I feel very lonely in my views and my tastes.
It's also funny that the saying "high school never ends" applies to the graphic novel/comic book community as well. And politics. Always the politics.
Anyway.
I had to write a paper after my graphic novel class that compared what I do to the artists we studied. This was not really a paper I wanted to write, so I wrote about something that had been on my mind. So here is an excerpt from my paper which you will probably disagree with. (The nice thing about writing an opinion paper is that I can make things up about my opinions and make them sound all official. )
That balance [of great storytelling versus the craft of the medium] recently had me thinking about something a peer had said, which was that good art and bad writing make a bad graphic novel. Another peer agreed and added that bad art and good writing also make a bad graphic novel. Having read a lot of graphic novels, I disagreed. I started to call this "The Graphic Novel Formula" and changed it to what I saw was fit.
Good writing + bad art = good graphic novel
First of all, going along with Kochalka’s idea ["Craft is the enemy"], I believe that a graphic novel can have good writing and bad art, and still be a good graphic novel. Style of art can vary widely from artist to artist. What makes a graphic novel may not necessarily be the art, but the story. Many people who are not artists or art historians think good art equals realism. The more realistic a person can paint or draw or sculpt, the better the art is. This is a distorted view of what “good” art is and creates a lot of barriers for people to accept other types of art. When the average person picks up a graphic novel, he or she may dismiss it due to the lack of realism in the drawings, or “bad art”. However, what the average person doesn’t know a good story can transcend bad art if it has a powerful enough message, if it is original, well written, and if the writer really puts their heart and soul into the work. An example of this would be one of the classic graphic novels of our time, Maus by Art Spiegelman. Many artists do not think the drawings in Maus are that impressive. While it is unique to use anthropomorphic animals in the place of people, they are animals whose features are simplified. To the average person they look like badly drawn mice with basic triangular heads. At times in the book, many of the character hardly differ from one another visually. Although this is mainly due to a stylistic choice (Spiegelman is in fact, a very talented artist), some may pick up the book and flip through it and think, "this isn't art, these are scratchy cartoon drawings." However, once people read Maus they realize it is much, much more than simplified drawings of a cartoon mouse. Speaking from my own personal experience, I was moved to tears by the story alone, because it is the story that really carries the message in Maus. Another artist who falls into this category would be Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, a storywith simple art that deals with the complex topic of a girl growing up in Iran during a political revolution. I think the reason why Maus and Persepolis tend to be recommended to a beginner for their first graphic novels is because the writing shines through the art. Once read, a person can see just how complex and serious the medium can be.
Bad writing + Good art = bad graphic novel
I do agree that bad writing plus good art makes for a bad graphic novel. A graphic novel with pretty pictures but poor writing is nothing more than a sequence of pretty pictures. If the story doesn't make sense, is poorly written, uninspired or unoriginal, the reader is going to walk away unmoved. One graphic novel I recently read was Blacksad by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, originally from Spain but now has been translated into English. Most readers agree that Blacksad has some really amazing art. It is another graphic novel that uses anthropomorphic characters but these are done with vivid detail and in color. However, Blacksad lacks an original story. It is a usual, and uninspired, detective noir with a three part story which mostly involves the main character, Detective Blacksad, running around and interviewing suspects. By the end of the graphic novel, he seems to just stumble upon the answers and brings the criminal to justice. When it comes to story, there is nothing ground breaking here. Therefore, the graphic novel was just a mediocre and bland read.
Good writing + Good art = needs a careful balance
The next part of this formula would be one about both good writing and good art. The problem with a book that contains both is that it has to maintain a perfect balance of both; otherwise the art and writing will be competing for one another. There are two memoirs that were covered in our "History and Practice of Comics" class that I think speak to this. In David Small's Stitches, I think his loose and expressive style of drawing complements the emotional story very well. There are times when Small's drawings are amazingly strong compositionally, but I think the story is also strong enough to stand up to these drawings. Never was I distracted be either the art or the story so much that it took away from the other. In Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, however, the writing often seems more like fine literature than a graphic novel's complimentary prose, that it distracts from Bechdel's art, which is well done in itself. Often Bechdel references older literature and uses fancy writing in places where a much simpler diction would be ideal (ironic because she is so disgusted with her father's ornate home decorating, yet she uses ornate language in her writing). Because of this, the reading of the words becomes a bigger ordeal than looking at the pictures, and I found that the text was competing against the drawings.
There are exceptions to this, of course. Books where all there is are pictures except for a sound effect, but there is still a silent story that is going on at the same time, along with the pictures (see, Robot Dreams by Sara Varon). There are also many, many graphic novels, which are just “mediocre” in both art and writing. For the most part, however, the graphic novels that are more widely spoken about I believe fall into the categories above.
That's that. I anticipate my internet flogging.
I have a deadline for Friday. I am scared of what Nicole Hollander might do to me if I miss it.
