Margaret BauerMost people don’t usually think of the comic book, a thirty-some-odd page pamphlet of paneled drawings, dialogue balloons and spandex-clad superheroes, as a genuine art form, but a new exhibit on campus is determined to show that Batman is as relevant as Basquiat. “The Rubber Frame: Culture and Comics” focuses on the historical development of the comic as well as its significance in modern American culture. Show organizers D.B. Dowd, a professor in the School of Art, and M. Todd Hignite, a Master of the Arts graduate of 2002, are hoping to bring what has so far been a medium relegated to the status of childhood hobby to new light. (In double-sized, full-color action, of course!) According to Dowd, “Comics is a field that has a lot of fans, and has adherents, but there hasn’t been that much writing done about comics as an art form, as a cultural phenomenon. It’s a rich subject.”
“Holy European origins, Batman!”
It’s hard to believe that the stack of yellowing “funny books” collecting dust in your parents’ attic has its origins in the political world of 18th and 19th century England and France, but c’est la v‚rit‚. The tradition of caricature and cartoonish political satire has its roots in the work of English Georgian artists and also renegade French artists’ like Honore Daumier and Charles Philippon, who spent every waking hour lambasting King Louis-Philippe. In one particularly scathing critique, which managed to land Daumier in jail, he depicted the king as the giant Gargantua shitting out favors for his flattering sycophants. It might not sound like much today, but it paved the way for the political cartoons we see on a daily basis, including those by our own artists Yu Araki and Brian Sotak. Unfortunately for those kinds of artists, they could never hope to achieve proper, celebrated renown in the world of “fine art.” They were simply “tradesmen,” as Dowd puts it, “and could never hope to achieve admission into the Royal Academy, except maybe through watercolor painting, which was still considered a lesser form.” For a fine overview of this predecessor of the comic book, check out the Special Collections room of the Kemper Art Museum at Steinberg Hall.
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s an American cultural icon!”
If you stop to examine the three display cases in the stairwell of Olin library, you’ll see a small but remarkably thorough evolution of the comic book. Dowd and Hignite have assembled a fine group of works tracing the development of the genre, from early 20th century newspaper series like R.F. Outcault’s “The Yellow Kid” and Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo in Slumberland” to well-known icons like Superman and Batman. (Rabid comics fanboys will have to settle for “Superman No.1” from 1939 instead of the original “Action Comics No.1,” the first appearance of the Man of Steel and the most valuable comic book ever at over $100,000.) There are also great examples of Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, and Outcault’s Buster Brown.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”
The East Lobby Case is by far the most interesting display at Olin, with several examples of culturally relevant comic books. As the exhibit points out, many comic writers were Jewish and thus aware of the political situation in Europe, including the rise of Nazism. This led to many superheroes becoming involved in World War II before America actually did! In “Submariner No.1,” for example, the underwater hero attacks a German submarine, sockin’ it to those nasty Nazis. Unfortunately, the flip side of this moral coin was often painfully apparent. Dowd and Hignite have gathered a number of subversive or outright racist comic books, with derogatory depictions of blacks, Native Americans, and the Japanese. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the latter were treated the worst-just witness the jingoistic cover of “Captain America No.13,” where the red, white, and blue Cap’n clobbers a fanged, slanty-eyed Japanese commander. “Remember Pearl Harbor!” screams a stamp on the cover, illustrating the cheap sense of revenge this “funny book” was supposed to afford its reader. “It’s difficult to imagine the amount of hatred that was directed against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor,” says Dowd. “The idea of total war is basically foreign to us now… But remember, these people are making popular art. There not in the business to create any social justice propaganda… the stuff that sells is the stuff they’ll make more of. They’re pumping out lucrative, popular art, and trying to reach their audience.”
Notes from Underground, 1960s to present
Besides the usual superhero and adventure magazines, there is also a thriving underground “comix” movement, started in the 1960s by such pioneers as R. Crumb and Missouri’s own Frank Stack. Whereas major publishers like DC and Marvel try to lift readers out of ordinary life and into action-packed fantasies, underground comics generally deal with actual social circumstances or the mundane details of everyday existence. This style was featured prominently in last year’s film “American Splendor,” about the life and work of Harvey Pekar, a lonely misanthrope and avid record collector who recorded his daily observations in stories illustrated by leading artists like Crumb. This is an example of the comic genre of “the illustrated literature of loserdom,” as Dowd slyly terms it. “Harvey Pekar is kind of a goofball. There’s this class of people who are obsessed with the minutiae of their lives, and a substantial fraction of them seem to make comics. It can be quite lovable and attractive, but it can also be sort of exasperating.”
The Des Lee Gallery, at 1627 Washington Avenue downtown, has examples of Pekar’s work on display, as well as original drawings by Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman, the creator of the Holocaust story “Maus.” In his earlier work “Prisoner of the Hell Planet,” from 1973, we are privy to Spiegelman’s most intimate thoughts and anxieties about his mother’s suicide, rendered in stark black and white.
Then there were real weirdoes like R. Crumb, who incorporated drug culture and generally twisted worldviews into their art. These people grew up reading early horror and pulp stories that were around before the institution in 1954 of the Comics Code, a censoring authority, and wanted to revive comics’ earlier, wilder nature. Crumb went so far as to create shocking, oftentimes misogynistic art, with one piece at Des Lee showing him procuring oral sex from a series of women and then killing them off. Says Dowd, “It can be creepy stuff.”
The underground trend has continued to the present day, with artists like Daniel Clowes (“Ghost World”) and the Hernandez brothers (“Love and Rockets”) bearing the torch. The world of supervillains and spandex has also seen some remodeling, exemplified by Frank Miller’s violent depiction of Batman, Alan Moore’s starkly realistic “Watchmen,” and Neil Gaiman’s fantasy epic “The Sandman.” Only as recently as the 1990s have comics come to be considered as a serious art form, due to the success of Spiegelman, Clowes and Chris Ware. “The emerging tradition of the graphic novel has come to appeal to the art scene,” says Dowd. “I think consumers of culture, people who like to look at art, want things that are stylish, meaningful and attractive… and more philosophically-oriented art just doesn’t deliver anymore. Comics have a big audience, and they deliver the things that people want.”
Comics Quiz
1. Superman was originally from the planet:
A) Nylon
B) Zoloft
C) Krypton
D) Kryptonite, the makers of that damn U-lock that some jerk picked with a Bic pen to steal my bike.
2. Which of the following was an actual Dick Tracy villain?
A) Herpes Lips
B) “Double-Jointed Elbows” McPherson
C) Prune Face
D) “Pile of Grated Cheese Where His Face Should Be” Face
3. Which is not a superpower of Spider-Man?
A) Super strength
B) Spider sense
C) Ability to climb walls
D) Cooks, bakes and makes real cupcakes! Frosting included!
4. Underground cartoonist R. Crumb regularly depicted:
A) A little, naked, bearded man named “Mr. Natural”
B) A cat named Fritz having sex with other cats, rabbits and even an ostrich
C) Himself getting piggyback rides from big-legged women
D) All of the above (What a perv!)
5. Which of these was not the exclamation of a well-known superhero?
A) “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight!”
B) “Cialis now at low, low prices!”
C) “I’m just your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man.”
D) “Hulk smash!”
Answers: (1) C | (2) C | (3) D | (4) D | (5) B