Comix

Though the Dutch public broadcasters do occasionally pay attention to comics, any sustained interest in them has been lacking for a long time. This changed last Saturday, with the premiere of the new documentary series Beeldverhaal. It’s intended as an introduction to the wonderful world of comics, each of the eight episodes looking at a different aspect. The episodes themselves are only thirty minutes long, but judging from the first episode the creators manage to fit a lot of information in, without overlaoding the viewer. Much of the credit for this must go to the presenter Jean-Marc van Tol, one part of the team behind the hugely succesful Fokke & Sukke cartoon, who turns out to be a natural interviewer with whom other cartoonists feel comfortable.

But the way the programme is structured is also important. In the first episode the subject was (auto)biographical comics, both a genre that has become huge in the Netherlands in the past decade and a genre that’s easy to get for non-comics readers. The programme started by interviewing Jan Kruis, a cartoonist many people would know from his decades long weekly family strip in Libelle magazine, Jan, Jans en de Kinderen. Jean-Marc van Tol talks with him on how he used his own family as inspiration for the strip, even if the family in the strip is never intended to be his own. From there the programme moves on to Gerrit de Jager, creator of the slightly more edgy but almost as long running Familie Doorzon. This from the start was a comic that was more willing and able to talk about sex and drugs and sausage rolls, though still is a classic gag comic, again partially inspired by de Jager’s own life.

From there on it’s a small step to the autobiographical strip proper, as various creators talk to Jean-Marc about how much of their comics is their own life and how much their representation in the strip has become a separate character. Especially interesting was the interview with Maaike Hartjes, who often uses her partner Mark Hendriks in her comics. Hendriks himself is also a cartoonist and tells how this does not bother him, as he knows the difference between himself and the character “Mark Hendriks”. The only time he really had a problem with the way he was portrayed was when Maaike Hartjes did a radio interview and everything that looked innocent in the strip suddenly seemed very personal when he heard it on the radio…

All in all, a good first episode that promised much for the whole series. Future episodes will tackle superheroes, Dutch comics classic Ollie B. Bommel, Tintin, manga, the underground, Suske & Wiske and the Belgian comics scene and finally the modern newspaper strip. The only problem I’ve had with it so far is that the series is broadcasted late on Saturday night, just when the football is on….

Tom Spurgeon wonders:

Martin Wisse writes about a reader’s suggestion that Love & Rockets is the kind of book you hand people to get them to read comics, which soon moves into that thing I never understand about how the series lacks a natural jumping-on point. I’m beginning to wonder if the old way of encountering TV shows and comics right in the middle of their narratives and then working one’s way backward or not depending if it’s interesting or not has all but gone away. It could be the stumble-upon approach was simply the default method of those that grew up without access to DVD series season collections and comics trades.

It wasn’t so much the lack of a clear jumping on point that stopped me getting into Love & Rockets as just not seeing the original comics anywhere and the collected editions only rarely. And usually when I already had my eye on other comics. Besides which, I am anal enough not to want to read books out of sequence if I can’t help it.

When I were a lad I did get into superhero comics just diving into the deep end. The first American comics I can remember reading were Dutch reprints my uncle had lying around in his small collection. One was a reprint of the start of the Korvac saga in Avengers, which in half an issue introduced some dozen heroes or so, then puts them into space to meet yet another half dozen heroes, with copious allusion to earlier stories. The other one I remember is a Lee-Buscema Fantastic Four story, the Coming of the Over-Mind, again with a lot of characters you’re supposed to know and references to stories you’re supposed to have read. That was enough to intrigue me and once I started buying my own comics, it was yet another guest star filled Avengers spectacular, that crossover with Thor when Surtur’s demons threaten New York.

But all of that was at a time when I could buy one or two comics each week even on the meagre pocket money I got. That’s a bit more difficult if you’re buying comics at three-four dollars a pop, let alone want to buy trade paperback collections or gods forbid, hardcover reprints. Then it is a bit more risky to take a chance at a new title and you do want to get something you are already pretty sure of you’ll enjoy and understand. The more expensive comics become, the less easy it is to stumble over new stuff.

A reader writes:

The best ‘entry drug’ for civilians is Love & Rockets – very hip in the 80s, but still as brilliant as ever (best comic of past 30 years IMO).

Confession time: I’ve never really gotten into Love & Rockets. At first I was too engrossed with superheroes, then when I did start looking into other sort of comics, I could never find anything in the local comics shops, unlike with e.g. Cerebus, which I discovered through flipping through the High Society phonebook in my then local. I was aware of it of course, because it was, as Kasper says a serious candidate for being one of the best comics of the past three decades, but I never found a good jumping on point.

To be honest, there didn’t seem to be any. These days, Fantagraphics a nice line of L&R collections, but back in the nineties, when I was a serious comics collector, Love & Rockets was one of those series that it seemed you’ve had to have read from issue one to be able to understand it. Which sort of reinforces my point from two days ago, that continued availability is key for any comic to become part of the canon.

Colin Smith, one of our smartest comics bloggers, has been thinking about why it is that a quarter century after their publication, both Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns are still the first superhero comics you think of when trying to convert a civilian to comics:

Watchman and The Dark Knight Returns. The first step in converting the heathen was always obvious and straightforward once the bliss-was-it-in-that-dawn year of 1986 had been and gone. But the problem was always, always, what next? What other comparably excellent super-people gospels were there, what other beguiling and compelling examples of the fantastical comicbook tradition to be thumped into the wavering novice’s hand in order to seal the proselytisation?

A quarter of a century has passed and the problem persists.

Colin states the question in his first post on the subject as follows:

If the duopoly are still so greatly admired even as the briefly cheering circumstances which accompanied their first appearance at the time are long forgotten, it would seem that both comics have an appeal which transcends any one generation and any specific historical context. Given that few would defend either book as being a flawless expression of genius, and given the quality of a great deal of what’s followed in their wake, what is it that lends these comics their considerable reputation?

Then sets out to answer it in his next three posts on “Why The Commonly-Held Comic-Book Canon Is Absolutely Correct”. He makes a good case for justifiying their place at the top of the superhero canon and I’m not going to argue against it, but I do want to argue that there’s more than just their inherent qualities that got them to the top and more importantly, kept them there.

Because there is a bit of luck there as well, especially in the case of The Dark Knight Returns. Which is a good Frank Miller superhero story, but not obviously better than e.g. his work on Daredevil: Born Again or even Ronin. As with Shakespeare yesterday, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns look more important, more special because they’ve been set adrift from their context. Because they’ve have been continuously in print for a quarter century, they’ve become important, while those comics which appeared at the same time and were just as good or better (e.g. American Flagg!), but which for some reason or another didn’t and so never had the chance to gain the same reputation.