![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
modernism in comics?
Aug. 10th, 2011 06:30 pmThis thought keeps recurring to me lately, so I figured I'd share it, expecting people to disagree, probably, and painting it in the primary colours of overstatement... but here goes:
the artists who went on to launch Image represented a major paradigm shift in comic art. Over the last twenty-ish years their work has permeated the mainstream to the extent that that style is mainstream American comics today. I'm not sure how much their audience recognizes this, but it is an extremely dense style that rejects the compositional basics developed by Caniff and Eisner and Toth and Kirby et al.
The average reader on the street can't see this art. They can't read it or follow it. I dunno how many times I've seen this happen.
It strikes me as a lot like modernism in fine art at the turn of the 20th century, or avant garde jazz in the 1960s. All these art movements represent a new way of learning to see or hear. You have to learn how to appreciate these arts, you have to work at it. Once you do learn how to appreciate them, there's a lot to enjoy there. But in general it doesn't come naturally.
But I get the feeling that today's mainstream comics audience, which has been raised on this style for decades now, doesn't realize that many new readers coming in with fresh eyes can't decipher these comics and don't enjoy looking at them. Similar to if you tried playing John Coltrane's Ascension to a group of ten-year-olds or your mom's dinner party -- it's the rare person who would respond positively.
Modern mainstream comics have painted themselves into a corner, where the people who like them are the people who already like them. Comics that manage to break out into success in new areas with new audiences, tend to be ones that reject the post-Image aesthetic, and generally revert to the clarity and design sense of the Old Masters.
If you want to appeal to new readers, you have to produce something that is appealing to new readers. So it seems to me, at least.
the artists who went on to launch Image represented a major paradigm shift in comic art. Over the last twenty-ish years their work has permeated the mainstream to the extent that that style is mainstream American comics today. I'm not sure how much their audience recognizes this, but it is an extremely dense style that rejects the compositional basics developed by Caniff and Eisner and Toth and Kirby et al.
The average reader on the street can't see this art. They can't read it or follow it. I dunno how many times I've seen this happen.
It strikes me as a lot like modernism in fine art at the turn of the 20th century, or avant garde jazz in the 1960s. All these art movements represent a new way of learning to see or hear. You have to learn how to appreciate these arts, you have to work at it. Once you do learn how to appreciate them, there's a lot to enjoy there. But in general it doesn't come naturally.
But I get the feeling that today's mainstream comics audience, which has been raised on this style for decades now, doesn't realize that many new readers coming in with fresh eyes can't decipher these comics and don't enjoy looking at them. Similar to if you tried playing John Coltrane's Ascension to a group of ten-year-olds or your mom's dinner party -- it's the rare person who would respond positively.
Modern mainstream comics have painted themselves into a corner, where the people who like them are the people who already like them. Comics that manage to break out into success in new areas with new audiences, tend to be ones that reject the post-Image aesthetic, and generally revert to the clarity and design sense of the Old Masters.
If you want to appeal to new readers, you have to produce something that is appealing to new readers. So it seems to me, at least.
