The recent controversy over DC’s decision to not allow Paul Pope’s astounding “Batman: Year 100″ to be published in the 2008 edition of The Best American Comics has me wondering: Will mainstream comics ever WANT to be “art?”
The artistic value of comic books has been a debate for decades, with fans of the genre demanding that sequential art be taken as seriously as painting, sculpture and poetry. Comic books’ critics have simply pointed out that it’s difficult to take serious a story about a man beating up a gorilla while wearing his underpants outside his blue tights. But in our postmodern world, the artistic legitimacy of comics as a genre is hard to deny. Ever since Maus won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, there is no mistaking comics have serious merit and that is why we have the many “literary comics” sitting on our bookstore shelves, right next to the capes and yaoi manga.
Superhero comics on the other hand (or “mainstream comics”) (or “pop comics”) on the other hand, is still having a rough time gaining legitimacy. Fans dream of a day they can read their hardcover edition of Planet Hulk on the bus without the vague tinge of shame. They dream of a day in which the power and beauty of superhero comics, regardless of their fanciful subject matter, are seen for the art they really are. But are superhero comics ready to be considered art? Or more specifically, are their biggest supporters, the fans and creators, ready to allow their comics to be taken seriously?
When DC turned down an invitation to be in The Best American Comics, it spoke volumes on the company’s interest in the artistic realm of comic culture. Basically, they are taking the position that “Batman: Year 100″ is not art (and wasn’t, in fact, one of the best comics of the last year) but is simply entertainment, the publishing of which should be tightly controlled to maximize profitability. Forget reaching a whole new audience of “artsy nerds,” DC knows it’s costumer base and will just sell them the softcover trade instead.
But what’s really sad is that 95% percent of Batman and DC fans won’t care about this because they don’t read The Best America Comics anyway. Because the comic that are in those anthologies are “boring.” And yet these are the same fans that want superheroes to be taken seriously. This sort of ignorance (and arrogance) could better be illustrated by someone declaring that Transformers was a better movie than There Will Be Blood, even though they haven’t even seen the Oscar-winning film and forgot that one robot tastefully pissed on a guy.
The truth is, it is the readers of mainstream comic that are not ready for superhero comics to become art. When one imagines a “comic book critic,” they see someone who writes short paragraphs on how good a book’s art is and if the story held together. But a “literary critic” on the other hand rarely makes judgments on the plot or enjoyably of a text. Instead, they cut to the bone and explore what the text says about society, what is says about all of us. Now, if someone were to treat comic books the same way they treat a novel or poetry, fans would not like the results. Firstly, the end result would not be very pretty considering the levels of implicit and explicit sexism and racism in superhero comics. Secondly, as seen by any visit to any comics forum, there is a culture of ignorance in among superhero fans. You are not supposed to “over think” or “over analysis” Superman or X-Men comics.
So what are they, fans? Are they “just comics” or are they art? You can’t have both. If fans want superhero comics other than Dark Knight Returns and Arkham Asylum to be taken seriously, they must learn to get over themselves, their own ignorance and fear of art. Demand more from yourselves and then demand more from the creators and editors.
