We live in a world ruled by pop princesses and pancake houses, where video games have replaced books and writers no longer need grammar. But look deeper, and it’s easy to see that our sometimes witless world remains an inquisitive and clever place. In short essays, our writers probe those signs of intelligent life.
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Blame it on the movies. Yes, pin the still-gnawing sense that comic books are the domain of teen boys — or the inner teenager in adult males — on the tag that precedes too many studio pictures these days: “based on the graphic novel.”
But a visit to a bookstore invites a rebuff. No, not a comic-book shop. Too easy. Instead, consider a browsing break at a mainstream seller like the Barnes & Noble on Denver’s 16th Street.
One recent afternoon, after perusing the loaded book stand labeled “graphic novels,” and then noting the two brimming cases for Japanese comics, or manga, I headed over to the shelves reserved for the really good stuff, the heralded titles, the smarty-pants picks of a book-loving staff.
There, the graphic novel held a place of prominence too. There was Joe Sacco’s “Palestine.” The artist-journalist’s 2000 “Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95” was a breakout title once. Next to it stood “The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan With Doctors Without Borders.” Emmanuel Guibert’s oversized book is a powerhouse mix of his illustrations and photojournalist Didier Lefèvre’s photographs recounting his time in Afghanistan in 1986. There was also “J. Edgar Hoover,” Rick Geary’s graphic biography of the famed FBI honcho.
Heady stuff. Though one can imagine Ben Katchor’s just-published, whimsical “The Cardboard Valise” among them.
When the heck did this happen? When did the content get so rich, so, well, wise?
“There have been several waves,” says Jessica Abel, cartoonist, teacher and co-editor with Matt Madden of the annual series “Best American Comics.” A paradigm shifter came in 1986 with Alan Moore’s “Watchmen”; Frank Miller’s “Batman: The Dark Knight”; and Art Spielgelman’s “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale,” based on interviews with his father, a Holocaust survivor. In 1992, the saga’s second volume won a special Pulitzer Prize.
“Bookstores started putting comic books on the shelf,” says Abel. “But once you read ‘Maus,’ what were you going to read next? There wasn’t enough there. There were good comics, but a lot of them weren’t in book form. There wasn’t a business structure to get the material into the hands of readers who’d be interested.” There is now.
It turns out, some shifts in pop culture feel explosive. Rock ‘n’ roll cranked the amp dial in the 1960s. Pow! Hip-hop muscled its way to the fore in the 1990s. Ka-boom. Other changes are subtle, gradual and just as lasting, like the rise of the graphic novel. Not your father’s comic book, to be sure.
In 2009 R. Crumb published “The Book of Genesis,” a graphic-novel rendering of the Bible’s first book.
The greatest story ever drawn, anyone? Lisa Kennedy
See ‘related items,’ above right, for 8 other signs of intelligent life in The Age of Stupid.
