The Comic Arts Conference

San Diego, California, August 18, 1993

First, let me recommend Road Scholar, the Andrei Codrescu
movie. It's 11:30 here in San Diego, and I've just come back
from that; I went there instead of the Diamond party. There
are a lot of parties this year. In the words of Andrei
Codrescu, "When the Americans left the Earth, they left some
very strange artifacts."

The Comic Arts Conference is a very small affair, very much
unlike the massive Comic Convention. There were no more than
25 people in either of the two rooms, and everyone got to
know each other. The Comic Arts Conference is an attempt to
bring comics scholars together with comics professionals to
exchange papers and discuss critical analysis in respect to
the comics art, or sequential art.

I dressed for the occasion. Rather than the jeans and squid
shirt I'll be wearing for the Convention, I put on my best
trendy black pants, nude psychedelic shirt, flowery tie, and
mushroom hat. I popped a stolen color '486 into a bag and
bussed down to the Horton Grand Hotel. I even, heaven
forbid, bought a watch. This from the person who has Mr.
Nobody quoted on his front door: "Aristotle and Newton were
useless farts who made a machine of this whirling, wonderful
world. Let's stop all the clocks and kiss the walls
goodbye."

This is the Conference's second year. When I arrived, I had
to state whether I was a graduate student or a professional.
Since I'm not a graduate student, I was registered as a
professional. Anyone was welcome to attend; the only
difference between the two is that students get in for $10;
professionals for $20.

Whipping out the portable in a vain attempt to get some real
world work done immediately enjoined a conversation about
comics and the electronic media. This is a serious group
here, folks. Those interested in combining comics and
multimedia might want to contact Howard Byer, of COMIX in
Philadelphia. You can reach him at 2212 Walnut Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19103.

Likewise, the clothes brought some attention. Anyone
interested in submitting abstracts or articles for an
academic Rocky Horror book should contact Solomon Davidoff
at [d--nc--r] at [halifax.syncomas.com.]

There were two tracks to the Conference. As a mere superhero
in training, I was only able to attend one room at a time,
and missed Donna Barr's comments on Confucius and the
British Underground.

Co
Comic Strips

Tony Harkins of the University of Wisconsin at Madison
delved into the lack of variety of gender roles in the
context of marriage in 1950's strips. Comics almost
universally presented a very stereotyped view of marriage.
Strong bachelors became hen-pecked husbands, losing height
and gaining girth, while women went from helpless girl to
scheming wife. His thesis is that there was a lot expected
of marriages in that time, and people could easily feel
guilty that their married life didn't live up to the
standard. Comics presented an exaggerated bad marriage that
made everyone who read the strips feel good about
themselves.


Touching an American Nerve: Shmoos, Al Capp, and Postwar
American Culture

Shmoos, those Suicide Saviors of the postwar era, were the
first real example of extensive marketing. For those of you
who don't remember, Shmoos were creatures of Al Capp's
Dogpatch. They loved helping people so much that they die on
the spot just so you could eat them. They tasted like
whatever you wanted: steak, pork, chicken; their skin could
be made into leather for clothes or boards for building.

Shmoo products-dolls, trinkets, ashtrays-became a major
consumer item. Shmoo dolls were dropped on Berlin during the
Berlin airlift. Certainly, comic strips had associated
products before the War. But the Shmoo represented a turning
point in marketing's reaction. Madison Avenue and Al Capp
milked the Shmoo craze literally for all it was worth before
killing off the Shmoo.

Oddly enough, it was pointed out that this was right in the
time that advertising was going from being an art to being a
science. Advertisers were learning what made the consumer
buy. Children were a major target, as was the media-the
media might be able to start fads, and could certainly help
fuel them.


Literacy Through Comics

Ivan Kalmar of the University of Toronto, has performed
literacy studies with pre-reading level children and comics.
These studies indicate the possibility that comics-the
combination of words and pictures-enhance a child's desire
to read. Professor Kalmar was particularly intrigued by the
hold that special effects have on children. This may be a
young child's first concrete encounter with abstraction of
non-meaning sounds to the alphabet.


Bondage Fantasies and Golden Age Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman may have been the first attempt at using comics
to sell social values. William Marston saw, in the
traditional male power fantasies of early comics, the
possibility of teaching girls and young women to be strong.
To escape the bonds that man's culture has placed upon them.
Anyone interested is directed to William Marston's writings.
He was very open about his goal with the Wonder Woman comic.


Understanding Comics

The highlight of the conference was a discussion, mostly
between Will Eisner and Scott McCloud, of Understanding
Comics. Points at issue included Scott's definition of art,
his restriction of comics to comics with closure between at
least two sequential images, and his strong implication that
more cartoony comics were better comics. Art is very hard to
define. On one hand, we want a definition of art that
includes our favorite creative processes. On the other, we
can easily get bogged down in a debate over a definition of
art that was really just meant to facilitate discussion of a
specific art form. Such as, of course, comics.

Closure, in an open-ended form, can occur in single panels.
Scott chose a very easy example with the Family Circus. A
strong argument can be made that a majority of them are
single-panel gags with no future and no past. Compare to,
say, a Gary Larsen cartoon, set in a pogo factory: there's a
broken window in the warehouse. Our mind fills in the
past-the pogo rider poging out the window-and may even fill
in the future-the pogo rider splatting on the ground
(example courtesy Jim Drew). There is little difference
between this kind of closure and that between two distinct
panels. Scott responded that if you include that type of
closure, you'll be including a lot of traditional art as
well. The dividing lines between different types of art are
set up by the critics, not by the creators.

Scott freely admitted that his argument for cartooniness was
a personal preference, and hoped that it was obvious that
this was his preference. Books can't be written without
opinions. If he didn't have an opinion on comics, he
wouldn't have been motivated to write Understanding Comics
in the first place.

"Style is a result of our failure to achieve perfection."

                                                -Will Eisner
                                                            

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: The Effects of Academic
Study on Popular Art Forms

Peter Coogan of Michigan State University (Go Spartans!)
presented a chilling account of the effects of academic
study on jazz, film, and literature, and drew parallels to
what is happening now with comics. According to Peter, when
the academic community starts studying an art form, they co-
opt the form; pieces tend to be created by and for the
critics-the academicians.

There comes a point where boring is no longer bad. If a
piece is boring, it's because you didn't understand the
piece, and boring leaves the vocabulary of criticism. He
believes this is the essential marker for when an art form
has been co-opted by the academic community.


The Comics Studies Center

Peter believes strongly that if Comics Studies becomes its
own discipline in an academic environment, comics as a
popular art will be killed. The Comics Studies Center is an
attempt to co-opt the academic process that leads to popular
art becoming academic art. You can reach Peter at
[c--ga--e] at [msu.edu.]


The Beelzebub Comics Studies Archive

I've discussed with the presenters the possibility of
archiving some of these papers on the ftp and gopher site at
teetot.acusd.edu. This would make these papers (and any
others) available to the educational community
interactively, at any time. Obviously, most of the pictures
cannot be archived, due to copyright problems.


Donna Barr

We may see a new Desert Peach musical or play written
exclusively by Donna. I'll ask her more about this tomorrow.
She also has a new Stinz paperback out, from Mu. It includes
an introduction by William Messner Loebs, a map of the
Geisel Valley, and reprints of issues 1-3 of Stinz volume 2.
According to the inside front cover, there's also a Wartime
and Wedding Bells collection for Stinz from Brave New Words,
and a Peach collection called Peach Slices from Aeon. These
are in addition to Horsebrush and other Tales and Politics,
Pilots, and Puppies. Additional Peach stories have appeared
in Gay Comics 15 & 16, and Wimmen's Comics 16. Also look for
The Desert Pooh if I have my way tomorrow...

Role-playing fans who've been following the internet
discussion about Lace & Steel: Donna has copies to sell!
It's $20.00 plus whatever 4 pounds of postage is from her to
you.

Issue 11 of the Desert Peach is officially sold out. Last
year I passed up a chance to buy it for ten dollars. I'll
find out tomorrow if that was a mistake.


Queues and Magazines

In the midst of it all, I forgot to bring my badge with me
to the conference; this means I'll be waiting in line at 10
in the morning to pick up my badge holder. If the news
reports cover a machine gun murderer gone mad in San Diego,
you'll know I cracked under the pressure. Otherwise, this
machine gun murderer will be quite sane and hopefully giving
another report tomorrow night.