{"id":9019,"date":"2011-03-04T20:50:19","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T01:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=9019"},"modified":"2011-03-04T20:50:19","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T01:50:19","slug":"the-mid-life-moment-in-alternative-comics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=9019","title":{"rendered":"The Mid-Life Moment in Alternative Comics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Mid-Life by Joe Ollmann<\/p><\/div>\n

Over at the National Post<\/em>, I have a review of Joe Ollmann\u2019s new graphic novel\u00a0 Mid-Life<\/em> (click here to read<\/a>).<\/p>\n

A few ancillary thoughts:<\/p>\n

The Mid-Life Theme.<\/strong> As can be guessed from the title, Ollmann\u2019s book is about a mid-life crisis. Has anyone noticed how pervasive that theme has been in recent graphic novels? I\u2019m thinking here of Clowes\u2019 Wilson<\/em>, Collier\u2019s Chimo<\/a>, Jaime Hernandez\u2019s The Education of Hopey Glass<\/em> (and the triptych of stories in Love and Rockets 3),<\/em> Ware\u2019s Acme 19<\/em> (and arguably \u201cJason Lint\u201d or Acme 20<\/em>, which covers the characters whole life year by year but where the central life-defining actions take place in mid-life). Perhaps related is\u00a0Brown\u2019s Paying For It<\/em>, which I haven\u2019t read yet, also hinges I\u2019m told on a pivotal \u00a0life-decision the cartoonist made in mid-life. It doesn\u2019t take a genius to figure out why the mid-life theme is so pervasive. The generation of alternative cartoonists that now dominate comics were all born in the late 1950s or 1960s and are now facing mid-life themselves. Seth\u2019s an interesting anomaly since it could be said that he cartooned like a middle-age man even when he was young. But Seth is relevant here because he once said that he hoped his audience would grow old with him. That\u2019s what seems to be happening with alternative comics and their audience.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

The tradition of low mimetic comedy.<\/strong> Ollmann\u2019s book quite properly carries a blurb from Peter Bagge. This got me thinking about the tradition that Ollmann belongs to, which might be defined as the low mimetic comedy. In comics, it\u2019s a tradition that (as I tried to indicate in my review) goes back to Hogarth. This type of cartooning really flourished in the 1920s with lowlife scoundrels and picaros like Barney Google and Moon Mullins. The tradition was revived in the underground days in Crumb\u2019s Fritz the Cat stories and Gilbert Shelton\u2019s Freak Brothers. Peter Bagge carried the flame in the 1980s and afterwards in his stories about Buddy Bradley, as well as the Bradley clan and friends. \u00a0<\/p>\n

This is a tradition that is currently undervalued in comics right now (although Barney Google has been picking up fans), in large part because the dominant graphic novel mode tends to shy away from broad comedy and guffaws. It\u2019s hard to remember this but back in the 1990s, it was common to talk about Bagge in the same conversation as the Hernandez Brothers and Clowes. I don\u2019t think that goes on anymore. And certainly the Crumb that is celebrated these days \u2013 the Crumb of Weirdo and the sketchbooks \u2013 is very different than the Crumb of Fritz the Cat. Shelton\u2019s work is largely the preserve of aging boomers who want comics that will remind them of their salad days and perhaps spark a flashback.<\/p>\n

There are all sorts of reasons for the current eclipse of the tradition of the low mimetic comedy. One of the features of this tradition, at least in the Shelton-Bagge-Ollmann line, is that it tends to value plotting and dialogue more than image-making. The art in this tradition tends to be blunter and less subtle than that of more \u201cliterary\u201d (for want of a better word) graphic novels. I\u2019ve often thought that Bagge might actually have benefited from collaborating with an artist who could tone-down the art a little.\u00a0(One of my favorite Bagge stories is a collaboration he did\u00a0which was drawn by Clowes).\u00a0This is one case where the auteurism of alternative comics might be a drawback.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m hoping that Ollmann\u2019s book will a) be a success and 2) lead people to reappraise the tradition of low mimetic comedy in comics. It\u2019s a lively tradition and some of this work \u2013 I\u2019m thinking here especially of Bagge\u2019s Bradley stories \u2013 deserves more attention than they\u2019ve gotten in recent years. \u00a0Among other things, those stories are (like Ollmann\u2019s work) deeper and darker than they might first seem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at the National Post, I have a review of Joe Ollmann\u2019s new graphic novel\u00a0 Mid-Life (click here to read). A few ancillary thoughts: The Mid-Life Theme. As can be guessed from the title, Ollmann\u2019s book is about a mid-life crisis. Has anyone noticed how pervasive that theme has been in recent graphic novels? I\u2019m thinking here of Clowes\u2019 Wilson, Collier\u2019s Chimo, Jaime Hernandez\u2019s The Education of Hopey Glass (and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"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":[675,905,1023],"class_list":["post-9019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-joe-ollmann","tag-mid-life","tag-bagge"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9019","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}