21st Century Comics

With the advancement of PC, MAC, interactive, and multimedia technology, comic books are no longer limited to simple paper format anymore. They are no longer limited to paper-based distribution, nor are they limited to the past genres of comics. Much like Manga, American comic books have a wider range of genres.

One such example of a successful twenty first century comic is Scott Pilgrim, created by Brian Lee O'Malley.

Scott Pilgrim is a comic that is heavily influenced by Canadian rock, shonen manga, and video-game style combat. It nearly screams modern. The story is centered around the namesake protagonist, a young adult canadian slacker basist named Scott Pilgrim, and his exploits to protect the love of his life, Ramona Flowers, from a long line of violent kick-boxing ex-boyfriends. In spite of the odd themes, at its very center Scott Pilgrim is a day-in-the-life story, about learning what it means to love, be selfless, and "get a life," making it one of the strongest, warmest, if unconventional comic series of its time.

Collectable comics are still a commodity, yes, but there are also a rising number of digital illustrators, web designers, and online graphic artists who have been distributing their comics on the internet. With the help of the internet's massive, almost infinite range of distributional properties, advertising capabilities, and so on, the possibilities of getting a freelance comic noticed, purchased, and distributed is as endless as the internet is vast. They are normally referred to as "webcomics".

One such webcomic, which also includes multimedia illustration, graphics, and even short animations, is When I am King, but "Demian5". If there was ever an example of a comic breaking away from the norm of comics entirely, it would be this one, as explained by Technonnult:

"WIAK reads like a textbook example from Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics. The whole comic was created and published electronically — Demian didn’t take any notes or do any sketches on paper. He used mostly Adobe programs Photoshop, Illustrator and ImageReady to draw the comic and create animation. He freed himself of the restrictions imposed by printed page dimensions and used the web’s “infinite canvas” to convey a sense of space. The reader mostly scrolls left to right, following the characters activity along the landscape, but in a few scenes the reader scrolls down, following falling characters. Animation is used to highlight emotions and convey a sense of motion rather than as a storytelling tool. In fact, WIAK deals more with emotions and experimentation than plot. The story in WIAK is only background — what’s really important is what the characters are feeling and how it’s expressed to the audience." - Technoccult

Reconsidering the Superhero

The superhero genre originated as early as 1917, most commonly to American comic books. It is a type of specular fiction examining the adventures of costumed fighters, known as superheoes, who often possess superhuman powers and battle similarly powered criminals known as supervillains. It is one of the oldest american-born types of comic book fiction, and at its core, I personally have no taste for the earlier forms of it.

Thankfully, around the turn of the modern century, the superhero genre received an overdue overhauling makeover, transforming the superhero norms of the 20th century into a more human take on the heroes, but making them no less super.

Watchman is one such example, a series written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and colored by John Higgins. The story itself is used to reflect contemporary anxieties and to critique the whole superhero concept. Watchmen depicts an alternate history where superheoes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s, helping the United States win the Vietnam War. The country is edging towards a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes are outlawed and most former superheroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the personal development and struggles of the protagonists as an investigation into the murder of a government sponsored superhero pulls them out of retirement, and eventually leads them to confront a plot that would stave off a nuclear war by killing millions of people.

Hellboy is another. Created and written by Mike Mognola, the story of a well-meaning demon, summoned from Hell to Earth as an infant and raised into working for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD). The story takes the idea of a normally, radically negative force-- the force of the demonic-- and transforms it into the potential to be a positive one. Although Hellboy, also known as Anung Un Rama, is a demon, he is in every way a kind-hearted, if somewhat gruff protagonist.

Women in Comics

Rose O'Neil, Ethel Hays, Kate Beaton, all of these women have but two things in common. One of those things is that they played a pivotal role in changing the history in comics. The other thing is that none of these artists, writers, and publishers were men.

Despite many gender norms of what people consider to be "women's work" or "men's work", the comic book industry is about as male dominated as many other professions. In other words, it is very male dominated. Sad, but true, though women have not been short on their contributions to furthering the trends, tales, and production of comics.

Rose O'Neil, , born in Wiles-Barre, PN as the second of seven children, was one of the first few women to get the ball rolling. She held a long-standing love of comics, but was unable to pursue them until the nineteenth century, when women artists became part of professional enterprises, thanks to improving educational opportunities. Her career took off after her development of the Kewpie cartoons, and, subsequently, the marvel that was the Kewpie Doll.

Ethel Hayes not only brought comics created by women into the limelight, but she also had a hand in taking the trends and shifting them to her own design, much like taking the bull by the horns. Ethel was well known for drawing in the popular Art Deco style of the 1940s, and took the popular Flapper Girl, transforming her from a marketable pin up to Flapper Fanny Says, a witty weekly comic about young women of the flapper age in more stylistic settings. And after her prominent comic career, she even had time to become a popular children's book illustrator. 

Jumping forward roughly a century, we find that women in illustration are becoming more and more common, though the age of Rose and Ethel, known as the Platinum Age, has given way to the slowly improving Bronze age and going even more steadily into the Modern Age. One of the most well-known comic illustrators of the Modern Age is a women by the name of Kate Beaton, one of the first women to become popular based on her internet notoriety. 

Using historical, literary, and even at times contemporary parody alongside modern day humor and a stylized sunday-comic approach, Beaton has transformed her strip comics into an internet sensation. It is partially thanks to the internet that Beaton has become as popular a comic artist as she is today. 

Comics as Contemporary Literature

With the changing world of illustration, art, and narrative, comics are still looked down upon as one of the lesser mediums, even with the milestones of notoriety it has already achieved. Just creating comics by themselves isn't enough in today's market.

One not only needs to create comics but find interesting means of designing them, releasing them, and selling them. Some artists, such as Daniel Clowes, have taken the stereotypes of comics, some such which comics were previously looked down upon, and used it to their advantage. One of Clowes' such works, Ice Haven, takes upon a multi-media approach, both stylistically and narratively.

As shown in the images above, although these strips are following different comic-based trends, they are from the same collection of stories about the same group of people from the town if Ice Haven. This comic was released under one publication, but with the focus of the story ranged over so many different characters, each "chapter" was divided to be its own Sunday Comic series, each tale running their courses until they eventually overlapped one another.

From creative stylization, we move onto creative presentation and printing. Other artists, such as Chris Ware, have furthered their comics by generating different means of viewing them. Ware's most well known piece, The Acme Novelty Library, takes upon a more graphic style, almost like cut paper, show casing the work that audiences would later find in his most creatively distributed and printed work to date, known as Building Stories.

This unconventional work is made up of fourteen printed works, from cloth-bound books to newspapers, broadsheets to flip books, and packaged as a box set. Audiences are already aware of Ware's artistic tendencies prior to Building Stories' publication, but the latter project really takes advantage of the author's already graphic design-inspired style, as well as trends and commercial tactics necessary to get a leg up in the world of creating comics.

Manga and the Japanese Comics Tradition

Manga are comics created in Japan or by Japanese cartoonists and illustrators in the Japanese language, conforming to a style developed in Japan in he late 19th century. 

In Japan, people of all ages read these manga. Unlike much of the respected graphic "Western" literature, comics in Japan are not limited to simple super heroes, comedy, and romance. The medium includes works in a broad range of genres: action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, suspense, detective, horror, sexuality, and even business and commerce. 

One of the earliest forms of Manga published in Japan dates as far back as 1946. Japan's first officially released Manga was called Sazea-San, but the first internationally recognized Manga was Astro Boy. 

Since the 1950s, manga has steadily become a major part of the Japanese publishing industry, both nationally and world-wide. It represented a ¥406 billion market in Japan as of 2007, approximately $3.6 billion, and ¥420 billion, $5.5 billion, as of 2009. In Europe and the Middle East the market is worth $250 million. In 2008, in the U.S. and Canada, the Manga market was valued at $175 million. The markets in France and the United States are about the same size. 

Although it has gained both an international audience as well as a local one, Manga is only respected in certain circles, some comics retaining more positive notoriety than others. Manga that are highly respected both in Japan and also elsewhere include Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa, Death Note and Bakuman by Tsugumi Ohba and Takashi Obata. 

A Wide World of Comics

Comics has typically been coined as a past time only enjoyed by children or teens, but in today's more progressive society, the children that have grown up on comics are bringing them to light as more sophisticated means of enjoyment. Graphic novels have even been the subject of academic novelty, as discussed regarding Art Spiegelman's Maus.

Comics have begun breaking their own mold, transitioning into medias that extend beyond the range of newspapers, sunday strips, and even the classic super hero comics are experimenting beyond their comfort zone. The best example of a comic that exemplifies the progress of narrative in cartooning is Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

Persepolis is an autobiographical graphic novel depicting Marjane Satrapi's childhood up to her early adult years in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution. The title is a reference to the ancient capital of the Persian Empire, Persepolis. Newsweek ranked the book #5 on its list of the ten best fiction books of the decade. 

Like Blankets, March, Maus, and other such books released in the past few decades, Persepolis proves the power of autobiographical works in non-fiction. With Persepolis we are not only learning about the history of Iran, both ancient and recent, but we are also learning them through first-hand accounts in a much stronger sense of detail, granting the history that much more power. 

French comics publisher L'Association published the original work in four volumes between 2000 and 2003. Pantheon Books (North America) and Jonathan Cape (United Kingdom) published the English translations in two volumes, in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Omnibus editions in French and English alike followed in 2007, coinciding with the comic's later film release, co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. Although the film emulates Satrapi's visual style of high-contrast inking, a present-day frame story is rendered in color. In the United States, Persepolis was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2007 Academy Awards.

With works such as Marjane Satrapi's pioneering the potential of the comics, it won't be long until other works are respected on such an academic level.

Stereotypes and the Ethics of Representation

Cultural appropriation has always been a problem with popular publication and literate media, both comic and non. Discrimination against other cultures is often described as being outright and obvious, and in many cases such is true, but representation in media can also be a tool of racism. Accidental or otherwise.

Older comics, such as Little Nemo in Slumberland, some older Theodore Geisel political cartoons, and even the Archie comics all are examples of bad racial representation in media. Though, granted, their examples range from lack of representation to negative representation.

 Little Nemo in Slumber Land - Negative Representation and Lack of Representation

 Theodore Geisel - Negative Representation

Archie Comics - Lack of Representation

Recently graphic media and comics have taken to criticizing and amending the early 20th century trends with cultural representation in comics. With the start of the Underground movement slowly segueing into the appearance of more graphic novels, African Americans, people of Asian descent, and even people from religious-based cultures, such as the Jewish and Muslim peoples, are being represented through fact and history rather than sensationalism or stereotypes. Examples of comics that have helped bring about this change are works by Craig Thompson, James Strum, John Lewis, and Gene Luen Lang.

 Craig Thompson - Habibi

 James Sturm - Market Day

 John Lewis - March

Gene Luen Lang - American Born Chinese

Whether it's calling out cultural appropriation racism, to simply representing the culture in a respective manner, comics are coming closer and closer to representing more than just straight white men in media.