INTERVIEW
By Alex Ness
February 13, 2018
(Here it is, my big ass interview about comics with answers from thinkers in the world of comics. When begun a number of publishers and artists said sure to doing this, and after waiting for some they never ended up sending their answers. This is a portion of each person's time to answer, so I understand not doing it, and I appreciate those who did respond, and respond well. I also appreciate that some said yes and but then told me no so I wouldn't wait forever. Sadly I did wait for three respondents who didn't send anything, and that is my fault. I apologize to those who answered and had to wait to wonder if this would ever reach publishing on this blog.)
Comics cover a rather broad genre field. Despite being escapist fantasy
or self reflective indy comics, do they actually tell stories
from our lives? I've heard art and literary critics say that if art
doesn't reflect upon existence it is hollow, perhaps even worthless. Do
you agree? What existence can you see in comics?
MICHAEL FRIZELL
My
name is Michael Frizell, and I am a writer with Tidal Wave Comics.
Darren Davis, Publisher and creative force of the company, forward your
questions to me. Here are my answers!
Yes, I believe they do tell
the stories from our lives, although they tell them metaphorically.
Modern comics have stripped away the male power fantasy in favor of more
diverse voices and varied storytelling styles. Although comic
publishers are experiencing some growing pains – I think the industry is
still reeling from the fallout of the speculator-driven market of the
90’s – it will recover because diversification of characters, in
storytelling techniques and subject matter, and mainstream acceptance
will save it. It’s no longer the bastion of white, straight, teenage
males. Look close and you’ll see comics for the LGBTQ community, for
women and girls, for adults and children, for underrepresented groups,
and much, much more.
Comics often featured an idealized version
of the world with clear-cut villains and larger than life heroes. Modern
comics blur the line, tell nuanced stories, and explore multiple
genres.
CHUCK DIXON
I'm not much a philosopher. But any
work of fiction needs to reflect actual experiences and emotion felt by
the reader. Otherwise they are not honest or easy to relate to.
STEVEN GRANT
Ever
since I was a critic - I did do it professionally for several years,
& still keep my hand in periodically - I've noticed critics of all
sorts are prone to rather pompous grandiose statements. One thing I've
learned as a professional writer is who really cares what art &
literary critics say? Don't get me wrong, I read a lot of criticism
because people do have useful insights & there is criticism worth
reading, but why would anyone agree they get to decide what art is
hollow or worthless & what isn't? I go with Raymond Chandler: there
is no good art or bad art. There is only art, & precious little of
it.
Art exists to be created. That's its only natural function.
Anything else is gravy. Not sure what you mean by the existence I can
see in comics? Comics isn't any genre. Comics is a medium. There aren't
any natural restrictions on the content. Like any other medium, comics
can be anything someone imaginative enough wants to make them. Who's
anyone else to tell them they can't, or shouldn't?
MIKE BARON
For
most of their life, comics provided innocent escapism. Comics are the
most forgiving of mediums, for they can legitimize virtually any
conceit. What are Superman and Batman but the fever dreams of
adolescents? But they provide wildly escapist entertainment. A bullied
kid reading Spider-Man with a flashlight beneath the blankets. An
investment banker curling up with Uncle Scrooge. It wasn’t until the
seventies that the medium turned serious, thanks in part to Denny
O’Neil’s social consciousness. Some people think that comics should have
a social conscience—characters like Superman and Batman have it built
in. What are they but champions of the oppressed? As always, it’s a
matter of degree. To the point where it no longer entertains but simply
bludgeons you with a lecture. Underground comics seldom make this
mistake because they reflect the personal views of the creators. Works
like Maus, Spain’s My True Story, Joe Sacco’s Palestine, books like
these are idiosyncratic and real. You may not agree with the creator’s
views, but they entertain, because they are so personal, authentic, and
well-written. R. Crumb inspires fierce loyalty and widespread
condemnation because he dares to put what he really thinks down on
paper. The best comics reflect on existence in an entertaining way.
Art’s purpose is to illuminate life, but it is also to enthrall,
encapsulate, and entertain. I like the more personal comics. Even
whacked-out spacecraft like Little Nemo In Slumberland reflect on the
nature of reality. Some of the most powerful comics are
autobiographical.
MIKE CAREY
There are a lot of ideas to
unpick here, but I guess the broad throughline concerns the value and
function of art. I don’t think it’s possible to reduce this to a neat
formula. On the whole I subscribe to the uses and gratifications theory.
People use comics, just as they use novels, movies, TV shows,
paintings, music and every other art form, for lots of different things
at different times. Sometimes we can get a handle on what those things
are, sometimes they’re personal and ineffable. You can’t ever say “the
function of art is to do X, and if you’re not doing X then you’re not
doing art.” That seems to me to be a meaningless statement.
Are
comics art? Yes. What else could they be? If you try to create a
definition that excludes them, I guarantee it will be a bullshit
definition.
Do comics tell stories from our lives? Sometimes. But readers will APPLY stories to their lives in ways you can’t foresee.
The
comic industry has some conservative voices, and some oddball other
voices, but for the most part it is composed of people left of center.
Is the reason for that education, inclination, cultural stereotyped
roles? And, can work without any discernable bias work in the arts?
MICHAEL FRIZELL
I
don't see the industry as being "for the most part... composed of
people left of center." To be fair, I think there are people from all
parts of the political spectrum, and suspect that you may be correct in
your assertion, but how do we know for certain? In this political
climate, announcing a slavish devotion to either side would not serve
your audience. That's like deciding one day that you'll "only date
blondes" or some such nonsense and therefore limiting your choice,
right? Perhaps that's a clumsy analogy, but it flows that, as a creator,
if you know my political stance and disagree with it, you wouldn't read
me.
I hope my bias doesn’t bleed through. It’s inevitable that
some bias will creep into the work, of course, but I do make an attempt
to weed it out in order to provide as balanced an account of the lives
of the people I am chronicling as possible.
There are creators
openly conservative, oddball, and left-of-center, sure. Rather famous
ones, too. Tidal Wave makes a valiant effort to craft stories in its
Political Power line that offer a balanced account of the subject. As a
writer, I choose to focus on the subject’s life separate from the
politics as much as possible as I find it more interesting to figure out
what makes a person think they way he or she does rather than portray
what you can read on their Wikipedia page.
CHUCK DIXON
The
tricks is to work without a conscious bias. A writer's life informs
their work. There has to be something of you in the story. It's
unavoidable. But, if they want a wide audience, they need to keep their
political opinions out of escapist works of fiction. It's all about
story and nothing about message
STEVEN GRANT
I don't know
that the underlying premise is true. Very few people in superhero
comics, certainly, lean anywhere near what I'd call Left, though many
view themselves as liberals. Many view themselves as conservatives. I do
suspect most people don't end up in comics because they were popular
kids in high school, & you generally don't end up in comics if
you're willing to settle for a day job. All that probably has something
to do with any leanings in material. I wouldn't be entirely sure that
many people in comics even recognize their own biases, or that they'd
feel any compulsion to keep them out of their work if they do. It's
possible to keep bias out of your work, or tone it down to
near- invisibility, if you're especially self-perceptive & really
want to, but unless there's a particular creative reason for it, why
would you want to?
MICHAEL BARON
Leftists graduate to
communications arts because that’s where they excel. Conservatives are
more likely to make things with their hands. The left’s takeover of
academia, journalism, and the arts reflects their world view. Are there
any conservative equivalents to The American President or Dave? Bias
certainly does work in the arts. The American President and Dave are
highly entertaining. They reflect an idealized view of Democrat
politicians. Little Orphan Annie reflected an idealized view of
capitalists. But few conservatives go into the arts. This used to not be
the case. In the forties, fifties, and sixties, the arts were openly
patriotic. This leftist takeover of the communications industries is the
fruit of the sixties. It’s a pendulum. Eventually it will swing back.
Some of the most powerful movies are didactic: The Grapes of Wrath. I
Was a Fugitive From a Chain Gang. To Kill a Mockingbird. Conservative
equivalents? Ninety per cent of all Westerns. Some folks just need
killin’. But there have been seminal conservative works as well. Atlas
Shrugged. Rules Of Engagement. The Edge. And anyone wanting conservatism
explained should read David Mamet’s The Secret Knowledge. Mamet wrote
The Edge as well as The Untouchables, Glengarry Glenn Ross, and American
Buffalo.
MIKE CAREY
I don’t think comics are at all
unusual in this respect. People who have careers in the arts will often
be people who for whatever reason have pushed against conformity. It’s a
marked choice, and taking it often requires both courage and a maverick
mind-set. Not always, just often. As a side effect of this, rigidly
conservative voices in the arts are few.
I suspect there is no
such thing as an artistic work without any discernible bias. If there
was, it might also be without much value. You write, compose, act, draw
from your own engaged perspective. At the risk of sounding doctrinaire,
that’s part of the point of what you’re doing.
What is the best
thing to happen to comics in the last 20 years? I am not asking for
what brought comics revenue or anything that is about popularity.
MICHAEL FRIZELL
Tough
question. I’m tempted to say something about the plethora of movies,
but for the most part, those movies tend to eschew the crazy
inventiveness of the source material and focus on formulas that
sometimes work (The Avengers) and sometimes don’t (The Avengers: Age of
Ultron – but that’s just my opinion).
I’ve been reading comics
since 1976. Back then, science fiction, fantasy, and horror comics
dominated the small market. The X-Men became a comics phenomenon, and
back then, when one of the “Big Two” (Marvel and DC) thrived, the
industry thrived. That’s not true anymore. Casual comic readers get lost
in overlong storylines and endless crossovers from the Big Two. I think
the best thing to happen to comics in the last 20 years is the rise of
the independents. They offer stories that hearken back to the 70’s and
early 80’s when stories were inventive, felt risky, and publishers took
chances. Companies like Image, Boom, IDW, and yes, TidalWave, are
starting to influence the decisions made by the Big Two (but not fast
enough in my opinion, but that’s a different discussion). Look no
further than DC’s latest revamp for proof. They’ve taken a
back-to-basics approach that has worked. Marvel is attempting the same
thing.
Many “fans” complain about the rampant diversity and
replacement heroes (a female Iron Man, a female Thor, a Muslim Ms.
Marvel) and claim that it’s hurting sales. Traditionally, comics have
been slow to respond to social and societal changes. I think anything
that can bring younger, more diverse readers to the table, the better
off the industry will be in the future. But I digress. I’ll get off my
soap
box now.
CHUCK DIXON
Nothing good has happened to comics in 20 years.
STEVEN GRANT
For
various reasons comics have finally achieved a cultural acceptability
they didn't previously have. Mention comics & no one bats an eye
anymore. There's a certain cool factor with the general public if they
learn you can get into the San Diego Comic Con. Graphic novels are
recognized as worthwhile, at least in principle. We've finally been
mainstreamed. Whether that'll ultimately be harmful or beneficial it's
too early to say, but it's the biggest change. We're still something of
an outlaw medium but we're an outlaw medium people keep their eye on
now, whether directly or via movies, TV shows, books, etc. adapted from
the works. Now if we can only get the general public to stop thinking
the only comics company is Marvel we might get somewhere. Not that it
ultimately really matters.
MICHAEL BARON
Probably Image, because of the wide range of voices.
MIKE CAREY
I
don’t feel competent to answer this one. Imagine replacing comics here
with film or prose fiction. It’s such a big field you’re talking about,
any answer is going to be sort of silly and self-limiting.
If you
were talking about American comics, commercially produced, then I’d say
the best thing is the emergence of strong second-tier publishers,
commanding a viable share of the market and challenging the previously
unassailable duopoly of DC and Marvel.
Has the election of Trump
and his campaign prior to election been captured with any grace anywhere
in the comic book world? Why or why not? I wrote about Trump and the voices on the left being so outspoken against him being
perhaps more trouble than good. Do you think creatives have an
obligation to address politics and our particular culture and cultural
values?
MICHAEL FRIZELL
“Captured with any grace” is a bit
loaded and open to interpretation. I have yet to see someone focus
purely on the positive – and that includes myself in this, despite my
grandest efforts – when it comes to President Trump’s rise to power.
When
Darren approached me to write a sequel to the Political Power: Donald
Trump comic book first published several years ago, I froze. I wasn’t
sure how I could write the story in a way that made sense because the
story was unfolding. The comic had to be about the campaign as Tidal Wave
had already created a story about his dabbling in politics before
announcing his run. That left me about an eighteen month period to
explore.
I crafted the script during the campaign and I went out on a limb and predicted his win.
When
I research political subjects, I use news stories, watch hours of
interviews, and sometime attempt to reach out to the person (he never
responded, but it was worth a shot). There was so much vitriol on social
media and wild speculation in the mainstream press because we haven’t
seen a campaign like his in modern times. Instead of focusing on Donald
Trump as the narrator, I chose to explore the thought process of a
typical white, Midwestern voter struggling with the tenets of the
Republican party to justify his choice in Trump. It allowed me some
latitude as a writer to comment more on the negative mainstream press
and the craziness of some of his rallies and afforded me the room to get
into a character’s thought process. I think Trump’s public persona
defies that sort of analysis. You’d have to know the man to truly
understand him. While some of who he is he proudly displays publicly, I
didn’t want to assume too much about how he thinks because he’s been
unpredictable so far. I think that frustrates pundits and writers.
I
think creatives have an obligation to speak up and comment on our
political, social, and societal climate and challenge the norms. I think
there are artful ways to do it without bluntly stating your opinion as
fact. I know I am not comfortable with liberally sprinkling my writing
with political leanings. In the case of the Political Power series of
comics, I think it’s best to present the facts and let your reader
decide. I fear we are losing the idea of “trust, but verify” and that
scares me some.
CHUCK DIXON
I have no obligations as a
creator. Comics is such a small, niche market now that trying to promote
a political agenda through comics is like shouting on the corner of an
empty street. Most of this posturing is just that. There's a lot of "me
too" going on as a form of assuring job security.
STEVEN GRANT
No
obligation whatsoever, for anything. If your creative inclinations run
that way, great, have at it. But nobody's obligated to do anything
except talk about whatever they want to talk about, in whatever way they
feel is the best way to talk about it. Who, in a perfect world, has the
right to tell them otherwise? If someone want comics that discuss their
particular political causes, they can create their own damn comics. Of
course, we don't live in a perfect world, so many creators are saddled
with the semi-necessary evils of publishers & editors already
telling them at least the "acceptable limits" of what they can &
can't do, but we don't need more people sticking their noses into it.
Talent should use what's important to them as their material. That might
mean politics, it might mean gangsters or aliens, it might mean elves,
it might mean sex gags. The audience then gets to choose what of it they
want. Anyone who wants to impose more rules needs to recognize that all
rules are arbitrary, & they don't have the authority, no matter how
good they think their message is.
As far as our president goes,
no one's really tackled the subject much yet aside from a few off-handed
jokes, mainly due to the production timelag in comics. I couldn't deal
with specific things about the Administration because they shotgun out
new craziness so quickly; I'd forever be miles behind the curve.
Probably the best a cartoonist has come at tackling the situation is
Gerry Trudeau, who's been merciless both in the Doonesbury Sunday strip
& in his "Roland Hedley" fake news tweets. But the lag time of comic
strips is much shorter than that of comic books. If I pitched a new
comic tomorrow & got it accepted for publication by Thursday, it
could be anywhere between 8 months to a year & a half before the
first issue would come out. Hard to be topical under those conditions.
MICHAEL BARON
The
creative’s first job is to ENTERTAIN. The second job is to SHOW DON’T
TELL. The third job is to BE ORIGINAL. As for Trump, the left’s reaction
has been too irrational to do any of those things. Creatives have no
obligation to address politics. If that’s their shtick, more power to
them. Erik Larsen makes no bones about his sympathies, and readers love
Savage Dragon.
MIKE CAREY
I think your obligations as a
creator are for you to define, not for others to impose on you. That
seems self-evident. You can’t tell me what to create, and I can’t tell
you. You speak what’s in you to speak. I don’t mean that to sound
precious or arrogant. It’s just that your voice is something you figure
out for yourself, and you learn by doing. There’s no point in telling
someone they have an obligation to do things in a different way. It’s
usually not possible for them to bend into another shape without
breaking.
I read somewhere that when Jane Austen achieved a
measure of fame and success during her own lifetime, she was invited to
write a history of the House of Habsburg. She refused, explaining that
that wasn’t a story she could imagine herself telling.
There has
been eloquent commentary on Donald Trump in comic form, but he’s a
better subject for editorial cartooning than for comic books. Gary
Trudeau nailed Trump to the floor a long time before Trump ever ran for
president.
Do comics that feature global warming, air pollution,
over population or abortion rights have a hurdle, because of the
escapist nature of most comics? What would be a great example of it
working, and what is a comic that felt like pure propaganda?
MICHAEL FRIZELL
Good
question, and one we struggle with at TidalWave. Darren’s mandate has
always been to stay positive and stay focused on the person rather than
the message when writing nonfiction. In fiction comics, I think almost
every company as dipped their toes in hot-button social issues. I
believe the rise of the nonfiction graphic novel (Maus, for instance,
depicts the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany, Fun Home explores the
nature of a woman’s sexuality, etc.) and their success has made the
exploration of social issues a bit more commonplace in comics. But yeah…
there’s a hurdle.
When I choose titles to follow month after
month, I choose them because they offer escapism. I don’t want to read
about the real world. I want the idealized, black and white world of the
superhero. The line blurs on occasion, and can have a profound effect
on the reader. Spider-Man had to deal with his friend, Harry Osborn’s
drug use in the 70’s. So did Green Arrow. Frank Miller’s politics bled
into his writing of Batman in The Dark Knight Returns and Elektra:
Assassin with the depiction of Ronald Reagan as obsessed with “pushing
the button” and starting a nuclear war. Miller also explored rampant
destruction of the rain forests by fast food companies in the excellent,
and overlooked in my opinion, Martha Washington series of stories
(those stories also focused on the gulf between the rich and poor and
racism in America). These stories found a mainstream audience despite
being blatant in their commentary.
As for examples of comics that
didn’t work, I’d rather focus on the positive and not malign another
creator’s work. Howard Chaykin’s recent The Divided States of Hysteria
has garnered intense controversy because it featured a graphic and
sexualized depiction of trans panic violence, violent hate crimes
against people of color, genital mutilation, and racial slurs. He’s
holding up a dark mirror to our society and people don’t like what they
see.
The hurdle is that when you combine pictures with words.
I’ll give you an example from my own work outside of TidalWave. I am
publishing a comic with a publisher known for western stories called
Bender, about a serial killer family from Southeast Kansas who were
active after the Civil War. In the first issue, she main character,
Kate, is topless, uses a few four-letter words, and gets splattered with
blood. The publisher received complaints because the scenes
purposefully left little to the imagination. However, the publisher,
Oghma Creative Media, has featured scenes much more graphic in their
prose novels. The complaints stemmed from the pictures. The readers saw
what I wanted them to see, not what their imagination conjured. I can
only conclude that comics featuring depictions of controversial subject
matter will always shock us because we think of comics as “for kids” and
idealized, homogenized products designed to sell action figures or
cartoons.
CHUCK DIXON
Classic war comics (EC in the 50s
and DC in the 70s) are great examples of comics dealing with serious
issues in a mature way that seeks to engage rather than indoctrinate
readers. And there are too many propaganda comics in current publication
to list here and all of them fail as entertainment from every
subjective and objective measure.
STEVEN GRANT
The best
example I can remember of pure propaganda was Alan Moore & Bill
Sienkiewicz's Brought To Light, exposing alleged right wing criminality
of the Reagan-Bush era. I was VERY familiar with the material - I used a
lot of the same source material in Whisper - & I sided with their
intent, I generally love their work, & I absolutely hated that book.
Between Alan's feverish writing & Bill's wild art, the general
impression when you read it was that anyone who would believe this stuff
had to be raving mad. And it was a fairly serious subject. But it was
pure propaganda & played that way, & the worst thing you can do
with propaganda is put a big neon sign on it saying THIS IS PROPAGANDA.
Whether
there has ever been one that worked or not, I couldn't say. Most
"propaganda" comics are used to teach kids not to litter & things
like that, superheroes cleaning up the environment, or warning kids not
to start forest fires or whatever. Low level stuff. DC in the '50s had
some great Superman insert pages that ran across their line telling
everyone racism was stupid & unAmerican, a straightforward simple
message given weight by Superman. Really quite impressive for the time.
But did anyone ever read it & think "Superman's right! That black
kid I threatened to beat up yesterday, he's just like me, I should be
nice to him instead"? I don't know. How do you measure it?
Issue-oriented
stories often have problems if you're trying to do them at the major
superhero houses; as with all other media, the publishers can be a
little leery of stirring up their buying public "unnecessarily." But in
most cases things like global warming or overpopulation, they probably
wouldn't bat an eye; it would depend on what you wanted Hawkman or Thor
or whoever to do about it. Hell, Marvel's got its own storyline oil
company, Roxxon, that's fairly openly intent on destroying the
environment as a primary goal. Something like abortion, I'd be very
surprised if they were willing to publish a story involving that,
because that's a real hot button issue; having, say, Mary Jane Watson
pregnant & deciding to terminate could stir up whirlwinds they'd
likely not want anything to do with. But maybe they would. It's hard to
say.
MICHAEL BARON
Rule #2: SHOW, DON’T TELL. Comics about
air pollution and global warming can be very effective if they
entertain, and show don’t tell. A reader can smell a lecture a mile off.
I see snippets of comics on the internet that are obviously pure
propaganda, but I don’t read many comics these days, and those that I do
come without a grudge. I enjoy Stray Bullets—it’s tougher than most
crime fiction. And Dave Berry’s and Val Mayerik’s A Tale of Dust and
Blood, about the battle of the Little Bighorn, does a wonderful job
bringing history alive without beating you over the head with a message.
MIKE CAREY
I’d
question the assumption that most comics are escapist in nature.
Certainly there are hugely successful and important comics that deal
with real social issues. Look at Joe Sacco’s work, for example. But in a
broader sense it’s possible for things that look like escapism to be
meditations on the real world under a light disguise. Ursula LeGuin said
that “The future, in fiction, is a metaphor”. I agree. It usually is.
A
comic that felt like pure propaganda: Shadowplay, by Alan Moore and
Bill Sienkiewicz, in the Brought to Light book that Eclipse put out in
the 80s. I agreed with everything that was being said but found it
laborious and unsubtle.
Behind every great suspense thriller lurks the shadow of M. In
Fritz Lang's first sound film from 1931, Peter Lorre delivers a haunting
performance as a serial killer--a whistling pedophile hunted by the
police and brought to trial by the forces of the Berlin underworld. In 1990, a young painter, Jon J Muth, continued his rise in the comic book industry by adapting the story of M
into a four-issue comic book miniseries. Muth's photorealistic
illustrations paved the way for the acceptance of painted comics,
influencing a generation of artists who followed him.
"It’s Gotham City, 1928. Twenty years have passed since a madman slew the
parents of young Bruce Wayne, heir to one of the city’s oldest
fortunes. Twenty years since he fled the carnage of Gotham.
"He has gone from supernatural hero to insane spirit of evil. In this
collection, Deadman faces a slew of malicious spirits and the damned
humans attacked by these paranormal entities. He must save the souls of
murdered carnival freaks trapped in the abandoned remnants of a defunct
circus train, rescue kidnapped children and battle a tide of demons.
Great power lies within Deadman, but it can only be unlocked if he faces
the secrets within himself—secrets that have driven him mad. Can he
save the souls of the living and the dead when he cannot save himself?"
MISTER X is self described by Dean Motter and his various publishers as a fusion of film noir, Art Deco, and German Expressionism.
The story is of a utopian city with architecture that drives its inhabitants
mad and the never-sleeping architect who quested tirelessly for a cure,
Mister X. 
The Horrorist is a tale of the character John Constantine as detailed and fleshed out by Jamie Delano, that is powerful, even filled with depth not seen in the longer run in the book Hellblazer. Perhaps it is this way due to David Lloyd's art, or that facing a limited page count, Jamie told a story that had to have a certain amount of power to it in the space offered. Jamie is my favorite writer of Hellblazer (Mike Carey thereafter) and it isn't wrong to suggest I just like Jamie on the character. But I think it is the art with his words, that sort of gestalt combination, where one plus one equals three. This is dark, raw but also beautiful, for what it is.
