What the Harvard Independent says about comics history

A writer at the Harvard Independent tells some history of how comics began as far back as a few centuries ago, and cites one of the most questionable European comics as something her parents got her into reading:

They also gave me a love for comics. Alongside traditional novels, I read the pre-teen series “Percy Jackson,” “The Adventures of Tintin,” and Japanese manga. I remember my dad buying “The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons,” two heavy tomes I spent hours paging through, wondering when I would finally understand the jokes I didn’t get yet.

My enthusiasm for comics is far from unique; many aficionados are far more dedicated to collecting and discussing comic books. “Tintin” has had relatively low popularity in the United States, so I never had much reason—or company—to expand beyond rereading my favorite issues.

That's interesting if Tintin wasn't big in the USA in her time, and considering how severely questionable its ideological viewpoints were, that's why it didn't really matter. It just wasn't all it could've been is probably one way of putting it. Another subject brought up is pretty surprising, however:

The first large-scale combination of pictures and words was—unsurprisingly for the Western world—the Bible. In the 1830s, London mass-printed “The Pictorial Bible.” Though illustrated Bibles had existed since the 15th century, none were as thorough as this version, which featured a picture accompanying almost every major scene; the number of illustrations leaped from around 30 to hundreds. Woodblock carvings, which required a huge initial investment in artists, accompanied biblical verses, but advances in printing technology let printers reproduce them quickly.

The goal of such a labor-intensive yet inexpensive Bible was to reach the largely illiterate masses of the time. Though literacy increased significantly in the next hundred years, only about half of England could read at the end of the 19th century. Even for literate Christians, a widely distributed pictorial Bible would have solidified iconography, characters, and settings in the common imagination.

Though the concept of a “comic” had not been invented yet, this biblical form foreshadows the reasons comics and graphic novels became so popular and pervasive as storytelling methods. They not only help readers understand a work’s core scenes and themes but also create cohesive interpretations. In turn, this makes discussion smoother (though not necessarily broader), allowing tight-knit communities to form around the same story.

I'm surprised a university paper that's bound to be as left-wing as you could expect would be willing to bring up religious themes in the topic, considering how badly minimized the Bible's been for surely even long before the turn of the century. That's certainly one credible achievement this article's making.

It would be a disservice to the genre to fail to discuss comics in the Eastern Hemisphere. Manga, a Japanese form of comics, has gained widespread popularity worldwide in recent years. The history of illustrative mediums in Japan is also tied to religion, as the first widespread pictures were created by a Buddhist monk in the 12th and 13th centuries. As Europeans came into contact with Japan, so did their artistic techniques, including the political cartoon. From then on until World War II, Japanese manga heavily featured political themes, especially nationalist ones, as well as inspirations from traditional folklore.

Japan’s defeat in the war led to a decrease in militaristic imagery, especially with the influence of manga artist Osamu Tezuka, who was inspired by American Disney movies and superhero comics. This movement helped the genre become the world’s best-selling comic format in the 21st century, surpassing the American-born Marvel Comics.

Interesting she puts it that way, because in a way, yes, manga's long surpassed even DC in sales, due to how both company managements destroyed the coherency and impact of their products, with distortions of continuity just the beginning of their downfall. So is it any wonder manga became more popular? Of course, even that may not last, and depending on the subject matter, certainly not if they start taking up the kind of Orwellian tactics that brought down much of USA comicdom.

Though many still dismiss comics as a juvenile genre, the combination of text and visual art can often tell a story more powerfully than either medium alone. “Maus” by Art Spiegelman is an autobiographical graphic novel about his experiences as the son of a Holocaust survivor. The medium allowed him to use animal heads as a visual allegory for different groups of people without ascribing human facial features. “Maus” was introduced as a comic in 1972 and published in book format in 1986, eventually winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. The recognition “Maus” received helped legitimize the graphic novel in the eyes of the public and academics, allowing future comic artists to tell their stories using this hybrid medium.

I think it was in 1980 when the beginnings of Maus first saw print, but what's regrettable here is Spiegelman's far-left politics, which dampen the impact it could've had, and it's disturbing how Spiegelman minimized 9-11 more recently. If he doesn't consider what occurred a quarter century ago a serious concern, it's hard to believe he's really serious about his concerns over what happened during WW2, or even WW1. Also, why does she say Maus validated the GN, but not the late Will Eisner's A Contract With God, which came much earlier? Seriously, it sounds too much like she doesn't have what it takes to research what could be a more challenging example. Spiegelman's an easy choice.

Anyway, the citation of the Bible is certainly interesting, and quite surprising for what again is surely a left-wing college paper, but apart from that, this is an article that's decidedly too reliant on easy examples, and not enough on harder, more challenging ones, and ultimately doesn't explore how artistic quality was brought down in the mainstream for starters. As a result, it's hard to believe people like these are really fans of the medium if they won't voice concerns about what went wrong over past years.