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Why Comics?
Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere | Hillary Chute
30 posts | 2 read | 9 to read
Filled with beautiful full-color art, dynamic storytelling, and insightful analysis, Hillary Chutes Why Comics? reveals what makes one of the most critically acclaimed and popular art forms unique and so appealing, and how it got that way. Over the past century, fans have elevated comics from the back pages of newspapers into one of our most celebrated forms of culture, from Fun Home, the Tony Awardwinning musical based on Alison Bechdels groundbreaking graphic memoir, to the dozens of superhero films that are annual blockbusters worldwide. What is the essence of comics appeal? What does this art form do that others cant? Whether youve read every comic you can get your hands on or youre just starting your journey, Why Comics? has something for you. Author Hillary Chute chronicles comics culture, explaining underground comics (also known as comix) and graphic novels, analyzing their evolution, and offering fascinating portraits of the creative men and women behind them. Chute reveals why these worksa blend of concise words and striking visualsare an extraordinarily powerful form of expression that stimulates us intellectually and emotionally. Focusing on ten major themesdisaster, superheroes, sex, the suburbs, cities, punk, illness and disability, girls, war, and queernessChute explains how comics gets its messages across more effectively than any other form. Why Disaster? explores how comics are uniquely suited to convey the scale and disorientation of calamity, from Art Spiegelmans representation of the Holocaust and 9/11 to Keiji Nakazawas focus on Hiroshima. Why the Suburbs? examines how the work of Chris Ware and Charles Burns illustrates the quiet joys and struggles of suburban existence; and Why Punk? delves into how comics inspire and reflect the punk movements DIY aestheticsgiving birth to a democratic medium increasingly embraced by some of todays most significant artists. Featuring full-color reproductions of more than one hundred essential pages and panels, including some famous but never-before-reprinted images from comics legends, Why Comics? is an indispensable guide that offers a deep understanding of this influential art form and its masters.
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belacat
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Carol & John's Comic Book Shop in Cleveland Ohio is the place to be on #freecomicbookday. This shop appeared briefly in the film, American Splendor.

Leftcoastzen Harvey! 5y
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quirkyreader
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Today‘s comic score.

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BookishMarginalia
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New books. Couldn‘t help myself! 🤷🏻‍♀️😎

TieDyeDude Can someone shove that book in Bill Maher's face? 5y
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review
Lindy
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Pickpick

An eloquent exploration of comics format and its importance as a contemporary cultural medium. Be prepared for somewhat academic prose, but that‘s what‘s needed for this deep dive taken by an expert. Some of the major themes studied include disaster, sex, disability, girlhood, war, & queerness. I learned a lot & have a better understanding of why I enjoy reading comics.

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Lindy
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Comics does not propose linear reading in the same way prose does. Cognitively, one‘s eye usually first takes in the full page, even when one decides to start in the upper left corner & move left to right. This is sometimes called comics‘ “all-at-onceness,” or its “symphonic effect.” Reading can happen in all directions; this open-endedness & attention to choice in how one interacts with the pages is a part of the appeal of comics narrative.

TobeyTheScavengerMonk J. H. Williams III‘s art is just the best of the best of the best. 6y
Lindy @TobeyTheScavengerMonk Yes! And thanks for naming the artist, which I had intended to do in the comments because I ran out of room above. My fave is Williams work in 6y
TobeyTheScavengerMonk His work on Promethea was consistently stunning. I highly recommend it. 6y
Lindy @TobeyTheScavengerMonk Thanks, I‘ve made a note to revisit Promethea. While we‘re geeking out on superhero art, I also love Dave Taylor‘s 6y
TobeyTheScavengerMonk Ooooo I‘m going to track that down! 6y
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Lindy
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The title Building Stories asks readers to think about domestic dwelling spaces & how they affect & are affected by people: the stories that come from buildings. It also asks readers, with its 3-dimensional collection of loose objects in a box, to think about the book itself as a kind of built space that gets completed through the individual process of reading: How does one build a story?
(My copy of Chris Ware‘s Building Stories is above.)

Lindy Have any of you read Building Stories? I‘m thinking of inviting friends over for a group reading & discussion. There‘s 14 different pieces, and they can be read in any order, so it‘s doable. 6y
jpmcwisemorgan This looks really interesting. 6y
Lindy @jpmcwisemorgan It‘s overwhelming, in a way, because it‘s multilayered and unstructured, yet when I let myself get sunk into the people‘s lives, especially the central character, I love it. 6y
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Mitch I‘ve got his @Lindy and really love it. I don‘t read graphic novels at all..but found the storytelling in this amazing. I liked having the physical structure of the house to hold on to. And I think I was as interested in the actual formats as the story. I like the idea of people each taking a section and then piecing it all together - an ambitious plan! 6y
Crystalblu I agree with it being overwhelming but enjoyable. All I can think of now is what a pain it must be for the library workers 😳 6y
Lindy @Crystalblu Yes, inconvenient for libraries. I noticed a comment online from a patron who goes by Expectopatronum: “Warning! This ‘book‘ is a GIANT BOX and you will feel like a fool carrying it through the library.” 6y
Crystalblu Haha! That is great! 6y
Lindy @Mitch It‘s encouraging to read your comments since I might invite people who are like you, and don‘t usually read graphic novels. I‘m thinking that everyone will eventually read all or most of the materials, over the course of a couple of hours. I have a lot of introvert friends, so it should be a pleasant evening. 😊 6y
Mitch It sounds like a great evening.... I think it‘ll be fun 👍🏼Let me know how it goes 6y
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Lindy
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Fan sites and fan publications in many instances provide the most detailed, interesting facts and insights about a work, creator or movement; oftentimes much less is gleaned from a comparable scholarly article. This has been a major lesson for me as a scholar of comics.

(Photo ‘Chewie‘s Angels‘ San Diego Comic-Con, 2016, by Keith Plocek.)

tournevis Preach!!!!!🙌 6y
LitsyGetsGraphic Cool 😎 6y
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Lindy
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In Fun Home, Bechdel uses two different representational styles: one that is heavily crosshatched, which is used for drawing the tone of photographs, & codes as realistic, & one that has crisper black line art & simpler shading, which anchors the world of the book. There‘s also a gray-green ink wash throughout that Bechdel has described as “elegiac.”

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Lindy
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The drawing of the Roy photograph, which arrives roughly halfway through the book, is “literally the core of the book,” Bechdel told me, its own “centrefold.” Bechdel‘s drawing of the photo is her book‘s only double-spread, and the space it takes up underlines its key role in shaping the premise of Fun Home.

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Lindy
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In the 1950s Batman & Robin, & Wonder Woman, were suspected to be gay & therefore a negative influence. Dr Frederic Wertham wrote, “the homosexual connotation of the Wonder Woman type of story is psychologically unmistakable …For girls she is a morbid ideal.”

saresmoore I was annoyed by the casting of Wonder Woman as a slinky sexpot in the recent films. I‘ve always seen her as a fierce femme. Fascinating how the comics shape perception. 6y
Lindy @saresmoore Interesting. I really liked Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. She was fierce enough for me. 6y
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Lindy
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…comics can evoke childhood, & particularly girlhood, so powerfully. Narratives of growth, of hybrid identities & developing selves, make sense—and flourish—in comics. This is because of the form‘s diary-like intimacy—its handwritteness—and its ability to take both granular & synthetic views at once.
(Image: Marjane Satrapi)

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Lindy
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It may be hard to remember or imagine just how unusual sensitive gay content was for the ‘funny pages‘ of mainstream newspapers even 25 years ago, but within a week, 19 papers had cancelled For Better or For Worse outright, many more had suspended the strip, and Johnston went on to receive over 2,500 personal letters (in the days before email) including death threats. ‘I learned that the comics page is a powerful communicator,‘ Johnston writes.

Nebklvr That is amazing 6y
Ruthiella Remember the TV show 30 something where just showing a gay couple in bed TALKING (not about sex) caused a huge uproar? Crazy times!!! 6y
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Lindy
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The mix of lowercase and uppercase brush-painted lettering has no narrative function, but it does have a visual function. It is decorative, and in its unpredictability and ornamental quality, it asks a reader to be aware of the body whose hand creates the comics; it ruffles the surface of the page.
(Image from Lynda Barry‘s One Hundred Demons)

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Lindy
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Sacco has described how landscape is a character in his comics—just as much as any person. While Sacco argues that traditional American journalism has ‘this tendency for uselessness as far as giving people a feel for what it‘s really like,‘ he contends that comics ‘is a very engaging journalistic medium‘ because ‘it allows a sense of time and place to seep in through the images.‘
(Image of a refugee camp from Sacco‘s Palestine.)

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Lindy
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Comics is a medium that involves a substantial degree of reader participation to stitch together narrative meaning. And the visual content of comics that once signalled a ‘lesser-than‘ literacy is now an integral part of our contemporary daily lives, as so much of our primary media intake, especially online, combines the verbal and the visual, often with a complexity we have learned to navigate quickly.
[Panel from Bechdel‘s Are You My Mother]

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Lindy
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Chute writes that Lynda Barry‘s love of drawing was not valued when she was growing up. “Her mother often accused her of wasting paper when she drew, but Barry copied R Crumb‘s Zap #0 in junior high...”
That anecdote reminds me of Karen Reyes, the young protagonist in My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, painstakingly copying the covers of her brother‘s horror comics.

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Lindy
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Once asked if making Maus was cathartic, Spiegelman responded that it would be like the catharsis of making “a 100-faceted wooden jewel box.” Putting one‘s experience into little boxes in space doesn‘t lend itself to the purging implied by catharsis. It‘s like building a visual, material, counter-edifice to express a mental edifice, a mental structure.

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Lindy
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Chute‘s style is articulate and academic: “Pekar innovated comics autobiography, widening its scope to include the working-class quotidian, and showing how comics could make the rhythms of daily life, especially in public spaces, evocative and communicable.”

batsy Great description of Pekar. Love him 🙌🏽 6y
Lindy @batsy Have you seen the film American Splendor? I had only read one of his books before seeing the film, then I had to read more after that. Interesting guy. 6y
batsy Yes, I loved it! Was living in Winnipeg at the time so could access his works via the library. I went through Pekar-fever ☺️ (No library system here & with the cost of a comic or graphic novel being 2-3 times more than a book, I've stopped reading graphic novels 😞) 6y
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Lindy @batsy No library? That‘s the saddest thing! 😞😞😞 6y
batsy Yes 😢 6y
Crystalblu I got to meet him years ago! He and I were just as awkward as one would expect. 6y
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Lindy
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It means one thing when [Chris] Ware draws a bedroom scene of a white couple in the suburbs; it means another thing when Jaime [Hernandez] draws a bedroom scene of two Latina lesbians in a tiny, crowded apartment: comics as a way to put marginalized bodies and psyches on the page. [Above, Maggie and Hopey “discuss the thorny intersection of gender, work, and immigration.”]

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Lindy
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The success of Hyperbole and a Half points to the vital, open creativity of webcomics—an easy-to-circulate platform that gives artists and biology majors alike a space to produce stories that address illness and disability, among so many other topics, and to share them meaningfully.

Andrea4 Omg, can't get enough of her!! 6y
readordierachel That book is really special. One of the funniest I've ever read but also so poignant and true. 6y
Lindy @Andrea4 @ReadOrDieRachel Brosh‘s second book, initially scheduled to come out in 2015 has been delayed indefinitely. I hope she is ok. (edited) 6y
readordierachel I hope so too 6y
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Lindy
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Gary Panter: “I like cruddy stuff. I always liked bad drawing.”
Hillary Chute: “For Panter, ‘bad drawing‘ is when the shakiness of the hand is intentionally evident. Its unevenness or looseness, as opposed to being concealed and corrected, becomes part of the surface of the page.”

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Lindy
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Bart‘s iconic hairline is lovingly lifted from cartoonist Gary Panter‘s punk everyman character Jimbo and his spiky hair—meaning that one of America‘s most beloved pop culture characters actually springs from a key figure in its groundbreaking punk scene.

(Above: Matt Groening comparing images of his Bart Simpson and Panter‘s Jimbo.)

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Lindy
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Comic-book superheroes are also tied to cities: Superman to Metropolis, Batman to Gotham City, Spider-Man to New York City. The first two can be understood as fictionalized versions of New York: comics writer Frank Miller says that Metropolis is New York in the day, and Gotham is New York at night.

(Image is from Batman: Death by Design)

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Lindy
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The first comic strip, in 1895, titled ‘Hogan‘s Alley‘ but known as ‘The Yellow Kid‘ starred a Lower East Side tenement Irish guttersnipe who got his nickname from his dingy yellow nightshirt. He would inspire the term ‘yellow journalism.‘

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Lindy
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In a section where Chute is writing about Chris Ware, she mentions that he designed the poster for a comics conference that she organized in 2012. Reading that, I thought, “Wait a minute! I know that poster! I remember that conference because I was there.” I didn‘t connect Chute‘s name with it, however. It was a memorable weekend in Chicago. Highlights are still online here: https://www.uchicago.edu/features/20120730_comics/

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Lindy
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As a boy after the war, Nakazawa could not afford paper to draw on, so he tore down movie posters from city streets and handcrafted books from them. He would cut the posters to size, stitch them into notebooks, and pencil his comics illustrations on their white backs.
(Image above is from Keiji Nakazawa‘s Barefoot Gen, which is about his experiences in Hiroshima.)

GondorGirl ❤❤❤ 6y
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Lindy
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Comics is not an illustrative form, in which the words and images match, but rather one that Marjane Satrapi has called ‘narrative drawing‘ and Art Spiegelman has called ‘picture writing,‘ in which the words and the images each move the narrative forward in different ways the reader creates out of the relationship between the two.

CSeydel Interesting! 6y
Gezemice Indeed, comics can do things text alone cannot, like having two - or more - stories parallel, indicate mood by color, etc. 6y
Lindy @CSeydel @Gezemice This quote reminded me that the best children‘s picture books are those in which the artwork carries the narrative forward separately from—yet in complement with—the text. 6y
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charl08
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...as we live in an image saturated media ecosystem that thrives on distraction and short-term memory, comics provide a peaceful refuge...

Lindy 👍I‘ve just started reading 6y
charl08 @Lindy any good? 6y
Lindy @charl08 I‘m only 20 pages in, and so far it‘s covering material that I‘m already familiar with, but yes. It‘s good. 6y
charl08 I'll look out for your thoughts. Cheers @lindy for the comment. 6y
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KimHM
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Evening reading: I can‘t decide. 📚💚

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KimHM
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This is #teaching but Omg! I may become a convert yet. 📚❤️