Art and Comics Criticism
A few weeks ago, New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl deigned to address himself in print to this curious new trend of serious comics, in an article entitled “Words and Pictures.” As longtime EA readers know, I have little patience for the condescending tone most mainstream publications use in talking about comics. But this went beyond the usually-trite “Zap! Bam! Pow! Comics Grow Up!” story. It represented the appearance, in an extremely visible and influential spot, of a really nasty tendency in comics criticism that is seeking to hijack the comic artform and drag it from popular culture into the margins of the avant gard.
Emblematic of this effort was Schjeldahl’s berserk and utterly baseless personal attack on the recently-deceased dean of American comics, Will Eisner. In it, he wrote:
Eisner created a masked crime-fighter comic book, "The Spirit," in his youth; he was not a modest man, but his legion of admirers forgave him that, as they forgave his work's cornball histrionics. Rooted in German Expressionism but more reminiscent of MAD-type burlesque than of George Grosz, his characters rub their hands, tear their hair, and, if they happen to fancy something, slaver…
..never leaving well enough alone is apparently a principle for Eisner. Over-the-topness is endemic to comics of course - and industry standard for popular action and horror titles as well as for manga, and the default setting for Crumb's work. But it is ill-suited to serious subjects, especially those that incorporate authentic social history. [emphasis added]
Clearly the level of snide and personal abuse in this piece goes well beyond normal critical reaction. It seemed, for lack of a better term, politically motivated. Where, for example, did a writer with such an obviously shallow understanding of the comics medium and comics history come up with the idea that "Will Eisner was not a modest man, but his legion of admirers forgave him that..."? That doesn't strike me as the kind of observation you can make from his work, his biography, most critical writing about him so far, or the testimony of 99% of the people who ever met him. That sounds to me like something whispered in the writer's ear by someone who has an axe to grind.
But regardless, it was really sad to see Will Eisner get this kind of ill-treatment in one of the premier literary forums in America. Reading the piece inspired me to pen a reply to the New Yorker, which they have published, in edited form, in the current issue (sorry, not online). My original note reads as follows:
Peter Schjeldahl's piece on graphic novels… gives voice to one of the more unfortunate sentiments popular in some circles: the fashionable disdain for the work of the late comic book pioneer Will Eisner. While Eisner's work may not be to everyone's taste, this is a man who was making the case for sequential art as a viable medium for serious narrative in the 1940s! Eisner was a principle architect of comics both as an art and a business, and literally invented much of the visual language that Clowes, Ware, Spiegelman and Crumb employ so fruitfully in their own work. Yet there seems to be a kind of patricidal compulsion on the part of some would-be "serious" creators and critics to distance themselves from Eisner's sentimental "cornball histrionics" and old-fashioned craft, as if associating themselves too closely with his earnestness might puncture their postmodern pretensions. It is especially distasteful that Schjeldahl delivers a kick in the teeth to a man who is, sadly, no longer here to speak for himself, and whose recent loss is much felt both personally and historically by genuine appreciators of the graphic narrative artform. Eisner, and New Yorker readers, deserve better.
So what’s really going on here? To understand, it helps to know some history.
Eisner was the first great talent that the comic business produced. His work in the 1940s on his strip, The Spirit, revolutionized the visual language of comics in the same way that Citizen Kane revolutionized film. As early as 1941, he was talking about comics as a literary medium and serious artform. In the 1950s, Eisner retired from the business and stayed away until his work was rediscovered by fans in the early 1970s. At a comic convention in New York, he was approached by two young artists in the then-popular underground movement, who urged him to return to comics and start doing more serious work. The two artists were Denis Kitchen and Art Spiegelman.
Kitchen became Eisner’s friend, publisher and agent. He helped bring the Spirit back to the newsstands in reprint editions, and its success encouraged Eisner to undertake a more ambitious project: a “graphic novel” composed of four serious short stories set in the Bronx during the Depression. It was called A Contract With God and other tenement stories, and when it appeared on bookstore shelves in 1977, it became the first graphic novel to attract serious critical attention in the United States. Spiegelman followed Eisner to the bookshelves with his own graphic novel, Maus, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Spiegelman now contributes art to numerous mainstream magazines, including the New Yorker, where his wife Francoise Mouly is art director. In fact, coincidentally, Spiegelman had a piece published in the same issue that ran Schjeldahl’s review.
Following the success of Contract with God, Eisner, then in his 60s, became a spokesman and ambassador for comics. His mission was to raise public perception of the artform, which he did by continuing to produce his own outstanding work for the next 25 years, and by tirelessly championing the work of anyone using sequential art as a vehicle for personal expression, even when the subject matter might not be to his taste. His genius became proverbial within the comics community; the industry award for excellence is named for him. He was universally respected and genuinely adored, especially by those fortunate enough to have contact with him in person.
Beneath the façade of universal admiration, however, a faction of opinion in the comics community had long been uncomfortable with Eisner's visibility and reputation as the "living legend." They feel that whatever his importance, his talents and his contribution to the medium, he represented a sensibility that was too old-fashioned, too unhip and un-ironic, and too close to the "juvenile" impulses of the Golden Age and superhero genres. Many of them believed, and continue to believe, that as long as Eisner is put forward as the primary exemplar of the "serious graphic novelist," the medium would never be fully respected among the post-modern, avant gard art and literary worlds whose approval they desperately seek.
As long as Eisner was alive, these folks were flummoxed by his personal charisma and his uncritical support of their efforts, even if those efforts weren't always to his tastes. Also, the comics community was still the bedrock of support even for the artsy graphic novelists, and criticizing Eisner in places like The Comics Journal was too contentious. But now that mainstream journalism is starting to take comics seriously, there's a new opportunity to shape the debate. And now that Eisner is gone, they can begin their project of rewriting comics history in ways that better suit their pretensions – that is, without him as a looming presence against which they are all compared.
I think many of these people have a sincere desire to elevate the status of comics beyond the prevailing stereotypes of superheroes and funny animals. But what they are doing is reminiscent of the misguided tactics of jazz aficionados in the 1950s. Back then, the more difficult styles of bebop and West Coast cool jazz were supplanting the more commercial forms like big band swing that had been popular before. The critics not only championed the new, more confrontational artists like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, but also felt the obligation to disparage the classical style. Figures like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were treated like embarrassing anachronisms even as they continued to produce great work in more accessible, traditional forms. The poverty of critical imagination exhibited in those debates looks ridiculous to modern eyes, but it had a tangible and deleterious impact on the music. Modern jazz developed away from popular tastes into more involuted, cerebral “art” and eventually ceased to be a popular music. Its practitioners are celebrated, but their work rarely reaches even a sliver of the mass audience.
That is the fate in store for comics if influential critics cannot discover the vocabulary to intelligently discuss work that is not self-consciously arty, ambitious and pretentious. Right now, all kinds of excellent and entertaining graphic storytelling is happening both within and at the margins of the commercial comics business. Some of it is genre work; some uses traditional styles and techniques, like Eisner’s. Lots of it is terrible and always will be, but the standard of judgment should be broader than industry politics and superficial points of style and subject matter. By narrowing the discussion to the same tiny cannon of “important” names, critics like Schjeldahl and their supporters behind the scenes are turning a living artform into an artifact of hipness and a curious accessory to the worlds of “serious” art and literature.
5:51:22 PM 
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