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$180,000 (approx), according to Art Info.

Hi there. Over on Art Info there’s a report on the Brussels Antiques and Fine Art Fair, which included a few comic art dealers who commanded some very high prices for original work by Moebius and Milton Caniff. It does seem like prices run higher in Europe overall, and based purely on my conversations with various U.S. galleries and dealers, a tremendous amount of non-hero based comic art (i.e. underground old and new) is sold to European collectors. 180K may seem like a lot in the comics racket, but it’s cheap compared to a masterpiece by a comparable contemporary artist (let’s say, for the sake of argument, Ed Ruscha. Ignore dopey headline.

Speaking of dopey: Dear Chris Arrant at Robot 6: It’s not nice to quote from my article without attribution (that is, directly swiping from an interview I did). Here’s the piece I wrote (with its own dopey headline) about one aspect of Mike Kelley’s current show at Gagosian L.A. Mike’s work couldn’t have less to do with Lichtenstein, but such is life in the dopey-verse.

UPDATE: Robot 6 updated the post appropriately.

Oh yeah, and Frank would like to point out that Dave Sim responded to Jog at length in the comments section yesterday. Check it out.

Happy Friday.

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Howdy folks! Welcome to CC‘s weekend edition. So, I bet you’re wonderin’ how can I transition back to riffing on romance comics after two weeks of SPX tunes? Well, see at SPX, me and Heidi MacDonald were talking about Marie Severin. We were looking at a Tales to Astonish cover (#98) and trying to figure out who inked it. Bill Boichel said Severin inked it. And then Jaime Hernandez said Dan Adkins inked it. Heidi looked it up on her phone. It was a fun little game. One that we used to play at comics conventions in days of yore. Try it – you might like it and hey! if it ain’t your thing, that’s fine! I’ll be right here. Talkin’ to Jaime. (more…)

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Gil Kane, an artist whose interviews are always worth reading.

Autodidacts. I often think William Blake is the prototype for many modern cartoonists. Blake was a working class visionary who taught himself Greek and Hebrew, an autodidact who created his own cosmology which went against the grain of the dominant Newtonian/Lockean worldview of his epoch. The world of comics has had many such ad hoc theorists and degree-less philosophers: Burne Hogarth, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Neal Adams, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, Lynda Barry, Howard Chaykin, Chester Brown, Dave Sim, Alan Moore. These are all freelance scholars who are willing to challenge expert opinion with elaborately developed alternative ideas. The results of their theorizing are mixed. On the plus side: you can learn more about art history by listening to Gary Panter and Art Spiegelman talk than from reading a shelf-full of academic books; Robert Crumb’s Genesis deserves to be seen not just as an important work of art but also a significant commentary on the Bible; Lynda Barry’s ideas about creativity strike me as not just true but also profound and life-enhancing. On the negative side: Dave Sim’s forays into gender analysis have not, um, ah, been, um, very fruitful; and while Neal Adams drew a wicked cool Batman, I’m not willing to give credence to his theories of an expanding earth if it means rejecting the mainstream physics of the last few centuries. Sorry Neal!

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Foxhole #1 (1954) by Jack Kirby.

More gleanings from my notebook:

Herriman’s Missing Signature. Michael Tisserand has a question: “Does anyone know (or have any ideas why) George Herriman generally no longer signed neither his daily nor his Sunday comics in their final years? How uncommon is this? Are there any reasons having to do with comics production, or is this a purely personal decision? I also noticed that there were periods of time in Herriman’s early stint at the Los Angeles Examiner where he didn’t sign his comics. These are the only comics in those issues that are unsigned.” Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Jack Kirby Was the 20th Century. Jack Kirby was the immigrant crowded into the tenements of New York (“Street Code”). He was the tough ghetto kid whose street-fighting days prepared him to be a warrior (the Boy Commandos). He was the patriotic fervour that won the war against Nazism (Captain America). He was the returning veteran who sought peace in the comforts of domestic life (Young Romance). He was the more than slightly demented panic about internal communist subversion (Fighting American). He was the Space Race and the promise of science (Sky Masters, Reed Richards). He was the smart housewife trapped in the feminine mystique, forced to take a subservient gender role (the Invisible Girl). He was the fear of radiation and fallout (the Incredible Hulk). He was the civil rights movement and the liberation of the Third World (the Black Panther). He was the existential loner outcast from society who sought solace by riding the waves (the Silver Surfer). He was the military industrial complex (Nick Fury). He was the hippies who rejected the Cold War consensus, and wanted to create their own counterculture (the Forever People). He was the artist who tried to escape his degrading background (Mister Miracle). He was feminism (Big Barda). He was Nixon and the religious right (Darkseid and Glorious Godfrey). He was the old soldier grown weary from a lifetime of struggle (Captain Victory). There was hardly any significant development in American 20th century history that didn’t somehow get refracted through Kirby’s whacko sensibility. Jack Kirby was the 20th century.
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Just to continue this flurry of posts on Canadians, I thought I’d put up this quote from the cartoonist Seth that I found interesting. He’s responding to Dave Sim’s question about critiquing other people’s work. It made me think of a couple of previous posts about editors we did a while back.

The quote is from Following Cerebus #5.

Seth: [...] I prefer the idea of an artist struggling to learn on his own and figure it out on his own, rather than, you know, being part of a gang that’s supplementing each other’s work with critique. I guess that’s just because my inclination is, I’m attracted to the image of the artist working alone and producing this complete work. For example, I don’t know how anyone can stand to work with an editor. I don’t really know how fiction writers have become used to that idea. I can understand working with a proofreader: that makes sense to me. But even working as a prose writer, if there was someone changing around all the sentences in an article I had written and as a result of that it turned out to be a better-written article, I’d have to conclude at the end that I wasn’t much of a writer.

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Anyone interested in Dave Sim should try and get a hold of copies of Comic Art News and Reviews, a fanzine he frequently wrote for in the early 1970s.

As a teenage fan, Sim interviewed and analyzed many major creators who shaped his art, including Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, and Jules Feiffer. In retrospect, the Feiffer essays Sim wrote are particularly piquant because the young fan praised the alternative cartoonist for his insights into gender relations. Who knew back then that Sim would grow up to be a character out of Carnal Knowledge?

Equally ironic is an outburst against Jack Kirby that Sim penned in the very first issue of Comic Art News and Review. Sim was upset that Kirby had been given too much artistic freedom by his editors at DC:

I maintain, as I have for some time, that Kirby has little or no talent. His writing disgusts me even more than the early work of Gerry Conway. His creations seem to be of less than human quality. [...]

Now for some conclusions on this topic. Why do these characters exist? They are Kirby creations and it is a well-known fact that the only way to maintain Jack Kirby as a staff artist is to cater to his wants. One of these wants is total freedom to change, distort or completely destroy anything in the panel art at DC. He changed Superman into something less than he should be, totally demolished anything it took DC thirty years to build Jimmy Olson into….and left both characters when he was through with them. This is somewhat reminiscent of ushering a spoiled child into a room full of antique toys, permitting him to smash them at will and guiding him to yet another room.

Now, the almighty King demands that he be granted a team of artists at his California headquarters that he might continue his Fourth World Farce. Whom would he take? Neal Adams? Jim Aparo? Joe Kubert? Certainly sacrificing these gentlemen to the pseudo science fiction slop of the Fourth World means nothing…if the King is satiated by it.

At least on the issue of creator rights, Sim became wiser as he grew older. The entire magazine Comic Art News and Reviews testifies to the vital fan culture that existed in Southern Ontario in the early 1970s. A run of the journal can be found in Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. If anyone has access to the library, they should definitely check it out: it’s a goldmine waiting to be opened up.

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I’ve gotten some weird e-mails in regards to the “80%” quote I made in the comments section of my Tom K post from last week. In the original post I wrote: “For me, Tom’s work is an oasis in the desert. And the desert is contemporary alternative comics. I find 80% of today’s alt comics poorly constructed — a veritable colony of lean-to shacks that could be blown over in a strong wind. In contrast, Tom K builds comics that could be likened to a brick house. These are solid comics.”

And then in the comments section I wrote: “I worked all last week at Copacetic Comics and went through the shelves, book by book. I’m sad to report that how UNREADABLE most alt comics are. My 80% figure is not an exaggeration. I made a list (which I’ll never publish). It’s embarrassing how little structure alt comix have compared to mainstream comics.”

What I’m bummed about in hindsight is that the post was meant to be an appreciation of Tom K and not about how I feel most alt comics are structure-less. I try to go out of my way in my reviews to praise comics that have good structure, and when I point out that most alt comics do not, it is not my intention to “shame” anyone. If I review a comic that is structure-less, I’ll say so. But the point of my post on Tom K was not to criticize others but to praise Tom. Still, since the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, I thought I’d add a few more thoughts on the subject.

Okay then:

I said that 80% of alt comix are unreadable because of their lack of structure. I did not say these comics are “garbage.” I said they were “unreadable” and that they are “poorly constructed.” I’m specifically talking about sequencing, not really the drawing itself. “Unreadable” is a bit hyperbolic though. What I mean is that most alt comics are not well crafted on a narrative level. Alt-comix creators, for the most part, get away with being structure-less. They focus on style and “earnest-ness” at the expense of transitions and effective storytelling. Mainstream creators have editors and house styles. (While “house styles” and editorial constraints may sometimes lead to formulaic stories, they actually also often provide a solid foundation for the artists and writers to build upon. It’s not always conformist formula.) Alt-comics creators are “free to be me” and often bristle at the notion of editorial input. Editorial input is not necessarily the same thing as “structure” but I think the two go hand in hand.

I’m being vocal about this issue because I think too many alt creators don’t even realize it’s a problem. I want to wake them up to the fact that even the most experimental comics creators need to study story structure and craft (and could potentially benefit from editorial input) — not just their mainstream peers. I’m talking about myself here too. I study structure religiously and am trying to improve my own fundamental skills day by day.

I remember running into Chris Staros in 1997 (’98?) at the APE convention when it was still in San Jose. He told me a story about a young cartoonist he was working with named Craig Thompson. As I remember it, Craig turned in his manuscript for Goodbye, Chunky Rice and Staros wasn’t thrilled by the ending. So he suggested Thompson take another crack at it. Staros said, “It came back and it was unbelievable. It made me cry.” Fast forward to ten years later, and I’m talking to Nate Powell about his new book, Swallow Me Whole. I asked Nate how involved Staros was as an editor. Nate told me that Staros asked for the book to be drawn entirely in pencil first so that any changes would be easier. Makes sense to me.

What I’m getting at is this: Both Thompson and Powell are “alternative” cartoonists who have grown considerably in their short careers. And both worked closely with an editor who is well versed in comics structure. They both benefited from Staros’s critical eye and both have produced solid comics. Would they have made great comics without Staros’s input? Sure. But with an editor they pushed themselves to go beyond their comfort zones, and I believe they are better, more well-rounded artists because of the experience.

Another great example would be Paul Pope. He appeared almost fully formed, seemingly out of nowhere. Yet he was raw. When he began producing stories for Dark Horse Presents he worked with the editor Bob Schreck. I would argue that this helped Paul. Pope has said, “He’s an editor, but he’s also a friend. He knows how to get me working on it. Sometimes it’s flattery, sometimes it’s encouragement, sometimes it’s — well, he just opens Holy Hell before you.” Would Paul have made great comics without working with an editor like Schreck? Sure. But it didn’t hurt.

My beef with many alt guys is this aversion to structure, to editing, to criticism. Do you know that Chris Ware “sits” on a story for years before he releases it? From what I understand, he works on a couple of stories and strips simultaneously and over YEARS slowly adjusts them, until the story is finally ready to be published. He edits himself in ways that I think most young cartoonists cannot imagine.

I’d like to recommend Dave Sim’s Following Cerebus #5. It’s all about “editing the graphic novel” and contains conversations with Craig Thompson, Paul Pope, Frank Miller, Chester Brown, Seth, and many others. It is where I found the quote about Bob Schreck.

[Thanks to Mr. Hodler, my editor, for help on this one.]