Words and Pictures
Michelle Grabner
Roger Sabin
Adult Comics: An Introduction
London/New York: Routledge, 1993.
Roger Sabin
Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of
Comic Art.
London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1996.
Popular currency has always dictated the strategies for mapping
and analyzing popular art forms. Just consider the commercial
success of the adult comic industry. Its sudden popularity in
the 1980s has lead many media critics to declare a comic revolution,
perpetuating the erroneous notion that comics finally 'grew up.'
Roger Sabin not only takes issue with this false assessment of
the sudden maturation of comics, but points a finger at 'public
ignorance.' In Sabin's view, the media could only get away with
this myth-making campaign if the general public was oblivious
to comic's long tradition as adult entertainment.
Sabin wrote Adult Comics: An Introduction in response to this marketing ploy and the public's general
assumption that comics are solely an inexpensive source of amusement
for kids. In it, he constructs a social and cultural comic evolution
from William Hogarth's pictorial satires, leading the reader on
a scholarly journey from the first modern comics of the nineteenth
century to the underground comix of the 1960s and 1970s and then
the graphic novels of the 1980s and 1990s. By weaving comic's
proletarian appeal, aesthetic concerns, feminist subtexts and
hedonistic fantasies into a comprehensive historical survey of
the genre, Adult Comics undermines the industry's current marketing myths. That is, it
securely locates this popular art form in our cultural landscape - both
past and present.
Carving out an autonomous language for this marriage of pictures
and words, Sabin states, "they are not some hybrid form halfway
between 'literature' and 'art' (whatever those words might mean),
but a medium in their own right." And, as a medium visually based
in the cinematic, its graphic conventions combined with three
basic types of language - narrative, dialogue and sound effects -
fuse into an art form unique to communication. A definition that
Sabin then contextualizes into two thorough histories - the adult
comic in Britain and the adult comic in the United States.
After allocating two thirds of the book to the historical depth
of the medium, the most interesting analysis comes at the end
when Sabin addresses comic's greater impact on twentieth century
life in general. Issues of gender and sexuality, comic's engagement
with the masculine and feminine, its relationship to other media,
and its global concussions are the more galvanizing and consequential
ramifications of the comic practice.
In these chapters, Sabin ironically reminds us that comic research
outside of the United States and Britain has always witnessed
greater respectability. It has been the subject of critical journals
and university study in France and Italy. Comics have also been
the source of inquiry for such literary critics as Alain Robbe-Grillet,
Roland Barthes, and Umberto Eco. Not surprisingly, Sabin goes
on to report that government subsidies, comic museums, and study
centers have been established in Europe's more progressive countries,
who, unlike the United States and Britain, recognize comic's social,
cultural, and aesthetic significance apart from being a marketable
enterprise.
In contrast to the West, Sabin observes that comics in the East,
like television, rock music, and movies, have an entirely different
cultural worth. In a society comprised of conformity and taunt
social order, Japan's recent wave of pornographic comics, also
known as 'juicy manga,' have the government's blessing. Comics
are recognized by the Japanese as a social tool capable of curbing
sexual and aggressive fantasies. However, Japan's latest studies
linking television violence to the recent increase in murders
committed by children and young adults may have Japanese officials
rethinking the "safety valve" effect of popular culture, including
pornographic comics.
Careful not to erode comic's sovereign status as a popular art
form, Sabin was overly protective in his discussion of its relationship
to other media. He succinctly establishes a bloodline between
comics and Hollywood and he even attributes the 'look' of many
underground comics to the 1960's psychedelic album covers, posters,
biker and tattoo art, and other "manifestations of Hippie culture."
What is missing from Sabin's discussion however is the coopting
of the comic form by 'fine' artists. This is not to suggest a
rehashing of Roy Lichtenstein's ben day dots; it it rather to
examine the recent trend of younger artists such as Jim Shaw (California),
Simon Grennan, and Christopher Sperandio (New York/London) who
are adapting comic's egalitarian charisma, linear narratives,
and graphic simplicity in order to tell their 1990 'identity'
stories while gnawing at the distinction between high and low
art.
Even though Sabin could expand on the infiltration of comics into
other media, he is paving a critical path for furthering the analysis
of a medium relegated to one of the lowest rungs on the 'low culture'
ladder. With the publishing of Adult Comics, he has enrolled the comic as a current contender in the formative
field of entertainment studies - right up there with television,
film, and rock music.
Sabin's coffee table/reference book, Comics, Comix and the Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art, is a large, gorgeous distillation of Adult Comics. Not pretending
to be a critical text, this book depends on the seductive and
sophisticated graphic history of comic production. Its large and
seemingly infinite number of color reproductions - often of whole
comic book pages - give the viewer a wealth of comic experiences.
In the introduction of Comics, Comix and the Graphic Novels, Sabin again delineates comic art from all other media, even
though he starts out by saying, "Comics have smuggled their way
into art books before. Invariably they have been there, however,
as an aside, a digression, to demonstrate the inspiration for
the 'proper' art that constitutes the bulk of the book." Unlike
Adult Comics, this book is designed to cultivate an appreciation for an over-looked,
under-respected art form. Flaunting comic's aesthetic appeal,
Sabin has taken the opportunity to elevate the medium by creating
its very own 'art book.' He states, "Comics, Comix, and the Graphic Novels includes no canvases by Roy Lichtenstein or Philip Guston. Instead,
the intention here is to celebrate comics in their own right,
to explore their richness and diversity since the end of the nineteenth
century to the present day."
Like all big beautiful art books, there is always something oddly
sterile about its historical authority and disingenuous as an
authentic graphic experience. But for comic fanatics, connoisseurs,
and gift book buyers, this text is a charm. Students and scholars
of Twentieth Century cultural studies should stick with Sabin's
Adult Comics.
