Terminology: "art comics", "mainstream"

The Bookscan sales figures debate/mudfight is giving me a headache. I have nothing to add to the debate about the significance of the figures, or the accuracy of Brian Hibbs's analysis. Thereof I cannot speak. Whereof I can speak, however, is the matter of terminology, which is tripping up a lot of people and causing irritation all round.

What is an "art comic"? Dick Hyacinth wants to say that "art/literary comics" are "comics for which creative expression outweighs market considerations". Possibly that's what the term "art comics" should mean, on a simple, intuitive reading of the words; but in practice, that definition would be completely useless, because how would you tell? I mean, sure, sometimes it's obvious. (I sincerely doubt that Dylan Meconis decided to create a webcomic about a fictional 18th-century German theologian because that's how you make the big bucks.) But what about, say, The Umbrella Academy? I don't have a clue what Gerard Way had in mind when he created that series, or why he wrote it in the way that he did; it seems unlikely that he did it for the money (I'm sure My Chemical Romance earns him more than The Umbrella Academy ever will), though perhaps his collaborator Gabriel Bà was only in it for the spondulicks. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that that is indeed the case: a writer who's in it for the art and nothing but; an artist who's in it for the money and nothing but. Does that disqualify it from being "art comics"? What if their positions are reversed and the writer's in it for the money while the artist is in it for the art? And anyway, how does one determine -- even for oneself, let alone another person, let alone another person with whom one has no chance of directly communicating -- which of two motives is dominant at any given time?
The thing is, nice though it might be to classify all comics whose creation was dominated by creative considerations as "art comics", given the massive cachet the word "art" carries with it, we have no way of knowing which comics would fall into that category without developing telepathy. (And if I ever develop telepathy, I'm going to use it to fight crime and pick up women, not to improve the accuracy of comics bloggers' terminology.) But perhaps more importantly, that's not how the phrase "art comics" is actually used in practice. It seems to me that there's an established usage of "art comics" which refers to those comics that are the descendents-by-influence of the underground comix movement of the sixties. Essentially, any comic that wouldn't have looked out of place in the pages of Raw or Weirdo is an "art comic"; otherwise, no dice.

This is not what you'd conclude based on a cursory glance at the phrase, but, well, welcome to human language: "ladykiller" doesn't mean a killer of ladies, either. Words often don't mean what they seem to mean. "Art comics" was a phrase that arose in a particular context when the reading material available to American aficionados of sequential art was limited to

1) superhero comics;
2) newspaper strips; and
3) underground/son-of-underground "comix".

Of these three, it was only the third category that could be described as "comics for which creative expression outweighed market considerations", and so at the time, the phrase "art comics" made perfect sense as applied to those comics in particular. But then time passed, and other kinds of comics arose whose creators also valued art over commerce -- but they drew their influence from different sources than those the original "art comics" creators drew on, and their styles and stories were so markedly different that calling them by the same name didn't seem natural. Even their creators didn't call their works "art comics". (Heidi MacDonald notes an interview with Jeff Smith in which he seems a little bemused at the notion that Bone might be an "art comic".) And some of them, even the ones that were creator-owned and self-published in black and white, were both huge commercial successes and the exact opposite of "arty", being essentially slightly more edgy versions of the same kinds of stories put out by the superhero publishers. Any artistic category that puts, say, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in the same box as, say, My Troubles With Women, has pretty clearly become so broad as to be meaningless.

In general, a category that includes a more-or-less subjective value judgement is not as useful as a category that's merely descriptive. There's still some fuzziness to the definition of "art comics" as I've described it here (how do you discern the extent of the influence one group of artists has on another?), but I think we're less likely to fall over our own feet if we look on "art comics" as referring to an identifiable artistic movement -- a loose movement, mostly definable after the fact, but a movement all the same -- rather than an evaluation of the integrity or aspirations of the creators in question. The integrity and aspirations of comics creators are mysterious and in principle unknowable; the roots of their influences are not. A crucial thing to bear in mind is that on this account, saying "The Lonely Death of Got No Legs Boy[1] is not an art comic" is not the same thing as saying that TLDOGNLB is not art, or that it's inferior to those works that are art comics. On this account, to say "it's an art comic" is equivalent to saying "it's manga" or "the writer is British" or "it's black and white": it tells you something about the nature of the content, but not about its quality.

[1] Got No Legs Boy and The Lonely Death of Got No Legs Boy © & ™ Warren Ellis.

(Incidentally, on this account, no superhero or adventure comic can be an "art comic": art comics defined themselves at least partly by what they were not, and that meant superheroes. It seems to me, and I may be wrong, that art comics creators and fans tend to be more respectful of newspaper strips than superhero/adventure comics. I've always found this a little puzzling, but that's probably because newspaper strips are relatively insignificant on this side of the pond.)

Now, another windmill: "mainstream". What does "mainstream" mean in relation to comics? What is "the comics mainstream"?

In practice, when people say "mainstream comics" they almost invariably mean superheroes and superhero-like or superhero-slipstream titles; this is not because they think there's something inherently "central" about superheroes, but because superheroes (and superhero-like etc.) dominate the Direct Market. This is a fact, not a value judgement. Superheroes are the "mainstream" of the DM, at least in terms of sales figures -- they are the "main stream" of revenue for DM stores.

"But Katherine!" I hear you cry, "surely the whole Bookscan controversy is about the question of whether or not the DM is numerically significant compared to the bookstore market! You can't take for granted the precise issue that's under debate like that! That's begging the question!" Well, sort of. The thing is, I'm not really interested in the question of what the comics mainstream "really is" (I'll get back to that later). At this point, I'm only looking at usage. Who uses the phrase "mainstream comics"? Not people who buy their comics in bookstores, that's for damned sure. The only people who know enough and care enough about comics to know (and care) that there is a distinction to be made between "mainstream" and "not mainstream" ("alternative", "indie", what-have-you) are people who do at least some of their shopping in the DM. For them, the DM is significant. And in the DM... well, have you been to a comics store lately? Even those stores that aren't run by superhero enthusiasts will tend to stock a huge number of superhero titles -- more than any other single genre. Look at Diamond's sales charts and you'll see the same dominance on a larger scale.

I'll say it again: in the DM, superhero comics (and those titles that somewhat resemble superhero comics) are the mainstream. It doesn't do any good to get bent out of shape about it. You can say what you like about, say, Shortcomings representing the "true mainstream": the figures are not there to back it up.

However. When commentators talk about the "new mainstream" or "true mainstream", what they're talking about is not really sales so much as cultural respectability, because that's how it works for other media. In prose fiction, the biggest-selling genres in the USA are "religious/inspirational" and romance, but romance is not considered "mainstream", despite the fact that in 2006, romance outsold literary fiction three to one. Romance novels do not get reviewed in non-specialist newspapers or magazines. Romance novelists are not asked to appear on The Arts Show or Newsnight Review to give their opinions on the latest films/plays/art exhibits. No romance novelist ever has to worry that her[2] novels will be made inaccessible to generations of schoolchildren by being chosen as set texts for English exams.

[2] Romance novelists are more often women than men, and if you think that has nothing to do with the genre's lack of cultural respectability, you're a less cynical person than I.

My point being: sales don't necessarily translate to respect. They don't even necessarily translate to awareness, if the sales are limited to a niche group with relatively little cultural influence. The fact that The Lonely Death of Got No Legs Boy sells 500,000 copies as compared to I Have An MA In Creative Writing, I Don't Need A Plot's 5,000 doesn't matter if the 500,000 people who bought TLDOGNLB are all comics fans, while a dozen of the 5,000 people who bought IHAMICWIDNAP are professional taste-makers: literary editors, radio hosts, TV hosts, critics with great influence.[3] The kind of people who get your work talked about by people who haven't read it and probably never will.

[3] I promise to stop using the word "influence" real soon now.

Those commentators who say[4] that superheroes are not mainstream are not, in most cases, claiming that superheroes do not dominate the DM. They're claiming that superhero comics are not the kind of comics that are likely to gain cultural respectability for the medium. And they're right. I could go into great detail as to why they're right[5], but what matters is that they are right. Comics at present are not mainstream in that sense, and it's not through superhero stories that they will become mainstream.

[4] Although one of the frustrating things about this kind of debate is that people almost never actually say what their position is, and you have to infer it from the way they talk around it. As a result, people who disagree with each other end up talking past each other because they use the same word to mean different things, sometimes mutually incompatible things, and I end up banging my head against the keyboard and yelling "WOULD IT KILL YOU PEOPLE TO DEFINE YOUR TERMS?"

[5] Short version: partly because most contemporary critics and taste-makers in mainstream culture are snobbish, conservative and jaded and wouldn't know an entertaining story if it bit them on the arse; also because most superhero comics are written to appeal to people who are already devoted to superhero comics and as a result are either trivial or repulsive to those who are not.

However... the fact that certain graphic novels resemble literary fiction doesn't actually make them "mainstream" in this sense. They are, at best, potentially mainstream. There remains something outré about the comics medium as a whole, despite Maus winning a Pulitzer and Jimmy Corrigan winning the Guardian First Book Award and Fun Home being named Time magazine's book of the year. Outstanding literary-fictionesque works are praised in the mainstream press, but they don't often lead to a re-evaluation of the medium as a whole. Their cumulative effect may be to drag comics kicking and screaming into the mainstream, but we're not there yet.

(Proof that we are not there yet #1: When I tell people I meet that I review graphic novels, the most frequent response is "Graphic novels? What are graphic novels?" Saying "you know, comic books?" is usually not enough; it's necessary to provide examples. By the time I get through the explanation, most people have lost interest.

Proof that we are not there yet #2: When I appeared on The Arts Show, the host, poet and playwright Vincent Woods, cheerfully admitted (after the mikes were switched off) that he knew nothing about comics and probably wouldn't do anything to change this.)

Since comics as a whole are not culturally "mainstream", it seems a bit silly to me to make a distinction between "mainstream comics" and "non-mainstream comics" that's based on cultural factors rather than sales. To call your favourite available-in-bookstores guaranteed-100%-cape-free graphic novel "mainstream" because you think it'd stand up well to the scrutiny of respectable critics is wishful thinking at best. In the cultural sense, there is no comics mainstream. In the wider culture, comics are non-mainstream by definition. To people outside comics culture, it doesn't matter whether it's La Perdida or Bone or Identity Crisis -- it's comics, and therefore it's weird.

Meanwhile, to people inside comics culture, "mainstream" has become a contested term, because while it's not really disputable that the Direct Market, and comics culture generally, is dominated by superhero comics, even people who like superhero comics are dimly aware that this is an odd and perhaps unnatural state of affairs.

But recognising that this state of affairs is odd and unnatural doesn't make it go away.

Me, I'm not that much of a superhero fan. When I look at my "to-read" pile, I can see that only six of the graphic novels in it are superhero-related. (That sounds like a lot, but it's six out of 29, and that's not including the French comics I get from the library at the Alliance Française.) I like superhero comics just fine, but they're not what I'm chiefly interested in, and I'd be very pleased if the shadow they cast on the market were to diminish, leaving a bigger patch of sunlight in which multiple other kinds of comics could flourish. I think this would be good for comics not just because diversity is good in itself, but because superhero comics are narrow: their range is limited, by definition. Indeed, I think the dominance of superhero comics has been bad for superhero comics themselves. Can anyone deny that the periods when superhero comics have been most dominant in the market have also been the periods when they've been at their dreariest and most inward-looking? It's the superhero creators who take ideas[6] from outside superhero comics who've been the ones to shake up the superhero genre and make it interesting again.

[6] Look! Look! I didn't use the word "influence"! I'm getting better!

That is to say: I'd be glad to see "mainstream" mean something other than superheroes. In fact, I think the rise in prominence of Vertigo over the past fifteen years or so has done a lot to chip away at superheroes' dominance, as has the rise of smaller publishers like Oni and SLG and IDW, who generally don't do superheroes, but don't do art comics (as I've defined them) either. As a result of sterling work on the part of the editors at these publshing houses[7], and the gradual accumulation of high-calibre non-"art comics" self-published titles, the concept of what's "mainstream" has broadened.

[7] Why am I crediting the editors and not the creators? Because if the editors weren't willing to take a risk on slightly off-centre projects like The Exterminators or Love As A Foreign Language or Midnight Sun, they'd never see the light of day.

I've been using "superheroes" a bit loosely in this entry, just to avoid having to type out:

"superhero comics, comics drawn in a superhero-derived style, comics using plot tropes derived from superhero comics, comics which resemble superhero comics in having a similar focus on action/adventure and stylised combat, comics created by writers and/or artists better known for their superhero work or who got their start in superhero comics and remain positively disposed towards superhero comics, comics with none of the above qualities that are published by Marvel, DC, or Image, and/or comics with none of the above qualities that are nonetheless popular with people who read superhero comics almost exclusively."

This, you see, is what I mean by "superhero slipstream". The term "slipstream" was first used by Bruce Sterling to refer to prose fiction that was not quite science fiction, not really fantasy, but not strictly mundane either; literary fiction that science fiction fans could enjoy, or science fiction that literary fiction snobs could admit to liking. So in comics, "superhero slipstream" means: comics that aren't exactly superhero comics, but they're not too far away from them either. They're informed and inspired by superhero comics even if they're not actually superhero comics themselves. And in recent years the slipstream titles have been getting more and more significant, such that "mainstream" can now unproblematically accommodate Scalped or Y: The Last Man -- or, heck, The Invisibles, which is a weird, weird comic book, but gets a pass due to Morrison's previous work on Animal Man and Doom Patrol.[8] The slipstream's been getting wider and wider, and so has the concept of what's "mainstream" in the DM. And this is good.

[8] Not that Animal Man and Doom Patrol weren't deeply weird in their own ways -- but they were deeply weird within a superhero framework.

But. The slipstream remains the slipstream of superhero comics and not of any other genre or style-cluster. The comics mainstream (insofar as there is one, and I've already argued that in terms of the wider culture, there isn't) remains centred on superhero comics, if not actually constituted by them.

If publishers of comics that are more like literary fiction than superhero stories want to use the word "mainstream" as a marketing technique, I can't stop them, though I wish they wouldn't. But let's not kid ourselves that this accurately represents reality. Maybe one day it will, but I say again: we're not there yet.