“it inspires an aesthetic response.” That rings very true for me.

Your “greats” is a good list but seriously, there’s no way my work should be on there with Tezuka, Hernandez and Schulz. That’s just crazy.

Well, it looks odd there because 1) it’s your own work, but also 2) it’s a different type of work.

Actually, my paragraph about genre and expectations got lost in the edit, but a big part of this type of evaluation for me is generic expectations, and you judge different types of work differently. I expect something very different from Hernandez than I do from your work. Or different from Tezuka than I do from Hernandez. Which is why generic listmaking is a weird thing, as I probably shouldn’t be lumping different types of comics together.

It also speaks to the two version of “great.” Hernandez, Schulz, and Tezuka are clearly both versions of “great.” You, Huizenga, and Porcellino are perhaps not in the former (yet?) (though Porcellino might be depending on who you ask).

Good points, I’ll stop arguing with you thinking HTBE is great!

“it inspires an aesthetic response” – do you think that is informed by your work as an artist? Sometimes I think I’m lucky that when I really like something (or are moved by it, like the Egypt uprising) I can DO something with it, I can draw it. I see a lot of your work as being tuned into what’s around you as well and I think your (I’ll call it great) work as an artist really informs your criticism.

I don’t think my work and education as an artist could not affect how I look/read. And that may affect what I appreciate in different ways than other people, but I don’t think it’s anything especially unique.

I’m not sure how much my work making comics specifically affects this, though. I think it’s more about exposure to different types of artwork. If I only read comics, I suspect my tastes would be very different, but through exposure to experimental literature and painting/drawing of different sorts, I bring a non-comics perspective into play when I’m looking at work like yours or abstract comics or other less conventional comics.

I agree completely that so-called literary or “serious” comics need to be as focused on the pressures of originality as you define it here (saying something old in a new way) as do genre comics. One of my growing pet-peeves in recent years has been the number of works that seem blissfully unaware that what they are saying is not in fact brilliantly new or original and therefore they might spend a bit more time attending to how they say it

Funny Derik, those faux three definitions had me falling over backwards with my feet at the top of the panel.
For me above all other considerations is the story. I would agree there can be any number of different types of stories, and would add that even the confines of genre or reading level don’t truly effect my judgment of the final product.
For example while I prefer Tezuka’s “Ode to Kirihito” to “Astro Boy” it’s fascinating to see Tezuka able to lay down a template of his recurring thematic gestures in an early work intended for children. In a way it’s even more impressive to see an author able to communicate mature themes on a “G” rated level. Several years ago I read E.B. White’s “Stuart Little” to my children, never having read it myself, I was close to stunned by it’s lingering/haunting presence.
My children are now 9 and 11, and will reread Black Jack stories over and again. The urge to reread for pleasure is an excellent measure of any author’s work.
Your observation about Jesse Marsh is well taken, and could be applied to the vast majority of mainstream (really all) comics work.
I would say that having read many old comic books to my son several years back that at least the Dell/Goldkey stories provide a halfway decent platform from which to appreciate the graphic storytelling of artists like Marsh, or Toth. This isn’t to say I’d reread those things for pleasure myself, but at least they weren’t sleep inducing.

I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot for the past few months. the importance of a good aesthetic IS truly important (maybe even the most important) and while some may find those that believe this to be pretentious, I think the threshold of acceptability for people maintaining that judgment might just be very low (fans of tom cruise or contemporary super hero comics ???). This low threshold is something that comics is suffering for. So many new artists, both in the big 2 or 5 depending how you’re counting and from this new wave of undergrounds are just terrible artists. they might have some good stories but the art they provide is nothing but a hindrance, a perfunctory (and i think the use of that word might be kind for a lot of work i see) sketch that helps the work being put out be called a comic (i’m sorry, “graphic novel” because the artists just picked up their first no more than 8 years ago). I’m not arguing for technical beauty, Johnny Ryan and even Mike Diana don’t show off technical greatness in their books but it fits in the comical and transgressive tonality –you don’t have to use Jon J. Muth’s ability to make what they do. but Porcellino???????

If you don’t see the beauty in Porcellino’s art, I can’t do anything for you.

Porcellino is a very interesting artist whose work is often quite lovely. As we’ve shown here, what he achieves is not so easy to achieve. That it looks easy is one of its confounding virtues. :)

I can’t tell whether you dig Muth or not. I like some of his work fine, but not his photoreferenced comics stuff. He’s found his artistic home in picture books now, I think.

Like Derik, I won’t name names, but the artwork I’ve seen by some of the current darlings of mainstream super suit comic books is as ugly as anything I’ve ever seen, just as pure imagery, and is nearly incomprehensible as storytelling.
The images are loaded with detail, and computer generated special effects. When faced with them my reaction is to imagine Charles Schulz, Roy Crane, or Alex Toth recoiling in horror, or possibly bursting into laughter.

That’s another thing, this computer generated fad. It is really getting my goat! I am disgusted by it. Even the way that Clowes (a cartoonist I enjoy more than most active ones) has been using it in a way that over-saturates the work with an airbrushed, penny arcade feel in his post 8-ball work. I have yet to see a formal style that properly appropriates these crystal clear Photoshop colors; does anyone think they’ve seen one that works it well? (sorry about making this what-makes-a-comic-great convo into what-makes-a-comic-not-great, but as has been alluded to previously, to answer the question well in a way that doesn’t guide by personal taste is difficult almost rendering it to the governmental response about porn: “I know it when I see it”)

Aww, now you’re dissing computer generated art… That’s all I do… It doesn’t have to be garish and filled with gradients.

That’s true, a computer is a tool.
What doesn’t work for me combining obviously digital effects with a hand-drawn look.
Another thing I wonder about with digital work is the ability to make changes in colour easily. Certainly there are instances where this is of great production value, but I wonder if there aren’t times when something is “rubbed out” on a whim which might have stood up if it were hand coloured. And who knows, maybe what at first glance didn’t look right, on reflection would have grown on the artist?
It’s also unfortunate that computer colour became the norm just around the same time most colour comics began to be printed with full process colour.
There is a real charm and beauty in hand coloured jobs. The way the materials interact creates pleasing textures. The colour bleeding into the paper, the pigment picking up the texture of a rough surface paper. There is the loss of on one hand of seeing the obvious masterful control of the artist in the way he handles his materials, and the loss of the happy accident where an error can result in a pleasing effect where two colours merge.
With modern printing we could be seeing colour work being done with a variety of materials, but it’s almost all computer colour.

There is the loss of on one hand of seeing the obvious masterful control of the artist in the way he handles his materials…

Given that mainstream comic books relied for decades on hand-cut rubylith/acetate color separations that were done in the most anonymous, outsourced, and assembly line-like ways, and that computer coloring now has the potential to put more control back in the hands of the line artist, I don’t lament this loss very much.

It’s true that there’s an aesthetic peculiar to old comic book coloring that can be very interesting, and that economic shortcuts sometimes produced charming artistic effects (e.g., when crowd scenes in old Marvel comics would be colored in one uniform, dark color, say a red or olive green). But, generally, the rubylith-cutting process, combined with the usual cost-cutting measures of mainstream comic book publishers, militated against good coloring in those comics. What’s gone is gone, and in some ways—notwithstanding all the crappy computer-colored comics from the early nineties to now—for the better.

I don’t mean to come off as dissing comp gen art as a whole. I use photoshop myself in various projects, but not comics. Maybe I’m just an analogue man. But when I see comic art that was done on a computer I wonder if it would have been better suited to be viewed on a computer screen and never printed at all. I think a good example/comparison is Bechdel’s Fun Home and Kyle Baker’s Plastic Man: On the Lam (and not just because they’re shelfmates). Bechdel uses the computer to create a tonal mood in a way that is passive and complementary where Baker’s Colors come off very aggressive and rob the book. But this computer color brings up a more interesting idea I mentioned and one that dovetails what Patrick says about the charm of hand colored work: the delivery. Look at Plastic Man: the pallet works well on the plastic cover, better than on the old fashioned non-gloss paper. This just brings me to the biggest qualm I have with the big 2 (bigger than the shit staff) that funky new paper they’ve been using since around 2000 that can’t be read unless it’s not facing a light source. And now a question: is it cheaper? I might actually buy some of the Kirby reprints if it was printed on the same paper it was released on. Issuing older works on this new paper is tantamount to remastering in theory, but in praxis is actually molestation of a classic.

Charles, What I’m talking about isn’t the old four colour process. That process does have mechanical charms created as part of the printing process, and showcased at the four-color blog.
No what I’m saying is modern printing allows an artist to use any coloring medium.
You could be seeing water colour, oil, coloured pencils, oil pastels, mixed-media, and so on, and you can find some of that, but what you mostly see is digital colour.

True. An economic matter, I imagine. Digital streamlining on both the creative and delivery end. Convenience will out in commercial publishing, after all.

Frazer Irving and Kyle Baker make extensive use of computer colouring, to good effect IMO.

One needn’t imagine Toth recoiling in horror; he shared his horror and distaste for contemporary comics vocally again and again. It’s too bad that he didn’t make any meaningful comics late in his career to provide an alternative.

To me the central mystery of Toth remains, all that ability, that graphic and formal brilliance, but so very little worth rereading—why?

Toth worked in the factory system of mainstream comics where there was often resistance to allowing artists to write their own stories.
Toth is really no different from the vast majority of mainstream comic book artists. In fact in my opinion he got better scripts than most because he worked for Dell, and Warren fairly often.
People will tell you the Dell scripts aren’t exciting,which I wouldn’t argue with, but I’d strongly dispute the idea Spider-Man or The Atom were any more exciting.
Toth also worked a lot with Archie Goodwin who’s scripts were above the industry standard.
In addition the things Toth did write were all, if not great, at least good.
You had the Bravo stories which are well crafted adventure strips in the 1930′s style of Caniff’s early Terry.
Toth also contributed a few things to Warren which had more to say, while still fitting a “weird/mystery” genre style.
His story for Warren “Unreal” is interesting on a number of levels.
Bottom line is it’s reasonable to say Toth illustrated scripts which aren’t of any substantial interest to most of us today, even if we enjoyed them as kids, but most of what he illustrated is a step above the industry standard.
If Toth had been allowed to write more often he would likely have produced stories along the lines of Crane, Caniff, Robbins, etc..
I think it’s clear that even in genre material the individual personality of the artist will almost inevitably begin to inform the work, if not consciously then on a subconscious level.
Given a bit of time on a strip or a large enough body of work of every writer artist emerges as coded (conscious or not) autobiographical.
Can a critic reasonably dismiss every artist who creates genre material, which is foremost entertainment, unless they examine their own habits and declare they appreciate nothing, but high art.

For me it’s not a question of dismissing genre material. It’s a question of Toth’s Caniff-era heroic ideal yielding nothing interesting in terms of emotional content. Barks, Carlson, Kirby, Kurtzman, Stanley… all did genre material. And they had something to say. But Toth, as a writer? Nothing, other than the valorization of a kind of Douglas Fairbanks-era school of swashbuckling heroism. Charming, yes, but totally backward-looking. So I’m afraid to say that I don’t buy the idea of Toth as a writer. I don’t dismiss his collaborations with Goodwin, or the many other good things that he did, I’m just saying that as a writer-artist I don’t find anything appealing in the work that I know.

Charles, A few thoughts on the particulars of emotional content, and Toth.
First, as you point out, Toth didn’t have the opportunity to write any long form stories serialized or stand alone.
There are the few Bravo stories, and Jon Fury which I haven’t seen the whole of yet, but even there you’re talking about what would amount to a relative handful of pages.
It takes time to develop a nuanced character, and it’s only after we “get to know” characters that, like people, we begin to understand them. It’s hardly possible to read a character properly in small measure.
For example Segar created the amazingly detailed portrait known as J. Wellington Wimpy. It’s very easy for me to imagine someone reading a few months of Thimble Theater and wondering,
“‘You bring the ducks’ what ??? Okay, yeah. I’m not seeing it.”
It’s only after you know Wimpy’s character that:
“I’ll have pickles, onion, and lettuce, both, on my hamburger”
can be understood, not as poor usage, but as part of Wimpy’s calculated strategy. The things he says aren’t funny like a joke anyone could tell, they are funny because we know Wimpy’s motivation. Segar in Wimpy achieved on the page the kind of character that Jack Benny created on stage.
The audience knew Benny so well a wordless gesture or a single word like “well…” could elicit roars of laughter.
My thought is if a person went and read the first thirty Terry and the Pirates strips, and had never seen Caniff’s work or Terry before they would find about the same emotional content as is found in Bravo. There just isn’t enough there for us to be able to judge if Toth’s voice would have emerged.
There are clues though in Toth’s work that while he was far from emotionally vacuous he may well have been the sort of person who didn’t want to confront his emotions, he had a hard enough time keeping them in check, and his taste in art was towards escapism, things which took his mind off the troubled dark nature of man. There was no open avenue for Toth around that bend, it was a dead end.
I see a possible indication of this in one of the very few things I don’t like about Toth’s art. Toth was a “bad actor.” The faces of his characters showed a limited, stock emotional range. If Toth as a graphic storyteller/director was John Ford, as an actor Toth was John Wayne.
Toth at least wasn’t a scenery chewer like Neal Adams who’s ham fisted characterizations border on the grotesque.

There was no open avenue for Toth around that bend, it was a dead end.

Yes! That’s exactly it, I think. Toth’s work doesn’t confront and expose emotions in the way I would like. I get more from Schulz’s highly stylized round-headed strip characters than I do from Toth’s more realistically rendered people. Your comment helps me understand why.

I like escapism as much as anyone, but Toth had a way of elevating escapism to a kind of moral purity that, to use another word from your comment, I do find emotionally vacuous.

The bottom line for me is, if Toth had wanted to be a writer, he would have become one. Instead he spent an inordinate amount of time lamenting the fact that comics were no longer as he remembered them, and preferred them.

Excellent point about Wimpy, one of the greatest strip characters ever IMO.

Charles says,”The bottom line for me is, if Toth had wanted to be a writer, he would have become one. Instead he spent an inordinate amount of time lamenting the fact that comics were no longer as he remembered them, and preferred them.”

“Instead…inordinate” suggests that he chose the wrong path. Frankly, I’m glad Toth didn’t write much fiction; it wasn’t his gift. Complaining that Toth failed to write good stories is like complaining that John Alton failed to write good movies.

Few are gifted enough to excel at the whole package. It should be enough to excel at one thing, and complain that the other folks (e.g., mid-Century comics writers) aren’t doing their jobs well.

Granted, not every ace cartoonist can be, or need be, an interesting writer. So, okay, Toth need not have become a writer.

What I was trying to get at was that (a) Toth’s idea of good writing was very narrow, and emotionally vacant; (b) he was so narrow that he could not recognize new kinds of effective comic writing, and indeed was often offended by new trends; and (c) he boxed himself in as a result. It’s odd that his work could be so emotionally charged, in the sense of crafty delivery, and yet he shied away from any meaningfully exploratory content.

I’ve got an issue of Atlas/Seaboard’s wretched Thrilling Adventure Stories (no, not the Ware!) that features a Toth-drawn story about a tough cop and some scuzzy hippy drug dealer types in a near-future dystopian why-oh-why-is-the-world-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket scenario. I like to use this comic as a demonstration of the inadequacy of mere formalism as a critical criterion; it’s an ingeniously put-together Toth workout and a terrible, lameass story at the same time.

PS. The story is “A Job Well Done,” scripted by Ric Meyer, drawn solely by Toth, and it’s in TAS #2 (Aug. 1975), as described here @ GCD:

http://www.comics.org/issue/28923/

This same issue features the inventive Goodwin/Simonson collaboration, “The Temple of the Spider,” a sword-and-sorcery outing with plenty of cool formal gimmicks.

A Job Well Done: http://spaceintext.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/a-job-well-done-alex-toth/

Excellent, Derik, thanks!

Let’s do a roundtable on this puppy!

Toth did enjoy escapist fluff, and hated nihilism and copious gore, but he didn’t tout the former as the epitome of literature, and the latter presumably aren’t the new trends you have in mind. If a preference for drawing “family friendly fare” is wrong, we can condemn nearly every great cartoonist of Toth’s era.

“he shied away from any meaningfully exploratory content.”

How so? If you mean he turned down chances to illustrate the profound comics stories of his day, I’m not sure there were any.

“I like to use this comic as a demonstration of the inadequacy of mere formalism as a critical criterion”

I don’t see how the existence of a badly-written, well-drawn comic (A Job Well-Done) disproves the worth of badly-written, well-drawn comics (mere formalism). Seems question-begging.

When I say that Toth shied away from meaningful emotional content, I’m not saying that he failed to hit some imagined mark of literary profundity. I’m saying that his comics typically weren’t about anything interesting other than their own formal mastery and graphic punch and glossy surfaces. These are great qualities, of course—gifts—and I would not go so far as to deny that Toth’s comics have worth. I’m simply saying that I like to read comics stories by, for example, Barks, Kirby, and Kurtzman, and I like them because they are stories with something to say, whether profound or satirical or just eccentrically gutsy; by contrast, very few Toth comics appeal to me on the level of story at all. And this isn’t just the result of Toth not being able to find able scriptwriters to work with; it’s also the result of him thinking that doing Caniff again and again was the quintessence of good comics writing. That just doesn’t appeal to me.

Toth may have hated nihilism, but “A Job Well Done,” in its xenophobia, its ageism, its embrace of a hateful macho creed, and its obvious distaste for other cultural values, comes perilously close. That Toth ending up working on stuff like that rather than taking his artistic graces elsewhere shows how boxed in the field was, and he was.

BTW, I don’t mean to say that “A Job Well Done” has no worth or artistic interest. After all, it has Toth, and that’s not small potatoes. If the comic held no interest, there’d be no point in me holding it up as a notable example. I grant though that I did that in a rather snarky way.

Anyway, I don’t mean to dump excessively on Toth. This whole thread began with my attempt to figure out why I just don’t care about his work much despite being impressed very often by its graphic inventiveness.

Charles: We can do a roundtable if you like. Maybe Jesse would want to join in?

Sure, I’d be up for a roundtable.

Derik, thanks for this thoughtful follow-up post.

From my POV, you’ve removed some of the needless controversy surrounding my original question by going straight for the personal and putting aside grand historical and canonical claims. That’s for the best, I think. I believe you’re right that each of us has his own personal likes, which may or may not intersect with larger canons.

For instance, I understand that Al Capp’s work was quite important and that he is a major artist in the usual canonical sense, but I’ve never warmed to his work, despite trying. Part of that has to do, I suppose, with ideological distaste for his later reputation, and part of it with lack of interest in his type of satire, which, from my POV, relied predictably on the confrontation between cornpone innocence (with L’il Abner being a sort of hayseed Candide who never gets wise) and dastardly worldliness. I just don’t find it clever or interesting. But surely Capp was a major comic strip artist and a figure about whom anyone trying to speak authoritatively on mid-20th c. American strips should know something.

Then there are those artists I’ve learned to like despite distaste for their ideological pronouncements, for example Harold Gray.

I agree with all of your criteria, though I’d add back in an engrossing narrative or argument—that is, some enunciable thematic content that interests me on rereading.

As a PS, let me guiltily confess (and this relates back to my reply to Pat, above) that Toth is not one of my personal greats—and this despite the fact that I’ve read several comics by Toth in my adult life that stunned me with their graphic elegance and intelligence. I don’t connect with Toth because when I was younger I either wasn’t interested in or wasn’t much exposed to the kind of mainstream comic books he did back then, and because I do not associate him with a great property, such as an enduring, vital character or powerful, thematically compelling storyline. To me he had stunning craft skills that were put to very barren and uninteresting purposes most of the time.

Had I been exposed to some of Toth’s best work when I was younger, I think I may have developed a taste for other genres, other kinds of story, but by the time I got around to digging Toth for his craft I was older and the stories in most mainstream comics—both those I happily devoured as a kid and others—had ceased to be of interest to me.

So I tend to approach any Toth comic as a potential toolbox of examples of technique, shorn of thematic interest. Perhaps that’s the result of prejudice on my part. From a canonical POV, Toth is clearly one of the great, as in influential, comic book artists, and from a graphic design standpoint his best work is beautiful, but he is not a favorite of mine.

I note that Toth well fulfills your criteria of originality in technique (It’s all about how you say it, not what you say) and thoughtful application of the form. That I don’t have a passion for his work says something about the primacy of story, for me.

I like this assessment of Toth. It cements what I mean when talking about how to analyze art. I think another great example is the beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. It exposed the music world to a different take on how to use the studio as an instrument in the way Phil Spector did, but in a way that overshadowed the actual content/product.

I disagree about Sgt. Pepper. It does have some duff songs, e.g., “She’s Leaving Home,” but in most cases the songs are an inextricable union of sound/style/songwriting. Rolling Stone called it “playful yet contrived,” but since when is that a sin?

derik, it seems to me that your list could be applied to any kind of fictional work. in fact, i find myself more in agreement with your list of standards when it comes to written literature than with comics, maybe just because there is a part of me that is nostalgic for the “good old comics” i’ve read as a kid (whereas i was never into novels back then, as i am now). anyhow.

I didn’t take out the engrossing narrative/argument, I just said it’s not enough in itself. Depending on the genre I do expect a quality narrative, but it’s not enough.

Similarly, really great art, is not enough on its own, if the my generic expectations are looking for a narrative (which is the issue with Toth, I think).

I pretty much agree with all your Toth comments. Formally interesting, stylistically interesting, but narrative failure. Having read some of the stuff he wrote, I get the feeling he just really didn’t have anything to say, and that his “writing” was more about just having control of the story (as opposed to the rest of his work), than any particularly interesting thing to say.

True, I guess they could be applied across the board. Perhaps I should have left in some of my comments about genre/form and expectations. How I have different expectations when I approach different genres or forms (I expect something different from a great tv series than I do from a great comic).

Derik, thanks for this very interesting analysis of Hanawa.

Doing Time is a book I admire but have difficulty reading straight through, and certainly reading it quickly is impossible, at least if you want to get anything out of it. Its reliance on repetition with variation is one reason. Another is its sheer density in terms of drawing and of minute information imparted. I find the book “thickens” the reading experience almost to the point of frustration, in the process making powerfully evident to me the sheer monotony and restricted scope of prison life. It is observant and particular and thickly layered with visual information—spatial, textural, very, very minute—almost to a fault.

I wonder about the degree to which Hanawa means this to be a contrast or rebuke to the usual reading experience of manga, which are notorious for being read very, very quickly. (I’m especially interested in this in light of Cools’ article, cited above, which I’ve begun to read.) In a sense Doing Time is an anti-manga, a deliberate flouting of reading conventions (much as, say, Pekar & Crumb’s “American Splendor Assaults the Media” deliberately flouts the “show, don’t tell” dogma).

I suspect that Hanawa was deliberately going for that effect. The work as a whole does seem different even from his own work (the few other pieces of his I’ve seen were more of the grotesque/horror type). The sheer lack of any drama or conflict works against just about any narrative, but especially more conventional manga.

I like Domingos’ concept of the locus (a third way between narration and description), which it strikes me is a way of achieving lyricism and evocativeness in comics, and a corrective to the idea of comics as graphic narrative strictly applied. I tend to describe comics’ “narrative” in a very broad sense, in hopes of including such examples, but you’re right that “Magic Forest” isn’t storytelling. I often say that comics “tell stories, unpack ideas, or evoke scenes,” which is a cheat, since “evoke scenes” could also describe what conventional landscape painting does, for example, without comics’ sequential structure. In comics it’s got to be multi-aspectual and involve some kind of shifting of perspectives or focalization, I think.

When I don’t have to read for narrative time or for repetition and variation, the logic of sticking to that reading pattern is lost.

Ah, but these practices are a matter of habit over logic, yes? I would have to assume that Larmee was conscious of this when creating the work. Without some putative reading order, or without the reader’s ability to posit a particular order, we’re not dealing with comics, are we? So, traditional linear comics reading underlies this untraditional example, a kind of implicit template that the piece can push and pull against. I think you’re getting at that same quality here:

This push and pull of beginning/end is nicely countered by the red-orange stripe that divides panels three and four.

I like your attention to the panel borders (pencilled-in grid lines, usually erased). Again, Larmee seems to be using the conventions of comics under erasure, so that they’re half there, half gone, teasing and informing our reading but without falling into a predictable approach. I saw this a lot in Young Lions, which I reviewed here:

http://www.thoughtballoonists.com/2010/05/younglions.html

Thanks, Derik! Thought-provoking “Best of” list, BTW!

Thanks, Charles.

I like “multi-aspectual” as a descriptive term. I’ll have to remember that.

Without some putative reading order, or without the reader’s ability to posit a particular order, we’re not dealing with comics, are we?

But can’t a reader posit a reading order for anything? You can look at a painting and posit a reading order. Even the most confusing comics page (I’m thinking of a.. Steranko Nick Fury page that defies any reading order), you can posit an order. I’m not sure that’s something we can say is necessary to be “dealing with comics.”

My point hear was that after a few times reading this page, I started losing the need/desire to read it in conventional order, and that it didn’t really make that much of a difference what order I read it in, unlike narrative comics where the order is generally very important.

(I actually linked to your Young Lions review in the post!)

I agree with Derik on this, that order is superimposed, but I would be most heartily enthusiastic for the two of you to take extreme entrenched positions and argue to the dialectical synthesis. I find the status of “sequence” in comics to be a remarkably pressing critical question — the least well-theorized aspect of comics and the least satisfying to me when it’s evoked — and I’m eager to hear any in-depth thoughts on it anybody’s willing to offer up…

I’m not one for trenches.

As for sequence… I’ll try to work that into more posts. In fact, I can guarantee it’ll show up in a few of posts I plan on writing about some works that are not traditionally considered comics (Alechinsky, Turbeville, Twombly, etc.)

But can’t a reader posit a reading order for anything? You can look at a painting and posit a reading order.

True, but these habits or protocols are not merely personal and idiosyncratic. When we get involved in a discussion of comics, we’re thinking in terms of genre, in the broadest sense, and socially determined or at least socially informed ways of reading. The habits are shaped by our participation in comics reading and in the discourse surrounding comics.

Similarly, anything can be read as poetry, but it takes immersion in the discourse of poetry, or at least some familiarity with poetry, in order to perform that interpretive move.

My suggestion is that sequence or “order” is so important to comics, and to conversations about comics, that the only way an informed reader is going to abandon that is if they look closely enough, and long enough, at a work to break out of habit:

…after a few times reading this page, I started losing the need/desire to read it in conventional order, and that it didn’t really make that much of a difference what order I read it in…

Yes. After a few times reading the page, yes. But in the context of a blog about “comics,” that impulse would only come after your initial linear reading gave way to a tabular appreciation of the whole (or a nonlinear appreciation of its parts).

No hard and fast rules here; no trench warfare. Just an observation that we have reading habits that look for order, and that in comics that order tends to come in a particular way. Of course, in your case, Derik, I imagine that your defaults are not set in nearly as conventional a way as those of most comics readers! :)

My suggestion is that sequence or “order” is so important to comics, and to conversations about comics, that the only way an informed reader is going to abandon that is if they look closely enough, and long enough, at a work to break out of habit

Well, that I agree with (and the rest too). But that’s different than the statement I quoted in my reply, where you seem to state that without a reading order something isn’t comics at all.

I got that too, Charles. Not just from you — I’ve had lots of people tell me that reading order and sequence are essential for comics. So even if you didn’t mean it here, I think it’s still a big elephant in this room…

Derik — awesome. I’m really looking forward to reading those posts. So far this post is my favorite piece of writing about Larmee’s work, which I think is extraordinary and routinely underestimated.

I do still think there’s some value to theory’s “entrenchment,” though, its purification exercise. What’s happening for me, Charles, theoretically, is that the gesture (period, not just yours) toward “socially determined or at least socially informed ways of reading,” while absolutely correct and certainly important to comics studies, obscures or perhaps inhibits a properly formalist description of the ways in which “sequence or order is so important to comics.” (In terms of the conversations it’s not a problem.)

Derik’s reading makes the point that sequence and order are in fact not as formally essential as is generally claimed. They are certainly socially normative, as you say, but they’re not formally essential. (That’s the distinction that makes French structuralism politically radical, right?)

One thing that I find so exciting about Larmee’s work (and that of other artists working in the same vein) is that it does gesture toward a synchronic — and equally radical — approach to comics meaning. I think that is extremely exciting as it opens up ways for comics to fully participate in the experimentation of postmodern literature.

But theories of synchronic approaches rely on a properly formalist, non-historical foundation, and comics is very attached to its social conventions. There is no operable theory of comics form (that I know of!) that engages and thoroughly describes a category that’s meaningfully “comics” but that is fully non-sequential and non-ordered. Those categories feel like they’re embraced as “essences,” the things which are necessary for calling something “comics.”

But sequence and order are diachronic, not synchronic, so we’re in a situation of either superimposing other formalisms, usually literary formalisms, onto comics, or avoiding the most adventurous synchronic theoretical explanations and strategies. (That’s the theoretical version of what I meant a few weeks ago when I commented that comics “history” was holding it back…)

and yet one finds that developing soft surfaces with little sequential elaboration suggests that each panel a freshly opened window into a new narrative, possibly infinite, that connect back to other panels on a page as a plane that interrupts the coincidental (orisitmagical) but formally harmonious intermingling of foreign stories

like 6 eternal hallways that wrap around each other at a point and then bisected by the blade of a single page

it’s no secret that blaise larmee believe in ghosts

…the gesture…toward “socially determined or at least socially informed ways of reading,” while absolutely correct and certainly important to comics studies, obscures or perhaps inhibits a properly formalist description of the ways in which “sequence or order is so important to comics.”

I’m simply trying to remove the dogmatism from the issue by suggesting that all formalisms are in fact socially determined.

Caro, what would a “properly formalist” approach detached from social ways of knowing be? Or, rather, how would it be? Every reading and gazing convention is embedded in culture, whether diachronic or synchronic; I thought I was simply acknowledging a truism?

In other words, how could there be a truly “non-historical” formalism?

But theories of synchronic approaches rely on a properly formalist, non-historical foundation, and comics is very attached to its social conventions.

I’m not saying that comics is especially attached to social conventions, any more than is the reading of poetry, or the act of taking up a spectator’s role, or an art appreciator’s role. Do not these “social conventions” inhere in the discourse surrounding and holding up every art form? These conventions are the very grounds of making meaning with these objects, these forms, these performances. As I understand the issue, there isn’t a conversation about “comics” that could somehow stand entirely apart from these conventions, that is, from the general conversation about “comics”—because the very act of positing these objects as comics performs a kind of framing, establishes a set of discursive coordinates and assumptions. This would be true of even a McCloudian arch-formalism in which questions of differing social origins, historical roots, and generic affiliations are swept aside. In other words, this isn’t a matter of comics being parochial or especially beholden to its social roots; it’s a matter of all art forms being so situated, socially, culturally.

Comics “history” doesn’t only hold it back. It also constitutes it. That’s what I’m saying. And this is true even if we leave behind myopic fan narratives of history, or leave behind cultural nationalism, myths of origin, and other narrow aspects of the history. Again, even if our aim is a kind of super-formalism that dispenses with historical particulars, we’ll still be participating in the history of “comics” as long as we call it “comics” and make formal connections to other “comics.”

Derik’s reading makes the point that sequence and order are in fact not as formally essential as is generally claimed.
Forgive me for harping, but I don’t think Derik’s reading does this. Rather, Derik’s reading demonstrates that his initial sequential reading gave way to a less linear one, or that he was capable of oscillating back and forth between the two readings. That is because Larmee’s work is unconventional and sophisticated, and, if I may, because Derik’s ways of reading are also unconventional and sophisticated, and he has had considerable training in reading comics both with and against the grain of their assumed sequentiality.

Now, I grant that a strict chronological sequence is not necessary to my understanding of “Magic Forest”; I observed the same about many of the pieces in Andrei Molotiu’s splendid Abstract Comics anthology. But there is still, for me, a reading sequence, because, I think, comics reading is parasitic on conventional textual reading, which is to say that I bring similar habits to both; I attempt to read comics, and this presupposes sequence—even if the work in question can monkeywrench or sidestep linear narrative. And that reading sequence is what allows me, emboldens me, to call such works “comics.” Without that assumption, I don’t see how our discussion could continue to operate within the discursive field known as “comics studies” or “comics criticism.”

Empirically, let me ask you this: can you remember a comic, or imagine a comic, in which some presumption of sequence did not play a part in your experience of it?

By the way, I think comics in which the sequence can be changed by the reader, as in McCloud’s “Choose Your Own Carl” or Shiga’s Meanwhile, as well as comics in which there are multidirectional reading vectors, maze-like or game-like, say some of Trondheim’s work in this direction—all these demonstrate rather than undercut my point about sequentiality being essential. They still posit, in fact they call attention to, the necessity of choosing a reading path. They still work diachronically, rather than synchronically.

Anecdotally, my responses to the works in Abstract Comics all were dictated by my understanding of sequentiality, and of the traditional reading demands of comics. That understanding is what allowed me to, if you will, reconcile those works to my view of “comics.”

Jan Baetens recently argued, at the International Conference on Narrative (April 2010), that “abstract comics” are not abstract by dint of adopting an abstract picturing style, but rather by flouting narrative conventions. That is, saying something is an “abstract comic” is inevitably an ideological move that positions that work in relation to this thing we call “comics.” One thing I get from this is that ostensibly nonlinear or sychronic comics are still subliminally informed by the socially determined reading conventions that lead us to expect sequence in more conventional comics. That is, in fact, what makes “abstract comics” legible as comics. No?

Charles, thanks for the response! You came up with more than I’ll hit in this — the things you said actually about sequence I want to think about a little more because they’re what I was asking for and I don’t want to give them short shrift. I’ll try to clear up the most basic bit that I think is a communication issue, just getting on the same page thing, though.

For me, there’s a big big difference between saying that a formalism (or any theory) is non-historical, by which I mean it is not a theory which considers history or historical forces to be directly part of its object or the set of questions it’s intended to answer, and saying that the theory is a-historical, in the sense that it’s not historically determined.

Think about several of the different formalisms we use as literary scholars: we can use Jakobsen, we can use Derrida, we can use grammar itself. (And many more). All of them are historically constituted, yes, of course I agree (although grammar is a complex case). But they’re concerned with properties of their objects independent of those social and historical aspects. Lacan’s topologies are formalisms — he is absolutely a product of his mid-century post-war France, and a reading of Lacan may benefit from some awareness of that, but you don’t have to be attentive to it to understand Lacan, what he says hangs together as a logical structure independent of when he wrote it. If I use Lacan to talk about David Lynch, I’m not going to have to also talk about the mid-century conditions under which Lacan’s theory was formulated. I could, that might be really interesting (I’m suddenly intrigued), but the theory gives me the choice.

Theory is formalist philosophy, and although philosophies are products of the time when they were composed, it is a measure of their rigor that the abstract structures they delineate can be fully understood without reference to the circumstances of their creation and reception. That’s what I mean by non-historical.

I agree entirely that sequence is the thing that makes Abstract Comics in particular legible as comics: Andrei’s book is without doubt the best, probably the only, meaningful effort to “theorize” sequence in a rigorous way — but it’s in many ways just giving us the perspective, the raw material, exposing the “sequence” to us. It’s not a finished theoretical project.

Comics does not have a philosophical delineation of its abstract structure that includes sequence as a part of that structure — instead it has a socially constituted definition in which sequence plays an “essential” part. “I know comics when I see them.” But a definition isn’t a theory.

There’s two ways to take the conversation about comics where sequence “doesn’t play a part.” I mean, sequence plays a part in prose literature too but we’ve learned to be extremely attentive to the work’s synchronic aspects: take the big-ticket conceit in Midnight’s Children, equating the promise of India’s democracy to the potential of 100 magical children and attributing the squandering of that promise to prejudice, fear, and lack of belief. That conceit is most meaningful when the book is viewed as a whole, from above, not through the diachronic experience of reading it or the arc of events throughout which it is interspersed. It’s not that the book doesn’t have sequence — it’s that there is an aspect of the book for which sequence is absolutely irrelevant. If my theory said that “sequence” was the essence that made it a novel, something would be missing.

But I’m not sure that’s the most interesting way to go with that question — it’s the important one but it’s not the most provocative. What if I wanted to consider this a comic?

I’m intrigued by the Rauschenberg example… requires further thought.

Hm, posted this and it disappeared. I think Charles is onto something below when he talks about comics being broken into frames/panels — some kind of segmentation may be more fundamental than “sequence.” Could I have asked that question about Pollock instead of Rauschenberg? I don’t know…maybe about this?

But they’re concerned with properties of their objects independent of those social and historical aspects.

Well, so is comics formalism. My argument would be that the very social dimension of comics that you seek to sidestep is in fact the source of that formalism. But that doesn’t make the formalism invalid as a tool.

The larger question I was trying to raise is whether we can impute “properties” to objects independent of a social discourse that enables us to recognize, isolate and study those properties.

Comics does not have a philosophical delineation of its abstract structure that includes sequence as a part of that structure…

See, I think this is untrue, Caro. Comics does have, and is continuing to develop, an immanent vocabulary for dealing with these issues, one that arises from the very structure of comics. There is indeed an emerging philosophical delineation of comics (notable in Groensteen’s notion of comics as system). What I hear you saying–and correct me if I’m misreading you–is that you consider this delineation, as it now stands, too mired in the sociohistorical particulars of comics and comics fandom, and you would like some larger conceptualizing outside of those boundaries.

My response to that would be that comics theory will not arise wholly outside of comics culture, but rather, and necessarily, from within it. As WJT Mitchell argues in Picture Theory (and I believe I referenced this during our recent HU discussions as well), the immanent or, if you will, native vocabulary of a field ought not to be discarded in our quest for a higher synthesis.

Here is my attempt at a broad delineation of what comics do, from the blog for this semester’s comics course, which I’m about to start teaching:

visual art that tells stories–or presents situations and ideas, or juxtaposes ideas, or makes arguments, or breaks down scenes or settings into multiple aspects–via successive still images in series.

Pretty broad and slippery, I’d say, but note my stubborn retention of the word “successive.” :)

I do note that you use “series” instead of “sequence”.

Ah, now there you have me. And the distinction isn’t just hair-splitting. As I see it, the series is objectively present, whereas the sequence is that which readers work toward, assuming that they read with that expectation of sequentiality in mind, as I beleive comics readers generally do.

My reading of “Magic Forest” is based on a series of images that I read, due to habit and expectation, as following a left-right, top-bottom sequence, but I grant that there doesn’t seem to be any clearly enunciable narrative content in the work that demands such a reading. Still, in the context of a “comics” reading, that is the first thing I do, I think: try to turn the series into a sequence in such a way as to reveal a narrative or progression, one that necessarily has a direction. I do think that Larmee doesn’t quite give us that here, and I consider that a strength rather than a weakness of the work; however, I still think there is an assumption of sequence and directionality that hovers around, or behind, my experience of the work. I’d call that the “ghost” of comics reading that haunts my encounter with this particular page.

Agreed, the convention says “read this as a (narrative) sequence”. That’s what it took me a few times to start thinking of it as not a (narrative) sequence but a (non-narrative) series.

I think you can see the opposite shift occur in some of the “fine arts”, where we are used to seeing series with no direct sequencing involved.

Comics does have, and is continuing to develop, an immanent vocabulary for dealing with these issues, one that arises from the very structure of comics. There is indeed an emerging philosophical delineation of comics (notable in Groensteen’s notion of comics as system).

Absolutely — I think it is emerging. But I don’t think it’s emerged. I don’t think comics has hit that point where there’s a stable, solid, reliable body of theory to fall back on — there are still lots of questions that need lots of theoretical effort. My initial point was that sequence wasn’t well-theorized, and that it was one of the weakest attributes of what was theorized, so the statement you quote here is indeed too strong out of context. What it was intended to mean is that this theoretical project is not completed to the point that we no longer need to put concentrated focused effort into the non-historical aspects. We don’t want to say, “oh look, Groensteen’s good. Let’s go with what he said. Hurray, we’re done.” (Not that I think you’re saying that…)

I like Groensteen’s book a lot, but I don’t think it resolves these questions about sequence, and I don’t think it’s become any sort of standard that automatically feeds back into conversations — even conversations more concerned with history — the way comparable theoretical efforts in linguistics and literature have.

But, yes, I do also think that even Systeme, which is far and away the best shot at this yet, is “too mired in the sociohistorical particulars of comics and comics fandom,” even though it’s much less so than many other attempts and definitions.

I don’t see why the options here are either “wholly outside” or “necessarily from within.” The meaningful theoretical efforts in other art forms that come to my mind happened in dialogues between the within and without. Rosalind Krauss’s engagement with linguistic philosophy; Fredric Jameson’s recasting of Freud. To use the Lacan example again: he did not work within film; he was not a film scholar in any respect — but he did sit down with Bunuel and Langlois at 3am to see El, and their conversations influenced the Seminars in ’54 and again in the seminars on Ethics at the end of the decade, and Lacan’s own ideas emerge in Bunuel’s work throughout his career (most obviously in Cet Obscur Object de Desir…)

Why is comics theory more necessarily bound to the parameters of its culture and history than the theory of any other artform? In 100 years, sequence might not be important to comics at all, but if we aren’t brave enough to ask whether it has to be, then doesn’t that reduce the chances?

visual art that tells stories–or presents situations and ideas, or juxtaposes ideas, or makes arguments, or breaks down scenes or settings into multiple aspects–via successive still images in series.

The next time Matthias accuses me of being too literary I’m going to send him your definition and tell him to come yell at you instead! :)

Successive followed by series! It’s twice the sequentiality!

Maybe can you expand a little on the “breaks down scenes into multiple aspects” before I dig into it? It’s certainly a definition that would preclude reading either the Rauschenberg or the Pollack I linked to as comics…

Why is comics theory more necessarily bound to the parameters of its culture and history than the theory of any other artform?

I don’t think it is. Bu then, nor do I think other artforms are free from the sociohistorical groundings of their attendant theories. I’m just being a materialist stick in the mud about these things. :)

I don’t think comics has hit that point where there’s a stable, solid, reliable body of theory to fall back on — there are still lots of questions that need lots of theoretical effort.

I think this will always be the case, and that is part of what prompts my involvement in these questions. There will always be orthodoxies to unsettle, new questions to ask, and old ones to ask again.

Theory in the sense we are discussing is not, I believe, a progressive undertaking like hard science in which older models are swept aside according to new empirical evidence, and in which new forms of knowledge may be said to succeed or supersede old ones. Theory doesn’t get things “right” and then get settled; it circles, renews, comes back.

I don’t think it’s become any sort of standard that automatically feeds back into conversations…the way comparable theoretical efforts in linguistics and literature have.

Ah, but, see, I regard these kinds of standards as questionable, and potentially tyrannous. I want to have further and more intense engagement with the questions, but not the kind of exclusionary framing that takes place when theory becomes standardized. Of course, I agree that certain questions and issues should become part of the repertoire of theorists in the field–let’s take sequentiality as one such example–but I would hate to have a situation in which not only the questions but also the answers feed back into the conversation in a kind of predictable lockstep, the way so much humanities theory now does in classrooms and curricula far and wide.

I think what we’re talking about here, underneath it all, is my resistance to decontextualizing moves that put theory before history. But I can chalk that up partly to my roots and my stubbornness. The question of sequence you raised remains an interesting and important one; forgive me if I’m browbeating!

You’re not browbeating! Perfectly valid argument…I don’t disagree with you about the problems in the academy. I left academia largely for those reasons. Theory is not only entrenched, it’s entrenched in a way that results in a lot of bad theory.

But I do think that it’s a problem caused by materialist conditions in the academy rather than with the various Hegelianisms that inform a lot of theoretical practice. I don’t think you can pin what happened post-theory in the academy just on the Idealist projects, or that it would solve the problems in the humanities if we could go back to the beginning of the 20th century and push all the post-Hegelian philosophical discourses in more materialist directions. If we could make Lacan more rigorously materialist, we’d just have a differently entrenched Lacan, because it isn’t the Hegelian aspect of theory that has caused its entrenchment in the academy. There’s a baby with the bathwater problem there…I guess I’m the sort of materialist who feels that any corrective must be dialectical. :)

But more to the point here, if you pick the methodology of humanities academia to push against in this context, you’re sort of pushing back against something spectral, since academic theory isn’t an immoveable force in comics — it isn’t a force in comics at all. There isn’t a single article on comics in either October or Diacritics. (I haven’t searched Critical Inquiry.) Comics has a different orthodoxy — a non-theoretical orthodoxy, mired in the fandom and the artform’s history — but it’s still an orthodoxy, worth pushing back against for the same reasons that you’re giving for pushing back against theory. But it’s such a materialist orthodoxy that, at least dialectically, it makes sense for the push-back position to be some sort of Idealism…

I like your distinction between series and sequence; I think it’s useful — I’ve still got something to push back against there but I’m gonna have to do some work to articulate it. It’s probably going to have something to do with the Jakobsonian metaphor:substitution::metonymy:sequence and deMan’s corrective that metaphor is not substitution (which is still sequential, I think, for him?) but combination…but I can’t articulate it yet.

…academic theory isn’t an immoveable force in comics — it isn’t a force in comics at all. There isn’t a single article on comics in either October or Diacritics. (I haven’t searched Critical Inquiry.)

Well, you’re stacking the decks a bit by starting out at “the top,” whereas most applications of theory in academia occur in far less august circumstances. These processes are trickle-up, generally, no?

But OK.

Oh I think that must have come off snottier than I intended; I’m so sorry. :( I didn’t have the impression that comics studies was particularly trying to place articles in those journals. They’re very much theory-first sort of journals, and comics studies is very much work-first. That’s what I meant by theory not being much of a force in comics…

“Snottier than I intended” — I didn’t mean it to be snotty at all! I’m stopping now LOL.

At least, until I’ve thought about the real issues regarding sequence and have something useful to say…thank you both for the great discussion. Looking forward to more later!

Ack, I missed this:

The larger question I was trying to raise is whether we can impute “properties” to objects independent of a social discourse that enables us to recognize, isolate and study those properties.

It’s not the “independent” that I’m on about — it’s the singular social discourse… the privileging of comics’ specific, narrow sociohistorical context. I think that was probably clear in what I just wrote.

Although I’m not entirely sure I understand what you mean when you say that the “social dimension of comics…is the source of the formalism,” so maybe I should be asking that first…

I mean, it sounds like an ontological point — all theorizing emerges from a context. Which I buy, But you’re deploying it as an epistemological one: theory can only know that which belongs to its proper context. Which I don’t buy. Context is shifting. History with a capital H is inescapable; specific historical particularities can be challenged, undermined, expanded, shifted — with the resulting effects on the theories that come out of those shifted contexts. There’s no such thing as a “proper context”… there’s no reason (yet) other than historical convention and cultural context why that Rauschenberg collage isn’t comics…

Although I guess you might have been saying that there’s a Groensteen argument against it? Maybe point me?

…you seem to state that without a reading order something isn’t comics at all.

You’re right. That’s what I’m saying, as I now realize.

But I’m not making this argument on some ahistorical ontological basis; I’m trying to acknowledge that all such determinations are socially made.

That’s why I pushed back so hard against Caro’s suggestion that comics formalism could be ahistorical, or disconnected from comics’ social history.

…order is superimposed…

Yes, and that act of superimposition is the very thing that constitutes the work as “comics,” isn’t it?

It isn’t simply that I the reader am doing the superimposing, either. I suspect an idea of readable sequence is anterior to and constitutive of any work that its creator poses as comics.

You can look at a painting and posit a reading order.

Sure. I do that all the time. But I tend to do it more when the surface is broken into frames, or panels, and more so when those panels seem to encapsulate repetitive figural imagery.

Enough harping for tonight!

Really interesting conversation.

“and that act of superimposition is the very thing that constitutes the work as “comics,” isn’t it?”

I think this is the point at issue, yes? That is, Charles is saying that the most important (the only?) social-historical fact which makes comics comics is the use of sequence. If you get rid of sequence, it’s not comics. This is pretty much McCloud’s deal too, right? Which is why single-panel cartoons don’t get to be comics but hieroglyphs do.

Caro’s arguing (or suggesting) that sequence might not be the whole deal. Maybe something could be comics without the sequence, perhaps working off of some other aspect of comics — the use of panels, for example, or the use of familiar characters, or of cartooning, or the juxtaposition of words and images.

For example, what if you had an Andy Warholish page of Tintin heads; all the same head, repeated on a grid say 20 times. The repetition seems like it would pretty thoroughly obviate sequence. But…it’s tintin. And there are panels. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a comic if it were hanging in a gallery…but what if it were a pamphlet sold through the direct market? Obviously there’d be trouble with the Herge estate, but presuming you saw it before it received the cease and desist letter…wouldn’t that be a comic? At least conceivably?

I think the issue of sequence in comics is pretty fascinating. But I find it *least* interesting as a means of defining what comics is or isn’t. To me it seems more useful to think of comics as a medium which has explored sequence rather than one defined by sequence. Abstract comics like Blaise’s do often work off the tension between a potential narrative and the frustration of that narrative…but I don’t think that’s the only way abstract comics could go. It seems like you could also use panels and speech bubbles and other signals to work in the tradition of comics while abandoning sequence altogether.

I’d like to entirely divorce formal and definitional issues, basically. I think mediums are social/cultural phenomena. Formal issues arise from the medium’s history, as Charles’ says, but since history is still moving on, form can move on too. It’s not that hard to imagine a future in which abstract comics are enough of a presence that the presumption of sequence when viewing them no longer holds.

In some ways, the emphasis on sequence just seems to mean that comics hasn’t really had it’s modernist moment yet…..

Charles is saying that the most important (the only?) social-historical fact which makes comics comics is the use of sequence. If you get rid of sequence, it’s not comics. This is pretty much McCloud’s deal too, right? Which is why single-panel cartoons don’t get to be comics but hieroglyphs do.

I didn’t intend to say this, and in fact I disagree with McCloud re: single-panel cartoons, which to my view are comics inasmuch as they are part of the same tradition of cartooning, publishing, and use.

I don’t think that’s the only way abstract comics could go. It seems like you could also use panels and speech bubbles and other signals to work in the tradition of comics while abandoning sequence altogether.

Perhaps. We started by discussing a work that eschews speech bubbles and many other symbols familiar to comics readers but yet retains a traditional page shape and panel grid. Were Larmee to use balloons in “Magic Forest,” I expect our discussion would have gone in a very different direction (heh). Of course there are a number of ingenious uses of balloons among the comics collected in Molotiu’s Abstract Comics anthology.

It’s not that hard to imagine a future in which abstract comics are enough of a presence that the presumption of sequence when viewing them no longer holds.

Actually, it is hard for me to imagine that. If we imagine a work that lacks sequence and also lacks balloons and other common symbols associated with comics, I think we’re imagining a work that very few readers, even specialists, would recognize as “comics.”

Of course, there are other markers or signals of “comics” besides formal ones, perhaps the most obvious being social context (as you say, Noah, Perhaps it wouldn’t be a comic if it were hanging in a gallery…but what if it were a pamphlet sold through the direct market?). But the absence of both discernible sequence and devices like word balloons would, I think, make a work very hard to recognize as comics in any case. More to the point–and this is an observation McCloud makes with regard to non sequiturs in comics–the very placement of images in a comics grid is likely to make readers impute sequence even if the creator, as in Patrick’s sketchbook example (below), consciously intended none.

In some ways, the emphasis on sequence just seems to mean that comics hasn’t really had it’s modernist moment yet…..

Comics will never have its “Modernist moment,” not in terms hospitable to the prevailing historical narrative of Modernism. That moment is past. One can see, of course, all kinds of radical formal experimentation in the comics of the past 30-40 years that would seem to cry out Modernism!–the kind of Spiegelman work collected in Breakdowns is one obvious example–but comics will not recapitulate the developmental narratives of previous eras and other forms. Bart Beaty wrestles with this issue in a chapter on Modernism v. Postmodernism in his (excellent) book Unpopular Culture, which deals with the Eurocomics avant-garde of the 1990s. In general, the whole narrative of succession or supercession implied by the critical fictions of Modernism v. Postmodernism is bogus, IMO.

In any case, I argue that Modernism is as much a historically situated social as well as artistic phenomenon, and therefore will not happen again. Saying that comics hasn’t had its Modernist moment yet implies, to me, that there is some necessary but deferred intellectual coming of age that comics must go through, and that that process can be judged by whether and how comics approach the history of other consecrated cultural forms, as in, Will comics finally achieve Modernism?, Will comics studies finally do what film studies has done?, Will comics become more like painting?, and so on. I reject that kind of teleological developmental model. There is no historical precedent for the moment that comic (and we) are now living through.

Since the blog has shown an open minded approach to a whole range of comics, maybe one of you guys might be interested in further discussion of reading order as applied to the Jim Steranko piece “Frogs.”
Steranko is an interesting study because he eagerly makes love to the most pulpish kind of genre trappings while experimenting with structure and form in a sophisticated way.
Steranko suggested the piece could be read horizontally, vertically, or in any other order the reader liked.
I suggested, to Steranko’s publisher David Spurlock, the large grid be reprinted as a card set so that readers could experiment with a wide variety of reading order.

Hi Patrick, where might we find this Steranko piece? Is that the Nick Fury one, I mentioned above?

Derik, The piece was first published as a two page spread at tabloid size in Comixscene #3, 1973.
A very small but complete version can be seen here:
http://www.thedrawingsofsteranko.com/frogs.html
My thought is a set of 48 cards which could be arranged in various reading orders would fit Steranko’s suggested intent.

I found that piece very straightforward as far as the reading goes. Up-down, left-right. The extra lines that separate the columns got me reading that way from the start and the more direct narrative connection from panel 1 (top right corner) to panel 2 (just below it), rather than in moving across the row, added a level of confirmation. Numerous other juxtapositions in the pages enforce that reading order for me.

As Steranko suggested multiple reading orders could be edited together.
One of the more obvious would be a strict chronological order with no cross-cutting between episodes.