Comics As Art? Comics as a source of inspiration for art, maybe; but comics themselves are usually regarded as, at best, low brow or, at worst, corruptors of the nation. The reputation reflects a rocky history: from censorship and outright banning to the rampant commercialism of the present day, when the comic market has become a multi-million pound industry, suffocating in an explosion of naff films, merchandise, and gimmicks. Some parts of the comic market that is.
But where does the comic come from, and how is it defined? "There are those who hold that newspaper strips remain the only good and pure example of the cartoonists' art, and anything printed between two covers is unsufferable vulgarisation," writes Kim Thompson in the introduction to the catalogue of Misfit Lit, a 1991 exhibition of comic art in Seattle, Washington. "There are the true believers for whom comics were defined half a century ago by the near simultaneous creation of Superman and Batman . . . ." Some people say the precursor to the comic was the penny dreadful of the Victorian era. Pulp novels are considered by some to be the start of it all; but then again, maybe it all began with "the funnies" - comic strips which started appearing in newspapers early in this century. One way or another, when it all began, it was for an adult market. Children were undoubtedly reading them, but the first kid-oriented superheroes didn't make an appearance until the late 1930s with the advent of DC (Detective Comics) in the US.
helping the war effort
From the outset, what was seen as the "power" of the comic was manipulated. The comics of the early 1940s were tools for "helping the war effort"; Captain America is one superhero who was created for that purpose. Superheroes in American comics and jolly good fellows in British comics spent their days defeating the evil enemy. After the war, British comics evolved into a choice between battles - rehashes of war comics - and the brat pack.
The likes of the Dandy and the Beano are still going strong. The behaviour of some of the characters occasionally raises parental eybrows (yes, those same parents who couldn't get enough in their own youth); but Minnie the Minx, Dennis the Menace and Beryl the Peril - brats one and all - always get their comeuppance. During the 1950s in the States, horror and science fiction (fuelled by an undercurrent of fear of "the bomb" and Communism, it has been suggested) came into their own. The grotesque and satirical world of Mad magazine was a hilarious antidote to normality. Soon enough, along came the anti-comic backlash. Comics were seen as a threat to the establishment. Suddenly, the power of the comic acquired a far more ominous dimension: psychologist Friedrich Werthen claimed comics lead to juvenile deliquency. The US Senate even set up a subcommittee to look into the comics, at which Werthen testified. "Burn The Comic" campaigns ensued, and the Comic Code Authority was set up. Graphic depictions of gruesome acts were outlawed; outrageous terms as "terror" and "weird" were banned. From a business point of view, the damage was painful; with respect to art, any notion of freedom of expression was totally undermined; and from the point of view of excitement and fun, well, forget it.
underground heroes
Into the 1960s, with John F Kennedy at the helm, and superheroes began to make a comeback in America. Marvel Comics came along, and Spiderman was invented. The Marvel heroes were often more doubtfilled and less clean-cut than their DC counterparts; eventually Marvel produced the XMen, oppressed because of their mutant nature. These ambivalent heroes could be used by their creators to comment on a racist and sexist society. At the same time the underground comic movement took off, spearheaded by Robert Crumb. Crumb's first comic character famously came to him while he was on drugs and listening to the radio. "In the Sixties the comic medium was so atrophied that if you wanted to do something a bit different you were totally locked out," says Crumb. "I was stuck doing greeting cards, and I got so sick of it, I packed my bags and headed off to San Francisco, with all the other lost American souls. I started producing Zap, which I sold on the street, and the underground scene picked up from there. We had this wonderful freedom, no one telling us what we could or couldn't draw or parody. The underground comic movement broke all the taboos," he says. From then on, a variety of comic genres mushroomed. Satire, autobiography, politics, romance, it was all available. The superheroes even began fighting one another. Meanwhile, in Britain, comic creators were furiously trying to break free of tired old rehashes, culminating in 1977 with the arrival of 2000 AD - still around today, but not the anarchic, anti-State masterpiece it once was.
real-life issues
With the 1980s, comics focusing on real-life issues came to the fore. Probably one of the best of the era was Love and Rockets, an American comic created by Jaime Hernandez, which tells the story of a ordinary couple. The first issues of Raw, created by husband-and-wife team Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, also appeared. Comics began to proclaim themselves high art: Spiegelman calls Raw a place where comic creators who weren't interested in earning a living came to.
Towards the end of the 1980s, the impact of some of the more brilliant British comic creators such as Alan Moore, creator of The Watchmen and Swamp Thing, became evident in American comics. Elaborate graphic techniques to depict violence are at the cutting edge of the art; censorship is hardly to be seen.
This decade has seen an explosion of the market - small publishers, one-offs, X-rated comics. And, of course, an expanding industry of mainstream magazines, produced in the US by the two huge companies - DC Comics (now owned by corporate communications giant Time Warner) and Marvel - and independents such as Image, a "creator-owned" publishing company which is best know for Spawn, currently the biggest selling comic in the world.
Additional information supplied by Des O'Byrne.
Comics can be an effective medium for communicating with an illiterate or semi-literate audience. After the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua, the new government distributed a comic throughout the country depicting the implications of the revolution and explaining to the people the sort of changes they could expect. Meanwhile, the US government was organising opposition to the new regime. The CIA produced its own comic, with stories showing how to do little acts of sabotage - such as sticking a coin into a lightbulb socket. (Once a bulb was inserted the whole electrical system would fuse, as lovingly illustrated in the book.) Nastier tasks were also encouraged by the CIA comic.
