The Education of a Comics Artist
The Education of a Comics Artist. Ed. Michael Dooley and Steven Heller. NY: Allworth Press, 2005.
This collection of short (averaging about 3 pages) writings on comics needed to be either longer or shorter, somewhere between the interesting pieces that were all too short and the pieces that seemed completely pointless a solution could be found. This book covers an impressive range of subjects under the umbrella of “comics” from newspaper strips to superheroes to manga to educational comics. How much of this will be of interest to any one reader would depend on their prior knowledge and interests.
I’m curious as to the editorial direction of the book. Many of the pieces made me think that the editors selected a person to write and then just let them ramble on about whatever they wanted. The book is divided into sections such as “Political Comics”, “Editorial Cartoons”, “The Business of Comics”, and “Graphic Novels.” Some of these sections fail to maintain coherency or sense. The “Action/Adventure Comics” section features a nice overview of superhero comics art styles from Arlen Shumer and then an interview with Jim Steranko about his deviation from the Kirby/Lee Marvel style in the 70’s, but this is followed by short interviews with Barron Story, Bill SIenkiewicz, and Dave McKean, none of which are really known for superhero/action comics (maybe Sienkiewicz, but not in the recent past).
A bunch of standouts in the book:
The last section of the book “Lesson Plans” with James Sturm, Ted Stearn, and Matt Madden about teaching comics is an excellent section. Tim Kreider’s “Throwing the Book at Comics Artists” is a great little piece that says a few things that needed to be said: “Comics authors are too often rewarded with critical acclaim for their ambitions as much as for their achievements, congratulated just for trying to produce “serious” work–even if that work is kind of cliched, derivative fiction, abstruse academic exercises, or warmed-over journal material that would get more or less diplomatically beaten out of apprentice fictionists in any undergraduate writing workshop.” (190) (Well I don’t know about that latter part, but the sentiment is spot on.) He continues: “Adrian Tomine is an excellent cartoonist, but if he were working in prose instead of panels he would be regarded as a minor minimalist, a footnote to that trend’s vogue twenty years ago.”
Craig Yoe writes about comic artists’ need to explore the roots and classics of the medium. Bart Beaty writes an overview of European comics and Dan Nadel finally clued me in on what “Fort Thunder” is/was. Tom Spurgeon writes about mini-comics. One of the most interesting in the book is Leonard Rifas on educational comics, a genre I never gave any thought to before. Jessica Abel writes about discovering plot and conflict in Archie comics (oddly even though she explicitly talks about using this discover for teaching, the essay does not appear in the “Lesson Plans” section where it would have made the most sense).
Anyway, it is an educational read, but there’s too much fluff in it, too often the essays were people rambling on about themselves.
I should note that thankfully the book has a pretty big index.
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Edit (8/22/05): Editor Michael Dooley left a response in the comments, I’m reproducing it here so it doesn’t get lost:
Thank you so much for the thoughtful review of the book I co-edited, Mr. Badman. I appreciate your comments, both positive and negative, although, as you’d expect, I don’t concur with the critiques you raise.
I’ll leave it to the readers to determine how much is fluff and ramble and how much is worthwhile and entertaining. But if I may, I’d like to clarify and amplify on some of your specific comments.
For starters, we did not let any of our contributors simply “ramble on about whatever they wanted.” The book was more than a year in the making, with each and every essay assigned to specific writers with specific directions after much careful preplanning between Steven Heller and myself. All submitted texts were edited, sometimes very heavily, to maintain our editorial focus while allowing for a diversity of voices.
I should also note that the book is not “divided into sections such as ‘Political Comics,’ ‘Editorial Cartoons,’ ‘The Business of Comics,’ and ‘Graphic Novels’.” It is organized into five specific sections. The first one, “The Comics Field,” has chapters on political comics, editorial cartoons, graphic novels, and other comics genres. Section four, “The Comics Profession,” has chapters on the “business” and the “creation,” or, if you like, a look at the profession with respect to the “left” and “right” sides of the brain. A complete table of contents can be found on the publisher’s site and will, I hope, indicate that the material is not randomly strewn as your description suggests. You can also click through Amazon.com’s “search inside this book” pages.
As you note, our “Action/Adventure Comics” chapter opens with Arlen Schumer’s “superhero” overview and a Steranko interview. By the way, Schumer’s piece is seven pages long. And Steranko’s runs for six pages. The rest of the chapter has five pages (six, counting the illustration) on master instructor Barron Storey (remember, this book is titled “The Education…”) and three or four pages each, plus illustrations, on some of his spiritual heirs: Sienkiewicz, McKean, and David Mack. The subject of superheroes is briefly mentioned here, but we gave this chapter the broad “action/adventure” title so we could include the very significant sub-genre that has grown out of DC’s Vertigo line which, as I describe in my foreword, “helps fill the chasm between traditional mainstream and alternative” comics literature.
As to why it made the most sense for us to include Jessica Abel’s essay in the “Kids’ and Teens’ Comics” chapter rather than with the lesson plans, I should point out that her main focus is not on the lesson itself but rather on its evolutionary process, and on how even a comic on the level of “Archie” can provide an Education (there’s that word again) for anyone perceptive and willing enough to learn.
I am glad that, among your list of the praiseworthy aspects of “The Education of a Comics Artist” you found our “Lesson Plans” chapter to be excellent. You may also be interested to know that a half-dozen syllabi are available for free, as PDF downloads, on the publisher’s catalog page for our book… including a 14-week, 20-page Storytelling course by Abel and Matt Madden that incorporates Archie, Oubapo, and much more.
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Those syllabi Michael mentions are quite interesting. Take a look.
Tags: anthologies, Comics
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