
Why do these comics not reach a broader audience?
This is an old question by now. I am sure there are many reasons. Price of books, sexist artwork, trite writing, lack of truthful characters--the list continues. The question, however, has no real meaning. Why don't people read comics? Who knows? Furtherm ore, who cares? One need not know how or why a severed artery bleeds to tie a tourniquet. The imperative is to stop the bleeding. Likewise, with comics what matters, right here, right now, is to get people to read comics. Critics and historians can always figure out reasons later. First, one must stop the bleeding.
Everyone in comics would love to see more women reading comics. Partly, their motives are mercenary. Women represent an immense amount of potential income. However, there are many genuinely altruistic reasons as well. If nothing else, to have more women r eading comics would at least give current comic book fans another subject for small talk at parties. A somewhat grander reason might be that art and creativity flourish when both men and women are free to participate. Reading is participating. Artists nee d their audiences. Without them, creativity is merely a formalistic game, going nowhere, achieving nothing. Women need to be as much a part of the process as men. Otherwise, nothing changes.
Clearly, retailers need to take more responsibility. Women see retailers much more often than they ever see artists, publishers or distributors. The retail shop is the ambassador for the entire comic book medium. As such, retailers have done a dismal job presenting themselves to their female customers.
Unclean, dark, dusty shops are unattractive to men, but even more so to women. Beyond the level of simple cleanliness, retail shops often maintain an arcane and unfriendly system of organization. Of all the shops I have been in, I have seen only three tha t were not systematically arranged either alphabetically by title or sectionally by publisher. These are outdated systems that serve no one. They are patently absurd, and there are no apologies to be made for them.
The rationale I have heard is that retailers use these methods because they speed up their catalog orders. Just because it is easier for the retailer does not make it easier for the customers. It is sheer arrogance to force customers to learn a bizarre, a rcane system so that they can spend their money. If the customer is paying, the customer's comfort is paramount.
People who read books and periodicals are familiar with the Dewey decimal system and subject headings. These have been standard since the early days of the magazine explosion. Customers are familiar with them, and have been for many years. Comic books may be treated as either periodicals or books--either will do. The current treatment will not do. The present system of arranging comic books is the biggest hindrance to attracting new customers, female and male. It caters to an elitist old boys' club that c annot and does not support the comic retailer's business. No shop that wishes to stay in business should ever rely on a design that caters to its owner and ignores its customers.
Equally, retailers often fail to take interest in what their female customers read. It may be difficult to keep in mind the reading habits of a thousand customers, but surely it is not so difficult for retailers to ask. When a woman does get up the nerve to come into a comic book shop, a retailer should treat her with extra special care. If one asks her what books she likes to read, it is much easier to recommend comic books that might appeal to her. Of course, this means the retailer needs to know about what he carries, but I am confident retailers can be bothered to learn.
Of course, retailers cannot take the blame for everything. They may well be the ambassadors of the comic book medium, but even an ambassador cannot be held responsible for everything his constituents do. Publishers, distributors and artists are every bit as responsible for the dim situation of the medium as the retailers.
Publishers have a simple job: produce conscientious, quality material that sells. It sounds simple and so it is. That does not make it easy. Publishers often publish female-friendly books on solid aesthetic principles that do not sell, and in fact lose mo ney. Anyone in the comic book world can name several. Anyone can also name a few dozen titles that are complete dreck that do sell. This is the basic plight of any publisher. Unless a publisher is independently wealthy, it is impossible to stay in busines s without making money. The pressure to produce crap that sells always looms over a publisher's head. Many publishers succumb: they toss aside their artistic sense and, thinking only of finance, pump out crap they know will sell, in spite of the fact that it is beneath them. But is it worth it?