Why Do They Still Call Them 'Comic Books'? / R. W. Watkins

So what specifically do I find so detrimental and downright offensive about such technological ‘advancements’ and ‘higher’ production values in contemporary comics?

Well, in regards to the ‘higher-grade’ paper — particularly the truly high-gloss stuff — there’s first and foremost the little issue of readability. Why should enjoying a comic book involve seeking out the ideal location in order to avoid the glare of the sun or a common indoor light? In the case of many comics, the paper is also so lightweight nowadays that one must take care that an issue isn’t swept away by the wind before one gets it out the pharmacy door. (It appears that Marvel and Image have been publishing several of their titles in the ‘self-cover’ format for a few years now. This involves using paper for the cover of the same weight as that used for the interior.) There’s also the issue of aesthetics: Why would any comics publisher think that Archie and Amazing Spider-Man should have the same sheen and feel as Vogue and Seventeen Magazine? Are the companies actually that desperate to tap into the young female market?

As for the computer colouring and inking, it is my conviction that such technology actually defeats the purpose. Rather than draw one into a more believable world, the (perceived) attempts at realism merely tend to distance the reader from the subject. (Remember what McLuhan said about newspapers being things you get into “like a hot bath”.) As Scott McCloud points out in Understanding Comics:

“[...]When you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face — you see it as the face of another. But when you enter the world of the cartoon — you see yourself. […] The cartoon is a vacuum into which our identity and awareness are pulled... ...An empty shell that we inhabit which enables us to travel in another realm. We don’t just observe the cartoon, we become it!” (p. 36)

Well, good luck with attempting to enter the likes of Thor’s present-day realm:

Thor: God of Thunder No. 24 (copyright © 2014 Marvel Entertainment Group)

As complex and imaginative as what Jack Kirby’s Asgard was, it was still ‘cartoonish’ enough in which to lose one’s self.

One simply cannot escape the fact that everything in mainstream comics looks generic and overwhelming nowadays — like stills from some computer-animated motion picture. The artist’s original drawing (which may have been composed digitally in the first place!) lies buried somewhere beneath the clutter of digitally administered ink and layers of unnecessary colour. The word ‘overkill’ definitely comes to mind. As I was telling some Facebook group or another a while back, Jack Kirby’s own mother wouldn’t be able to differentiate his art from that of Rob Liefeld in many of the modern-day productions. I simply cannot distinguish one superhero artist from another any longer. I hear a lot of other longtime comics enthusiasts saying roughly the same thing. As I mention in another essay (‘Spider-Man in the Alternative Era: Reassessing McFarlane and Larsen’), as far as Marvel Comics go, it’s part of the reason that no one really seems to matter historically after McFarlane, Larsen and Sal Buscema on the Spider-Man titles:

“[...] The artists [have] become an even less significant cog in the machinery of the medium. To seasoned enthusiasts, the mainstream superhero comics of the past decade and a half don’t even look or feel like comic books to begin with. As for the literary side of the equation, a sense of narrative is quite often diminished or lost entirely under the weight of the overwhelming production values.”

One can quite legitimately conclude, in fact, that the greatest artist in mainstream comics over the past decade and a half has been the computer programs in use! The way computer technology is heading, I think genuine artists are destined for extinction. As I implied above, writers were rendered obsolete circa 1992.

Ironically, computer-coloured comics on glossy paper are both impedingly realistic and unsuitably artificial. It was perhaps rather prescient that Marvel Comics for a brief period in the mid 1960s bore the indicia ‘Marvel Pop Art Productions’, for such contemporary mainstream comics demonstrate all the earmarks of the conveyor belt system of production.

And what do creative people with experience in the comics field think of these modern-day monstrosities? As one might expect, Dennis Hyer (Mullein Fields, Inhuman Relations) makes it clear that all of this computer stuff is pretty irrelevant to him, both as creator and consumer, and he claims to have not read a mainstream comic book since about the age of twelve.

Bad Boys creator J. R. Williams shares the same sense of isolation from the major companies, but is a little more generous :

“I seldom read comics these days, and when I do read them they are most typically self-published or small press comics (not usually in color). It does seem perfectly natural to me that comics publishers are making use of the available computer coloring technology, and that it’s creating a sort of new aesthetic... natural also that the emerging visual changes will elicit wide-ranging opinions from both enthusiasts and detractors. Any time there’s a significant change in the visual arts there’s going to be some controversy. I’m not personally a fan of (most) contemporary superhero/mainstream comics or the way they are colored, but I do think it’s interesting how the use of color is now becoming a bigger part of how the finished work is publicly presented […].”

Williams went on to tell me that he was particularly impressed with the role that computers have been playing in comics restoration. (That’s another essay.)

Nathan Sorry artist Rich Barrett, who works in digital primarily for the sake of online comics, saw things even more optimistically when I interviewed him recently:

“I think we’re in the midst of a big shift to digital art among a lot of well-known artists. I’ve seen a lot of them make the switch from paper and ink to Manga Studio over the past couple of years and retain their unique style and characteristics. I think it’s true that there’s probably a slightly cold sheen to digitally inked comics that is recognizable, but I also think you’d be surprised to learn what is and what isn’t digitally produced. I remember being shocked to learn that Brian Bolland has been inking all his cover work in Photoshop since sometime in the late ’90s. Whereas, you look at the work of someone like Chris Ware, whose style is so graphic and geometric, but he does at least most of his work by hand (unless that’s changed in recent years, which is possible).”

“What digital is really revolutionizing is comic-book coloring. For years, digital coloring in comics stood out like a sore thumb and seemed like such overkill that it was weighing down the line art it was supposed to be complementing. Today, I think there are a lot of really smart colorists that are doing amazing work with subtlety and finesse. And this becomes really apparent if you read comics on a tablet or monitor. For me, this is one of the biggest selling features of reading digital comics. Superhero comics especially look SO much better on an iPad then they do on paper because you’re seeing the color in its natural, digital environment. I really find a lot of it breathtaking.”

It is obvious that Barrett has a higher tolerance of the newfangled ways than what I do. He also has more patience, given his ability to wade through all the superficial debris out there and select a few golden nuggets for his Most Interesting Comics of the Week column at the Mental Floss website. He makes a key point, though, in those latter lines, about computer-coloured superhero comics being better suited to their “natural, digital environment”. Let the gaudy, colour-saturated digital creations stay on the computer screens, I say. Let only those that exhibit restraint, taste and subtlety (like Barrett’s!) venture onto the printed page.

Unlike J. R. Williams, however, Barrett’s glass is half empty when it comes to the restoring and reprinting of the old four-colour comics:

“[...]When they go back and recolor the vintage stuff they often go overboard with inappropriate gradients and just too much ‘stuff’. The problem also is, the old comics were colored in a way that needed to work on newsprint paper, which absorbs the color. When they just reprint that on glossy, modern stock, it’s too loud and saturated. I don’t know the ins and outs on the reprinting process or the decisions they make, but I’d prefer they stick with choices that are truer to the original work rather than redo it in an effort to appeal to modern audiences. There’s plenty of companies that are taking great care in how they reprint the classic stuff though. Usually those are the high priced coffee table books.”

When it comes to such questionable reprinting, the late Kim Thomspon of Fantagraphics probably put it best when addressing DC’s dubious ‘deluxe edition’ of Batman: Year One:

“It is profoundly astonishing to me that ANYONE, let alone major publishers, is still subscribing to the weird notion that printing a comic on coated (a.k.a. glossy, a.k.a. shiny) stock is somehow fancier and better and more collectalicious. Granted that we (and Kitchen Sink and that whole generation of alternative publishers) went through that madness back in the 1980s and 1990s, we got cured eventually and realized that 98% of comics look better on uncoated stock, and NO comic looks good on outright glossy stock” (comment regarding Dan Nadel’s article, ‘David Mazzucchelli Disavows Forthcoming Batman Reprint’; The Comics Journal’s official blog; 6 March 2012).

Thompson’s assertion serves as a pretty good summation of my views on the use of ‘higher-grade’ paper, and I think it is interesting that he should make mention of Kitchen Sink; for I think the first colour comic book printed on some sort of glossy paper that I can remember purchasing was actually from outside the mainstream: Charles Burns’s second Big Baby issue (‘Blood Club’, 1992) for Kitchen Sink. Ironic, that. For some reason, an ‘alternative’ suspense tale looked better in colour on glossy paper in the early ’90s than what any mainstream superhero comic story does two decades later. To quote the inimitable Linus Van Pelt, there’s a lesson to be learned there somewhere, but I’m not sure what.