Serious Comics

jumping off a Tom D comment on the "Common Things You Have Never Done Even Though You Are Shockingly Old." thread:

Yes, never read a graphic novel or any comic books you're supposed to take seriously. I did read some Marvel and DC stuff when I was a kid.

― pisspoor bung probe prog (Tom D.)

_are_ there comics besides marvel and DC stuff that get taken seriously? i mean there are obviously. but it's incredibly marginal. i've read "maus" and i've read "fun home" and sometimes i hear that oh there's this great graphic novel that fantagraphics put out which is cool but i don't have the money for it. i guess i've read "the princess and the dressmaker". i guess that counts. i think it is different with manga. i haven't read a lot of manga, but i do have the complete reprint of "yokohama kaidashi kikou". that's more accessible, even before it came out, there were fan translations, there was an interest in getting it out there. something like "the princess and the dressmaker", outside of a pretty specific subsection of a pretty specific demographic group, to me that feels marginal in a way that even lit fic doesn't seem marginal.

comics aren't just for kids!, they said for years and years, and indeed it's true, now we have marvel comics films that rake in the cash telling the same stories that were told in those comics, with the same level of storytelling sophistication and seriousness. i heard fun home got a broadway play? maybe?

are webcomics serious? do people take homestuck seriously? i know people who claim that homestuck is this tremendous work of art, and also that there's no point in going back and reading it, that you had to be there while it was publishing. i haven't read it, but to me, i feel like even though i wouldn't read it, it probably is, or was, a tremendous work of art. i got a friend who's an artist and is _hugely_ influenced by Prince Valiant. Prince Valiant, I think, is a Serious Comic, and it's not published by Marvel or DC. i think fantagraphics or somebody has published reproductions of the old stuff. but when people talk about Serious Comics it's probably not Prince Valiant.

the english-language "comic book" comics that i think of most as Serious Comics are marvel and DC comics. watchmen, sandman. it's really hard, i think, to do a "serious comic" in english, that people will read, where superheroes don't come into it. in manga, the majority of stories are shounen and seinen - josei gets underrepresented, there's hardly any josei. at some point the labels are, like... i had to look it up. yokohama kaidashi kikou is a seinen. all i can think to say to that is "(shrug) okay". i mean it's got nothing in common with shounen battle anime. and it got a two-episode ova. "fun home" got a play, i guess. did you know there's a stage version of "revolutionary girl utena"? it's a bonus on the DVDs, though i don't think it's been subbed.

i'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

Bobby Bittman: "As a comic, in all seriousness..."

it's really hard, i think, to do a "serious comic" in english, that people will read, where superheroes don't come into it.

iirc the single best selling comic book in the year of its release was robert crumb's genesis book.

lol @ this thread

yep, Maus and Fun Home, the only two non-superhero comics in English

like, this same exact conversation with these same exact criticisms/complaints/misconceptions dates back to at least the late 60s and people who don't bother to understand comics have been asking these same questions and not listening to the answers for 60+ years. It's okay if there's an entire medium that doesn't connect with you. An anologous situation for me would be, like, musical theater. Outside of a handful of things (mostly Bob Fosse) I will just never get it or enjoy it. And that's okay! But I don't pop up on musical theater forums expressing confusion about why everyone in musical theater sings all their lines.

I will now list every serious comic ever produced

Herbie
Tales From the Crypt
The Passion of a Man
God's Man
Donald Duck
Uncle Scrooge
Trashman
Weird Fantasy
MAD Magazine
Vault of Terror
Haunt of Fear
Frontline Combat
Two-Fisted Tales
Zap!
Shock Suspenstories
Young Romance
My Life
Girls' Love Stories
Girls' Romances
Secret Hearts
Little Lulu
Zippy the Pinhead
The Adventures of Jesus
God Nose
Cheech Wizard
San Francisco Comic Book
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
Mother's Oats Comix
It Aint' Me Babe Comix
Wimmen's Comix
American Flagg
Omaha the Cat Dancer
Ms. Tree
Love and Rockets
Peepshow
Yummy Fur
Mr. X
Optic Nerve
Eightball
Hate
Neat Stuff
Raw
Cerebus
Too Much Coffee Man
Flaming Carrot
Dalgoda
Heavy Metal
Epic Illustrated
From Hell
Stray Toasters
Fart Party

that's it though, those are the only ones.

Manga are comics. Bande dessinee is comics. If we want to use "comics" to mean "American comics", it's important to point out that in 2024 DC and Marvel are marginal concerns and the real money is in manga-influeced YA comics.

The thing about Fantagraphics stuff being hella expensive is true though, I'm in a comic book reading group and it's a constant struggle because we try to keep it financially accessible but so many important releases are pricey.

I think the real misdirection here is comics that "people take seriously". What people? What is meant by "serious"? Americans take all kinds of absolutely moronic things seriously and who cares what they think anyway. If you're just asking what quality non-superhero comics there are the list is endless. If you're asking why the majority of Americans don't read "serious" comics that is a totally different issue that really has nothing to do with the form or content of American comics themselves and everything to do with history/politics/economics.

There's also a whole demographic of ppl who do read "graphic novels", NPR types, easy to stereotype but they def do not read superhero comics and I don't think they'd even be interested in Watchmen or Sandman; they read, like, non fiction accounts of wars or confessional comic litfic.

of which there is a ton

my daughter's high school lit class covered Persepolis last year does that count as being taken seriously

Sacco (Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza, the Fixer), Pekar (Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me) etc.

The Best We Could Do, Sarajevo Tango, the Photographer, Fax from Sarajevo

Anyway here's Wonderwall a bunch of recent US comics that are not DC, Marvel or adjacent which I enjoyed:

Caroline Cash's Peepee Poopoo series, a queer take on 70's underground comix aesthetics.

Rich Tommaso's Black Phoenix, pastiche of 50's Archie and sci-fi comics. In the same vein, but with some Love & Rockets thrown in, is Santos Sisters by Greg and Fake Petre.

Ram V's The Many Deaths Of Laila Star might be too Gaiman-y for some but it's an interesting take on the Hindu pantheon.

Sammy Harkham's Blood Of The Virgin is a pretty great story about working in Cormanesque exploitation cinema in the 70's.

Katie Skelly's The Agency is fun and sexy and disturbing like everything she does.

Sam Szabo's Enlightened Transsexual Comics are a hoot.

Simon Hanselmann's Crisis Zone is still the definitive covid comic for me tho everything they've done since has mostly alienated me.

Glenn Head's Chartwell Manor is harrowing stuff.

Jordan Crane's Keeping Two is a really good depiction of anxiety.

Kate Beaton's Ducks is I think a big one for the aforementioned NPR crowd but it's also just really excellent, about working on an oil rig in Canada.

There's also a lot of crime/noir comics that I guess are a bit superhero-adjacent so perhaps not for this list - Brubaker/Philips, Chip Zdarsky, Pornsak Pichetshote.

_are_ there comics besides marvel and DC stuff that get taken seriously?

as already established itt, yes absolutely. I won't list any more titles, but will mention there are university courses on comics, academics who specialize in comics, and comics reprints and comics analyses published by university presses. New York Review Books has a comics imprint. one of the most famous newspaper comics anthologies was published by the Smithsonian. there are museums dedicated to comics. plenty of film adaptations (Paying for It just debuted iirc) and documentaries. there's the Center for Cartoon Studies — which is an art school, not a research institution tbc — in Vermont. Kate Beaton's Ducks was widely celebrated in mainstream Canadian media. etc etc.

are webcomics serious?
this is the more interesting and up-to-date question (though Shakey otm re: "serious"), as I cannot answer it in the same way. I'm sure there are some media studies academics who have studied them, but it's clearly not the same as high schoolers being assigned to read Maus or Persepolis or Fun Home. there are some "serious" arty comics people who have done both (e.g., Dash Shaw, the aforementioned Kate Beaton) but I would tend to assume in general webcomics are not anywhere close to the level of non-superhero print comics

Paying for It just debuted iirc

lol for real? I hadn't heard about this.

ha yeah it played at TIFF! I don't know much about it though and never read the book

directed by Sook-Yin.

Fantagraphics stuff being hella expensive

In my experience libraries are pretty good about carrying this stuff. My local library has never turned down a purchase request I've submitted for comic books I want to read.

To temper what I wrote a little, I do think mainstream/middlebrow/what have you interest in comics hit a peak in the 00s/early 10s, so if you were surveying the scene for the first time in 2024 it might seem like non-superhero stuff is pretty overlooked. It's hard to think of a more recently debuted artist with a profile someone like Bechdel or Ware had back then (Beaton arguably in Canada but I assume that's not the case elsewhere). And there are lots of cool thing totally flying under the radar like D&Q's ongoing series of adult/alt manga reissues; a book like My Favorite Thing Is Monsters probably would have gotten mainstream attention if released in like 2008. But click around https://www.tcj.com/ and there's still lots of stuff coming out

There's a kind of a siloing of genres and fandom in general, but I think something in particular is happening to the "serious" ranks where there's just less crossover into the non-mainstream continuum, if not on the author side, then at least on the audience side.
There's a lot of people who might buy "My Favorite Thing is Monsters" that wouldn't buy another comic ever.

There's a couple of other "serious" comics like this -- Nick Drnaso's stuff also comes to mind -- in the sense of "may I also interest you in...?" "NAH!"

It's probably even a tossup if you can get someone buying Ducks to give Hark a Vagrant a look (though way easier to go the other direction)

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters did get ink in the Guardian, NYTimes, etc. And yeah Sabrina is prob the biggest mainstream success story of late - longlisted for the Booker, coverage on the BBC, etc.

The only convo I've had w/ someone who does webcomics he was less concerned with mainstream respectability than with the fact that the switch to TikTok has created a lot of trouble for the medium, apparently young ppl are abandoning it.

Phili I think you're right but also kinda feel like it was ever so.

The thing about Fantagraphics stuff being hella expensive is true though

Maus is $35 in HC. Fun Home is $20 in PB. Fantagraphics releases are absolutely in line with those prices, without the economies of scale that multinational conglomerate publishers enjoy.

That's nice, but economies of scale don't matter to ppl's wallets. I pointed out they're expensive - I didn't say anything about whether they could be less so or whose fault it is.

Nick Drnaso's stuff also comes to mind

I am not really a comics person at all but read a bunch of graphic novels in the 2000s when there was a lot of hype around them. Sabrina is the only graphic novel I have read in the past decade bc it was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

One worthy/serious webcomic I've been following the past few years is Brian K. Vaughan/Niko Henrichon's Spectators, which has been serialized a page or two per week for 2-3 years and is wrapping up later this year. Beyond the prurient surface level, it's an interesting meditation on sex vs violence in popular culture and the self-destructive path humanity is on.

did you think it sucks

I pointed out they're expensive

The OP pointed out they’re expensive! I’m noting they’re the same price as the only two comics she has ever read, so the comparison doesn’t necessarily hang.

sucks xp re Sabrina

one thing that is likely to move comics more to the center of mainstream culture in the coming decades is that the current generation (gen z/gen alpha) is the first generation to grow up with comics as both a mainstream cultural force in film, but also (more importantly) with no stigma attached to comics as a medium because of the insanely huge market for YA graphic novels. Unlike in previous generations where comics (primarily superhero comics) were universally stigmatized as the domain of nerds, losers, and maladjusted adults, the current generation is growing up with a vast wealth of material at their disposal that is in libraries, taught in schools, read for pleasure, widely available etc. This generation understands comics, and some portion of them will grow up to produce comics in line with their changing interests.

It may be worth noting that DC/Marvel comics are now primarily the province of old men (ie, that prior generation of nerds, losers and maladjusted adults), and its a tiny and shrinking portion of the market. Most kids don't read superhero comics. They read Jedi Academy or Smile or whatever.

(speaking specifically of America here, obviously)

The OP pointed out they’re expensive! I’m noting they’re the same price as the only two comics she has ever read, so the comparison doesn’t necessarily hang.

Fair enough! As I said, I'm in a comics reading group and it's a source of frequent frustration that Fantagraphics stuff - as well as D&Q and "quality" comics in general - comes at too steep a price point for most ppl in the group.

It probably doesn't work if your reading group is all local and competing for the same copies but I've found most library systems will reliably carry "serious" comics and also reliably, most of the time people won't borrow them, at least not to the same extent as the latest one piece/one punch man volume.

Sadly it's connected to a comic book shop and the deal is they let us use the store we buy our books from them.

Manga also a problem as apparently it's very difficult to get enough copies of anything in for everyone in the group to get one. I have no idea why that is.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters did get ink in the Guardian, NYTimes, etc.

lol as soon as I hit post on that I was like “bet that’s a bad example”

also the New Yorker, Artforum, the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, the Globe and Mail, Forward, the Herald Scotland, KCRW's Bookworm, Fresh Air on NPR, the LARB, Mother Jones, the AV Club, Vulture, and the NYTBR (separate from the NYT).

Love to start a thread with a simultaneous profession of ignorance and total incuriousness.

I'm sorry, that was too harsh.

too steep a price point for most ppl in the group

$35 is also the price for the top titles on the NYT HC non-fiction bestseller list this week, and the PB fiction list ranges from $17-22.

Marvel "Omnibuses" list at $125-$150.

I don't think anyone thinks non fiction hard covers are inexpensive?

it is kind of unusual for Kate to start a thread and then not respond (at length), not sure what's going on here.

Maus and Fun Home are both non-fiction


(and are both more expensive to print and transport than prose — iirc Fun Home is 2C, too? — but just comparing like-for-like at the consumer level, it’s hard to say a specific small independent publisher’s comics are too expensive for comics when they’re the same price as both the entire sample set of comics you’re comparing them to, and as prose bestsellers.)

Ok so you are still arguing with Kate's post not mine, maybe don't keep quoting me then to avoid confusion? thanks.

I’m /engaging/ with Kate’s point, you’re just the only one still articulating it itt :)

lol nice try

(without offering any other data points to consider — like, what serious comics has your book club read this year instead? it sounds fun)

That's the whole thing, "serious" comics as a category are expensive - so the option is either to go with local (UK) indie comics or end up with something spandex or spandex-adjacent (a lot of Image titles).

Every now and then an exception will be made if everyone's eager enough (in recent memory: Blood Of The Virgin, Sabrina, Monica), but usually suggestions from Fanta, D&Q and the like go above the price point members are willing to go for.

Is the group mostly historically-spandex readers? What cape titles have been picked?

Not really, no - all the spandex readers also read other stuff and quite a few ppl don't enjoy spandex at all (manga and YA readers).

Some recent choices have been a Tom King Supergirl volume, Luke Healy's Self Esteem & The End Of The World, the first volume of Dragon Ball, Lucy Byron's Thieves, Daniel Warren Johnson's Do A Powerbomb and Chrissy William's Golden Rage.

glad we got this sorted lol

It was more comics chat than we had here in ages so I'm happy.

I wouldn't hate this becoming a "what are you reading?" type thread tbh, not that I'm reading anything new right now.

What I am reading is Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza, which I'd never gotten around to despite owning it, after re-reading Palestine in the spring. I don't have anything insightful to say about it really, but it's, naturally, excellent and moving

reveling in Silver Age Legion of Superheroes/Superboy comics, eagerly anticipating picking up the new Charles Burns

ooh nice, didn't know about the Burns

This isn't current reading, but that D&Q series of alt-manga reissues I mentioned earlier are a boon to humanity. I love all the Tsuges I've read so far, the two Yamada Murasaki volumes are great, the Kuniko Tsurita is super cool. They're starting on Shirato's The Legend of Kamui next year, which I'm psyched for

looks amazing as usual
https://www.comicsbeat.com/graphic-novel-review-charles-burns-the-final-cut-is-surprisingly-straight-forward/

right on the heels of this, which is also v entertaining in its way
https://www.brokenfrontier.com/kommix-charles-burns/

sounds rad!

I wouldn't hate this becoming a "what are you reading?" type thread tbh

the annual "what are you reading?" thread is still going fwiw. started by Daniel! (though I still miss it being called that, out of coddling ppl who can't even read three words of a borad ttl.)


Some recent choices have been a Tom King Supergirl volume, Luke Healy's Self Esteem & The End Of The World, the first volume of Dragon Ball, Lucy Byron's Thieves, Daniel Warren Johnson's Do A Powerbomb and Chrissy William's Golden Rage.

Good range of stuff -- buuuuuut the Supergirl book is $20, Thieves is $21, the Healy is $30, Powerbomb is $25 (was $28 in floppies), and only Golden Rage is under $20, at $17. Maybe this is just how much books cost? (Then again, Kate's posting on anothre thred about how often she goes to Five Guys, where a cheeseburger, fries and milkshake costs over $30 with tax, so..?????)

King & Bilquis Evely's Helen of Wyndhorn is ongoing and great but not "serious"
If you think of them as street urchin chapbooks (which let's face it the bulk of it is, even some of the "serious" ones) of course they're absurdly expensive -- what corruptible youth has that kind of scratch? But if you think of them as art prints, they're cheap as hell.

damn i expressed myself poorly in that initial post

like why did i even say that

i read tons of independent comics and always have

pffft

ok the thing that i have trouble with is the whole comics culture thing, the shit people have been saying for 60 years

people make all these great fucking comics and _sometimes_ they even get made into movies and like

shit, i don't know, i'm looking at it two days later and i don't even know what the fuck i was trying to say with this post

smdh

sorry about that y'all

consolation prize, i've been watching a couple of this person's videos on comics (and yes they're superhero comics, i don't _hate_ superhero comics or anything) and they have some really good takes i haven't seen before

and also most of their videos aren't like two hours long

http://www.youtube.com/@StargoldGushes

15 min in the Paris metro to catch a connection and I counted 3 ads for comics - including a big one for My Favourite Thing Is Monsters

Or rather Moi, Ce Que J'aime C'est Les Monstres, without doubt a cooler title.

is it about monster fuckers

french comics about monster fuckers sound great

comics about monster fuckers were also the kind of thing i thought of as "serious comics". i would once again like to apologize for the kate of september 24, 2024, whose actions are not entirely comprehensible to me.

It's a queer horror/murder mystery I believe. Also not French, the ad was for a fr translation - posted here because it was used as an example of recentish critically acclaimed graphic novels.

It's pretty hard to sum up MFTIM tbh, though Daniel's description is basically accurate. I've only read the first volume, and you could call it a "queer horror/murder mystery" but there's not really any horror per se -- the main character/narrator is super into horror comics and monster movies, which manifests itself in a variety of stylistic and formal devices. It's also something of a memoir of growing up in Uptown in Chicago in the late 60s; there's an extended flashback sequence to 1930s Germany (some of which maybe you could call horror actually) centering on the victim in the murder mystery; there are interesting digressions about art.

It's beautifully drawn and structured but kind of feeble in other ways, a real mishmash.

It's absolutely worth reading, but it being her first graphic novel (created in her mid-50s) isn't too much of a surprise: it's wildly overstuffed though not necessarily to its detriment

But yeah I sometimes found the depiction of her brother to be overwrought

The author is a lifelong Chicagoan who made her publishing debut (with Vol. 1) aged 55 or so, and after experiencing audience reaction to the themes and lead character, said that if she’d grown up in current times that she would likely not have identified as female the entirety of her life.

There are currently four locations of the Multnomah County Library with copies checked in, and 20 on loan, so should be easy for you to try it out. Or just buy one, and slice out the pin-up/magazine cover pages to decorate your room!

xp