Bradleigh's blog

We've spoken so often in this class throughout the year about the medium of comics as harboring a more elevated form than previously considered by popular culture. While I think we all agree that comics truly are "not just for kids anymore," something has come to my attention as of late that I found rather interesting: if we consider illustrated children's books, where is the line drawn between the graphic novel & kiddie lit?

The components are all essentially there: images that support & flesh out a plotted text; a text that parallels & behooves illustration. If a children's book is meant for a child by its form, what are we to consider Moonshadow? The text is narrator-driven, with minimal dialogue coming from the characters themselves, & static images on each page serve to balance this narration. Consider the Clifford the Big Red Dog series, or Arthur, or even chapter-by-chapter illustrated texts for children like the Sideways Stories series or - & perhaps this is a stretch - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There are elements in all of these books that speak to adults as well as children (some, of course, more blatantly than others), but why does this make them more of a "comic"? Or does it even make them more of a comic at all?

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I don't mean to harp on subjects after we've moved beyond their discussion, but there is, I think, a dialogue that needs to occur when it comes to reading Watchmen in a 21st Century society, & it is one that we never had much of a chance to discuss in class. I'm speaking here about the novel's opening pages of Chapter XII, the climactic vision of desperate destruction that no one (no one) in 2009 is able to read without suffering flashbacks to the attacks of September 11. How, then, do we read Watchmen as a post-9/11 text, & how does this complicate its legacy as what some have called "The Greatest Graphic Novel of All Time"?

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On Friday night, I was introduced by an avid fan to what I'm presuming is a comic series with a huge fanbase somewhere: Scott Pilgrim. The Canadian-based, Canadian-drawn books follow the life of a 23-year old bass player with unexpected kung-fu abilities that rival both Keanu Reeves & Ryu, as well as a penchant for breaking hearts. After listening to a friend wax romantic about these books & their (apparently) swoon-worthy protagonist, I dug into the first book, not realizing I was digging in for the long haul.

Because the series surprised me by combining dryly caustic humor with human characters that still somehow retained video game qualities; by this I mean that they existed in the unimaginable, the unreal, & at times the carnivalesque. When characters fight, they explode into piles of money, when they are insulted or scared, they speed away in clouds of sputtering dust, and when they swear off animal products, they gain psychic abilities. It's humanity lends itself to its humor, & its ludicrous scenes wrap it in a shell of the absurd; somehow, this is a popular formula.

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Though I am only on Chapter VII of Watchmen, & even though I am waiting to finish the entire thing before I see the movie (which I certainly will, as it's becoming more & more apparent to me why the novel is so acclaimed the further along I read), there is something that has been bothering me concerning reports of the new adaptation: the exclusion of The Black Freighter. It seems to me that the meta-comical addition of this invented pirate adventure is one of the most important buttresses for the novel's main plotline, as it functions not only as a parallel emotional mirror, but as the most culturally aware piece of the story as well.

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Nicholas Gurewitch, "Dinosaur Sheriff"

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As Americans, we have all grown up in some way conscious of the syndicated weekday comic strip, a traditionally lighthearted companion to a hot cup of coffee. It is a form of art that, along with taxidermy, TV voiceovers, & commercial acting, valorizes the product over the producer. While certain syndicated cartoonists have gained cult followings for their art (Bill Watterson, Gary Larson, & Charles Schulz leap to mind, though there are plenty others), for the most part no one cares about who is dishing up that day's strip, so long as it is short & funny. On the flip side, there is the comic artist who draws contempt from his or her audience for repeatedly serving the same stale jokes again & again & again without care for the reader. "Cathy" artist Cathy Guisewite & "Mutts"'s Patrick McDonnell seem to use a formula for their work that dates back to the age of "Marmaduke," & for many, Jim Davis is also one of these cartoonists.

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In the now outdated but still entirely relevant anthology "The Best American Comics 2007," editor Chris Ware offers to the reader an unbelievably dense, intensely centered preface that lays out, among other things, the reason we do & should believe in comics. In the second unofficial section of the preface, Ware writes on the effect comics have on our perception of liminal & constructed spaces:

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