The Fabler

By Kevin de Vlaming

Whether you just recently rediscovered comics after watching a blockbuster film like The Dark Knight or Watchmen, or whether you’ve been hooked since you first read Alan Moore’s original Swamp Thing run back in the 80’s – chances are,  there’s a lot you still don’t know about the medium.

Despite being around in one form or another since the end of the 30’s, up until the late twentieth century a lot of people might have assumed there simply wasn’t that much to know.

This is because comic books were assumed to be the exclusive property of adolescents, man-boys, and hopeless dreamers.  A variety of reasons contributed to this general perception, and it took a revolution of sorts in the modern age of comic books to even begin to shake off that negative stigma.

Nowadays, comics are enjoying a sort of ‘intellectual revival’. Movie adaptations like V for Vendetta, American Splendor, and A History of Violence make leaps and bounds towards ‘legitimizing’ their source material in the eyes of the mainstream public, while appearances of major political figures (and in some cases, tv comedians) in comics have been boosting individual issue sales to record numbers.

While all of this is going on the indie comics industry trudges on determinedly, by and large unaffected by the mainstream hype garnered elsewhere in the medium.

Then you have the people who have been writing about the industry.

The dawn of the modern age of comic books (back around the mid-80’s) ushered in a new sense of self-awareness. People looked to document the unseen history of comics; indie creators tended to instill autobiographical content more and more into their work; artists and authors alike started writing about why they do what they do, and it became far easier to find essays defending comic books as literature.

They represent the voices that we can turn to when we want to learn more about how comic books grew from the pulps of the twenties into the big screen blockbusters of today, how independent artists are constantly striving to redefine their role in the medium, and why any of us should care in the first place.

The following titles are my suggestions for an initial look into the history, culture, and theory behind comic books. These books won’t cue any earth-shattering revelations in the minds of seasoned comic fansters, but they are a great place to start learning more about the medium, for those with any interest in doing so.

Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book

To understand how something fits into the world today, it’s pretty important to know how it got there and where it came from. There are quite a few published histories of comic books in the twentieth century, but few come as well lauded as Gerard Jones‘ richly detailed novel, Men of Tomorrow.

Beginning with the arrival of Harry Donenfeld in New York (who would later come to own National Allied Publications, DC’s grandfather company), Jones manages to weave a narrative into his chronological history of the glory days and shady dealings that hallmarked the early history of comics.

What really sets this book apart from the rest is Jones’ ability to breathe life and character into the major players of comic book history. From his portrayal of the fast-talking, self-made Donenfeld to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster as shamelessly exploited dreamers, his prose comes off as anything but dry.

It’s also worthy of mention that Men of Tomorrow won an Eisner award for Best Comics-Related Book in 2005.

Understanding Comics

That selfsame award won by Jones for Men of Tomorrow was also won a decade prior by the author of Understanding Comics. Scott McCloud, who has been called “the quintessential comic book expert,” won the Eisner in 1994 for this illustrated treatise on the medium.

McCloud had previously built a name for himself in comics with the 1984-1990 series Zot!, about a teenaged superhero from another, more perfect vision of our world and his relationship with an adolescent Earth girl. He also notably co-authored the Creator’s Bill of Rights in 1988, which sought to protect the rights of comic creators from the exploitative practices of corporate publishers.

Suffice it to say, when McCloud sat down to explain his thoughts on the medium of comic books and the untapped potential of visual communication, he was at no loss for things to say.

One of the great things about Understanding Comics, as well as McCloud’s later works Reinventing Comics and Making Comics, is that it’s actually written as a comic book itself. A cartoon Scott McCloud guides the reader panel-by-panel through ideas about what comics have the potential to be, and why he is so passionate about them himself.

Understanding Comics is a remarkably accessible opportunity to expand pretty well anyone’s knowledge of the medium, both as a concept and an art form.

This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature

I’ll be the first to admit that Rocco Versaci ’s layered defence of comic books as a form of literature lacks much of the accessibility that makes Scott McCloud’s work so appealing. But what it lacks in straightforwardness, it makes up for in thoroughness. I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘the Noam Chomsky of literature on comic books’, but Versaci’s points are solid, and extremely well supported.

It’s a sound approach to read Comics as Literature after the other two titles on this list. You would need at least an idea of how comics got to where they are, as well as a pretty decent grasp on some of the nuances of the medium. There’s definitely a bit of redundancy between some of the points McCloud makes and the points that form the basis behind Versaci’s argument, but the latter expands on each of them and ties them together nicely into one overarching, focused idea.

The well-focused thrust of Versaci’s book is probably the reason I keep coming back to it myself whenever I return to the subject of comics as pulp entertainment versus comics as a uniquely positioned form of art.

Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe

You may have noticed that there’s been something noticeably absent so far in this post. If you suggested the link to a Bryan Adams music video, you would be only half right.

There has been no mention of the role of Canadian comic creators in all of this – the history, the theory, or the form behind the medium. This is because, despite all of the literature that has emerged on comics since the eighties, a disproportionately small amount of that has been about the role of Canadians in the industry.

Joe Shuster, the artist who co-created Superman, was born in Toronto. Dave Sim and Chester Brown, both Canadians, are often regarded as two of the most celebrated names in alternative comic books out there. In addition, as Invaders from the North explains, Canuck comics with an emphasis on Canadian identity have had a major presence in the North American comic book industry from the early 70’s to today.

It is extremely fortunate for Canadian comic book fans that we have John Bell, the author of Invaders from the North, fighting the proverbial good fight and documenting Canada’s contributions to the medium. Bell has been writing about Canadian comics for over two decades now, producing a number of published works and articles as well as co-authoring the (now Government of Canada archived) website, Beyond the Funnies: the History of Comics in English Canada and Quebec.

With Invaders from the North, Bell gives a detailed look at what the Canadian market was up to while Gerard Jones’ history of comic books was unfolding.

His chapters elaborating on the significance of Chester Brown to alternative comics is especially enlightening, but the book on a whole receives my strong recommendation as a window to an often under-reported aspect of Canadian pop culture.