Quick Barks Follow-Up
by T. Hodler
Thursday, June 8, 2006
Bryan Munn was recently kind enough to link to this site, and he had some kind things to say, for which I’d like to thank him.
He also took issue with my invocation of Robert Louis Stevenson in the post about Carl Barks:
Barks did manage some interesting social satire and his storytelling and dialogue are very sharp, but Robert Louis Stevenson? Maybe it’s just because one of my old perfessors was an editor of the Complete RLS, but I don’t see the complexity of plot or theme in the decidedly adult work of Stevenson mirrored in Barks. Now when we compare Stevenson’s drawing to Barks…
I have two quick things to say in response.
One, I did write, “in some ways”…
And two, I did not intend to compare the complexity of Barks’ work directly to Stevenson’s, which is why I wrote, “In some ways, Barks’ place [italics added] in comics is similar to Robert Louis Stevenson’s in English literature.” Meaning that the grace and apparent ease they display in their story-telling leads many to misunderstand or underestimate their work.
I certainly didn’t want to imply that Barks’ duck stories are as complex as Stevenson’s writings. Though I’m not altogether sure that they aren’t. I’d have to think about it a lot more than I have heretofore.
In any case, generally, I’m not sure if it is really wise (or fair) to directly compare the work of two artists working in such different media. Making comics is different than writing prose, and the techniques involved (and the responses generated) are probably too divergent to make a one-to-one comparison. What they are trying to accomplish is simply too different. Likewise (to use a different art as an example), it would probably not be very fruitful to take, say, Goya’s war prints, set them side-by-side with Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War stories, and proclaim, “Goya’s more complicated”, or vice versa.
Well, it’s all too complicated for a quick post like this one. Food for thought, as they say, and thanks again to Munn.
UPDATE: No one say anything about the (unwise, unfair) Hergé/Tati thing below. I don’t want to hear it. Just pretend it never happened.
Labels: bloggers, Carl Barks, comics vs. literature, Hergé, Jacques Tati, Robert Louis Stevenson
Hi, thanks for linking to Frequential. I guess part of what I tried to say in that post is that, although it may be hard to quantify, I think that if he is read at all, RLS is read by adults (it was not his children’s poetry or Treasure Island I read in college) whereas most Barks is still marketed to kids (or traditional comics “fans”).
Have a nice weekend!
I see your point, but I do think everything gets complicated by your mention of adult comic “fans”. In some ways, I’m not sure there’s really that big a difference between adult readers of prose fiction and adult readers of comics. Reading (a lot of) books as an adult is slightly more respectable, but still marks one as a little weird, and the reasons people get into them aren’t that far apart. The 45-year-old woman who reads a different novel about a cat who solves mysteries every night isn’t so far removed from the 45-year-old man who must purchase every single issue of every X-Men spin-off. Likewise, there are certainly more afficionados of “real literature” than there are afficionados of “good” comics, but they’re not all that dissimilar, either.
But I’m just arguing to be arguing. I know what you mean.
P.S. And Treasure Island’s great!
“In any case, generally, I’m not sure if it is really wise (or fair) to directly compare the work of two artists working in such different media.”
Oh, sure it is. Everything’s a metaphor, mannn. In fact, it’s a really good idea to compare artists working in drastically different media. It’s fun for thinking. “They’re my Thinking Fun!” as my grand-dad used to describe those term papers he wrote just for kicks on objects he had lying around the house. Don’t bug out, man.