So I was reading the first of Bob’s most excellent field reports from Cool Japan 2007, and latched onto a point from Dr. Kern’s presentation, comparing manga to earlier Japanese kibyōshi (Edo era woodblock prints). I can see parallels, certainly, but I wouldn’t draw a direct line from one to the other. Well, neither did Kern: it would be unfair of me to say so, even for the sake of the rest of my argument.

But… are comics and manga just the latest iteration in a long line of previously existing graphic art, worthy of note in fancy wine-sippin’, hors d’oeuvre-munchin’ gallery shows, or is it just another crude, crass, mass entertainment medium that is fittingly ignored by anyone but fanboys and otakus and other losers (like the guys who write reviews for pretentious, high-falutin’ comicky web sites)?

Part of the appeal of comics (and manga is just another word for comics) is that it is a new artform– though yes, comics do draw inspiration from the past, and in fact we’ve been scrawling things down on every available surface ever since some prehistoric Frenchman just had to brag to everyone about how badass a mammoth hunter he was, so there’s a lot of past to draw on.

But the comic book and it’s Japanese cousin are recent innovations (the dates I’m picking are 1933 and 1947, respectively, you can go to wikipedia or the reference of your choice and decide on your own) and while they’ve drawn from many artistic and literary sources, I’d say they’re related most closely to the other new visual media of the 20th century, the twin visual arts of cinema and television.

One twist to the debate that should also be considered is that comics are a consumer product, mass produced and marketed just like pea soup and laundry detergent. If you don’t think this has had a large influence on comics as art, then you need to go find a few internet forums where folks are (even as you read this) vehemently arguing the relative merits of fan service.

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Let me cover that second point first.

I deeply respect Scott McCloud, and have often resorted to his definition of comics [wiki] when trying to relate my own paltry opinions on the medium, but I don’t recall McCloud ever bringing the aspect of reproduction into his discussions. It is true that a single, hand-drawn book would still be a comic (and maybe even a fine work of art) but the comics we consider when we start to argue about the relevance of the medium are all copies.

Cheap paper combined with advances in printing technology, and riding piggyback on the success of newspaper comic strips, led to the birth of the comic book. It’s disposable entertainment — like the pulp novels that came out during the same period, not intended as an archival medium for hand-drawn artwork, but rather as a way to separate nickels and dimes from the customer base.

People will still save and re-read their favourites, but the secondary market relies on the fact that most of us (or more likely, our mothers) will throw out comics when we’ve outgrown them. …if we outgrow them, but that’s a different column.

The need to make a buck (or franc, or yen, or won) drives the industry. The industry gets the comics into my greedy little mitt, for which I am thankful, and I happily fork over the $3 or $5 or $12.95. It’s the economics that has kept the floppy flopping for 75 years, has run up Action & Detective into the 800s, and propelled the ever-mutating X-men brand and its variants and offspring into the 1000s.

Economic success and artistic merit: there is a sliding scale, and any given artist or publisher may place greater weight on one but it is seldom at the expense of the other. No one (that I know of) is in the business to give away comics, except on May 5th. Small publishing houses are still businesses, and they are all striving for viability, and hopefully profitability: The ability to make copies and get them distributed is as much a part of comics as ink on paper. Even artists who claim to work only for themselves want to share the fruits of their effort, so at some point a comic will be reproduced and sold.

Web comics are an interesting variation, and at first blush might be seen as violating the economic model, but it’s just a artefact of the incredibly low reproduction costs (what’s the fraction of a cent cost of a page load?) and not anything new. The trick is not to get the image to the customer, but to convince the customer that they still want to pay you for it. Ads also count in that equation: an ad is still a cost to your customer (ref. Goldhaber, the Attention Economy).

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Can a mass produced object also be art? Let’s ask Warhol and Lichtenstein. [wiki: Andy, Roy, Pop Art]. Not that calling something “Pop Art” immediately gives it artistic merit, and this is ground that has been covered before by people with more degrees and pretention than I can muster. Most examples of Art (hanging-on-a-wall-in-a-museum art) are single entities, or one of a numbered series of prints. 100,000 copies may be just a few too many to qualify as a limited ‘art’ run, though that is what most in the industry consider a success. (here’s a run-down from 20 Feb 07, source ICv2 News)

The comic is new as an artform. Yes, it’s at least 75 years old in it’s current form and folks like to try and find roots that are even older [wiki: Woodcuts, Ukiyo-e] and if pressed I might even go so far as to call the Book of Kells [wiki, with pictures!] and other illuminated manuscripts as being the earliest protocomics. But words plus pictures, even when combined, do not always a comic make.

I think folks who try to find the historic roots of comics miss the point that it is a product of technology as much as the output of an artist. Not just the advances in printing, but also in the new visual vocabulary that comics share with photography and film. When I review a manga and pull in terms like shifting camera angles and blocking, I intentionally reference cinema in an attempt to describe (via words only) the more complex relationship that the images have to each other and the story. [ref. wiki: mise en scène] The aspects of sequence, story, and visual dynamics are what make comics unique, not the static images of centuries past that have the occasional speech balloon or scroll.

Comics don’t need a historical precedent. I think there was a definite breakthrough in the artform when it moved from single panels with captions (even if they are pretty, or inspired) to something that moves across the page. At least, that’s my take on it.

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to answer the question posed by the title: Hell yes, it’s the best damn art you can buy for the cost of a Big Mac (or two White Castle slyders, for a price comparison that goes all the way back to the 30s). A comic can be great even if it isn’t high art, just as fast food is awfully tasty but by no means haute cuisine — I don’t think comics need to be held to any artistic standards but their own.