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<\/a>Douglas Wolk disguised as Scott McCloud<\/p><\/div>Since Jeet has requested<\/a> it, here is a reprint of my review of Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics<\/a>. This essay was originally published in the third print issue of Comics Comics<\/em>, from June 2007. Following Jeet’s example, after the review, I have added a few brief notes.<\/p>\n For Nerds’ Eyes Only<\/p>\n Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean<\/em> Even now, with comic books and \u201cgraphic novels\u201d finally cracking through the art\/literary establishment glass ceiling, you can count the number of intelligent, knowledgeable American comics critics who actually know how to write on two hands (maybe add a foot in there, too, if you’re feeling generous). In any fair version of that list, Douglas Wolk would certainly be one of the fingers or toes. Unlike a lot of writers about comics, Wolk is a professional, meaning he gets paid to write, and he writes about comics because he wants to, not because it’s all he knows; he\u2019s not just an entitled fan who feels the need to tell you the long, sorry, and interminable story of how sad he is that he doesn\u2019t like reading Sandman<\/em> as much as he did when he was thirteen years old. Wolk is probably best known for his music criticism, where his clear, unpretentious prose stands out in a field populated mostly by Lester Bangs-fixated, obscure-name-dropping showoffs all seemingly competing with each other over who is the biggest asshole. His comics criticism displays the same attractive qualities that his music writing does: a broad base of knowledge, a genuine enthusiasm for good work, an open-minded ability to disregard genre biases, and a winning sincerity. Wolk is one of the few writers around who is perfectly poised to write the kind of book promised on this one\u2019s cover: a guide to understanding how comics work for newcomers to the medium. So it\u2019s a shame that his new book, as pleasurable and thought provoking as it often is, doesn\u2019t really succeed in its stated goal. <\/p>\n But before we get to the problems with the book, let me point out its strengths, which are many. Wolk divides Reading Comics<\/em> into two unequal sections: an introductory selection of chapters on \u201cTheory and History\u201d, and a much larger second part filled with \u201cReviews and Commentary\u201d. This second section, which fills out the bulk of the book, is a rewarding and diverse sampling of reviews and essays, mostly reprinted and reworked from earlier appearances in publications like Salon<\/em>, The Believer<\/em>, and The Village Voice<\/em>. These include short but fairly comprehensive (and often excellent) critical profiles of such cartoonists as Chester Brown, Frank Miller, Kevin Huizenga, Alison Bechdel, and Charles Burns. He is particularly insightful when exploring the appeal of the Hernandez Bros., contrasting artists like Craig Thompson and James Kochalka, and analyzing the oeuvre of Alan Moore. A terrific essay proselytizing for his favorite comics writer, Grant Morrison, may not have convinced me to revise my opinion of his work, but it did convince me to go back and give it a closer look. And Wolk\u2019s willingness to go to the mat for such hardly canonical figures as Jim Starlin and Dave Sim makes those articles refreshing and fun to read, the best kind of nut-job advocacy. Not everything here is perfect, of course; his article on Chris Ware is fatally flawed by Wolk\u2019s proclaimed belief that Ware could be a great artist if only he would make his comics more \u201cfun\u201d\u2014an embarrassing position, not unlike a hypothetical critic imploring Kafka to assure his place in posterity by making his stories more \u201cupbeat.\u201d But that\u2019s the kind of error that provides a reason to read criticism in the first place, and helps the reader to clarify his own views. So most of this volume is very good indeed.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the first section, where the heart of the book\u2019s argument should be, that disappoints. After beginning with a fairly successful overview of the American comic book market (and introduction to Wolk\u2019s viewpoint and prejudices), and an appropriately brief potted history of the industry, things start to get a little wonky, but everything\u2019s still basically on track. A protracted and somewhat aimless comparison of \u201cauteur\u201d theory in film and comics ends just as it begins to become interesting\u2014Wolk stops short of drawing any meaningful conclusions or judgments\u2014and he makes some rather dubious statements (\u201cGary Panter, for instance, couldn\u2019t even begin to pull off a Wonder Woman or X-Men story\u201d, for example, though maybe Wolk simply forgot to include the word \u201cconventional\u201d), but throughout the early pages, he\u2019s still writing for the new reader, patiently explaining the medium without condescending. <\/p>\n Then the superheroes come in, and everything goes sour. Although Wolk clearly understands (and writes) that it is a mistake to confuse the superhero genre with the medium as a whole, in this introductory section on theory, he limits his comments on the entire multifaceted world of underground, alternative, and art comics to a few brief pages about \u201cdeliberately ugly\u201d art (that even he admits is reductive) and then fills the bulk of his section with a defense of superheroes. And while his discussion of the metaphorical value of superheroes (Fantastic Four as a representation of family, Hulk as id, etc.) isn\u2019t really wrong, it is unclear why it deserves so much space here\u2014this kind of analysis of the superhero genre is not exactly rare, and it will be of dubious help to the novice reader who\u2019s heard about these newfangled \u201cgraphic novels\u201d and was attracted to this book by its Chris Ware-imitation cover design. That new reader already knows all about Superman\u2014she wants to know more about the world that gave birth to Ghost World<\/em>. Imagine a book called Introduction to Literature<\/em> that spent whole chapters explaining the appeal of murder mysteries, while noting only glancingly that Joyce and C\u00e9line wrote \u201cdeliberately ugly\u201d prose, and the problem becomes obvious.<\/p>\n Later, when Wolk, eager to justify his affection for capes-and-tights stories, writes that superhero comics are \u201cthe closest thing that exists right now to the \u2018novel of ideas\u2019\u201d, you have to wonder how many actual prose novels he\u2019s read. You can certainly argue that by their power-fantasy nature, superhero stories are inherently about ethics, and that they represent a <\/em>literature of ideas. But let\u2019s be honest about what ideas we\u2019re actually talking about here: \u201cwith great power comes great responsibility\u201d, the ability to run real fast has its upsides and down-, and super-powered beings should certainly refrain from destroying entire planets if they can. These \u201cideas\u201d are pretty weak tea compared to the complex concepts explored by Richard Powers, J.G. Ballard, and J.M. Coetzee, just to name a few novelists all currently alive and actively writing. (Hell, Tom Clancy\u2019s stories juggle as many complicated \u201cideas\u201d as the average caped crime-fighter comic!) Don\u2019t get me wrong, I love superheroes, but there\u2019s no reason to oversell them, and it\u2019s unclear what point there is in doing so here. There is little in the content of superhero stories that hasn’t existed in fantastic prose literature for thousands of years. If so many pages are to be spent defending stories about super-powered protagonists, at least let it be a defense of such stories as comics<\/em>. Otherwise, it’s all so much wasted space, and (as Wolk says about cartoonists like Crumb and Clowes who he feels spend too much time denigrating superheroes), it’s a bummer.<\/p>\n It’s time that writers about comics started spending less time justifying their nerdiest, guiltiest pleasures to the world at large, and spent more time simply talking about what they think is good. For much of the rest of the section, Wolk deals more with the world of Internet \u201ccomics culture\u201d and crazy fanboy collectors than he does on comics themselves. (Again, imagine if that hypothetical Introduction to Lit.<\/em> spent a chapter on loony streetside booksellers.) The book is padded with an old hoax review of an obscure Vampirella story Wolk wrote for the Internet under a pseudonym\u2014amusing enough for old comics geeks but again of little value or interest to novices\u2014and a full reprint of Wolk\u2019s contribution to a blog meme that traveled the Web a while back, \u201c100 Things I Love About Comics\u201d, a long list of one hundred mostly esoteric moments of superhero history, unlikely to mean anything to anyone not already well-versed in the lore. The final chapter of this section, the first that actually tackles the hard work of explaining \u201cHow Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean\u201d, is good enough, but mostly offers nothing more than a warmed-over version of material already well covered by Scott McCloud and Will Eisner.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want this review too sound too negative, though. It is an enormously fun book for anyone already knowledgeable about comics, and even neophytes will find plenty of things to like, especially in the judicious and interesting second section. Wolk rarely strikes an attitude, and his reviews all display intelligence, a sincere fair-mindedness, and clarity of prose. In fact, this is a rare example of the kind of book that is better when not taken on its own terms: as a newcomer\u2019s guide to comics, it\u2019s a flop, but considered simply as a collection of Wolk\u2019s best critical writings on comics, it more than earns it spot on any comics fan\u2019s bookshelf. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Things that have changed since I wrote this review: J.G. Ballard is dead, and I finally began to enjoy Grant Morrison’s writing, if only occasionally. Otherwise, I mostly stand by my article, awkwardly written as it often is. I must admit that I was later surprised by how much positive response Wolk’s book seemed to get on the internet from writers who claimed not to be comic-book aficionados; either the reviewers in question were closeted superhero fans (a distinct possibility), or my thesis may be flawed.<\/p>\n Mostly, I still feel like Wolk’s book was a big missed opportunity. The fact that so little has really fundamentally changed in terms of informed writing about comics outside of fannish media (the slick but shallow David Hajdu’s ascension as our national go-to comics expert being a case in point) only makes that feeling stronger. But I am also still glad I can look up Wolk’s articles about Jaime Hernandez and Dave Sim any time I want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since Jeet has requested it, here is a reprint of my review of Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics. This essay was originally published in the third print issue of Comics Comics, from June 2007. Following Jeet’s example, after the review, I have added a few brief notes. For Nerds’ Eyes Only Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean Douglas Wolk Da Capo Press, $22.95 Even now, with comic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[149,371],"class_list":["post-5840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-books-about-comics","tag-wolk"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDouglas Wolk
\nDa Capo Press, $22.95<\/p>\n