62244237

8/11/2019 62244237

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/62244237 1/4

Cinema Journal 50 No. 3 Spring 2011

and trophy object. A highly structured commercial apparatus has evolved since the

197 s

that bo th caters to and constructs the limits of the comics world, and

its

complex

social reladons provide an important case study in the constmcdon of value—both

cultural and economic—^in a media field . From the point of view of cultural produc-

ers,

if all audiences cotild be converted into San Diego-style fans, the industry would

operate along even more predictable lines than it currendy does.

The contributors to this In Focus highlight many of these issues by engaging with

the insdtutional restricdons on Comics Studies while also presendng their own unique

approaches to the field. Greg M. Smith brings his experience as a comics scholar to

bear on some of the ways in which work in this field is challenged by the exigencies

of the form, including the difficulty of the paraphrase and the complex mtddmodality

that comics represent. Similarly, Angela Ndalianis stresses how comics exist as a nexus

in an increasingly convoluted web of media influences that is a challenge for scholars

to untangle. Scott Bukatman's essay forcefully considers the comics-film reladonship as

a form of transladon and adaptadon, examining contemporary Hollywood superhero

blockbuster films and fin ing hat they come up short reladve to the comic books that

inspired them. Catherine Labio intervenes in the debate about nomenclature, dem-

onstradng how the very term most frequendy used to legidmate the study of comics,

graphic novel, tends to drive research in certain direcdons while obscuring the full

reality of the form. Finally, Darren Wershler's examinadon of the migradon of com-

ics into new digital formats demonstrates just how quickly issues of form can become

convoluted in the brave new world of Comics Studies. *

It A in t Easy S tudying Com ics

by GREG M . SMITH

fter having moderated a inema

ournal

conversadon about the state

of published research on comics in this issue, I find myself thinking

more than ever about the challenges of doing good academic work

on comics. One challenge may be particularly endemic to SCMS.

Members who are interested in comics often approach them through

their highly visible cross-media presence. Comics are ho t now, which

doesn't mean that sales of physical comics are up (they aren't, except for

transladons of Japanese comics), but that comics are increasingly used as

8/11/2019 62244237


Cinema Journal 50 | N o 3 ; Spring 2011

SC M S conference I cochaired a pane l on Co m ics and Television. At dm es this pre -

sen tado n fo rm at can feel like an a ttem pt to jusdfy th e study of c omics by linking th em

to m ore im porta nt media. Go od scholarship on adap tadon can certainly provide a

vista onto both the original and the adapted form, and we need to lend our particular

experdse to our increasingly transm edia world. But I worry that the Com ics and . . .

approach encourages us to neglect the actual comics themselves and to favor the ele-

ments (characters, iconography, storylines) that readily transfer across media. I grow

dred of the impulse to de comics to another medium. Dealing with comics alone is

hard enough without compounding the difliculty by studying two different objects.

Outside of Film and Media Studies, some academics pair comics with a more

established discipline as a fun way to sugarcoat dilBcult material, and thus we get

philosophy through com ics or comics as history, using comics as a pop ular hook.

Th is pr ac dc e is no t that different from the (Insert Film Tide) an d Philoso phy books

or History Thro ug h Film courses created by those withou t Cin em a Studies training.

Such approaches usually rely on the nodon of the low-culture object (popular film,

comics) as an illustradon of more important principles. While such works do provide

some aca dem ic recogn idon of po pula r objects such as comics, they also reiterate co m-

ics'

posidon as the less serious m em be r of the pair.

Film and television have arrive d on the academ ic scene as objects that may be

studied with out justificadon , bu t comics have not yet achieved th at status. Given the

wid espre ad sense of nee ding to jusdfy ou r own activity, wh at is the way forward for

comics scholars? I think tha t as long as you feel you have to a rgue overtly for a place at

the scholarly table, your place will never be assured. For Comics Studies to mature as a

field, academics need to assert they can study comics (as complex texts, as industrially

produced objects, as culture in circuladon) without making excuses for their devalued

status. My suggesdon would be to do solid, complex scholarly work on comics without

apology, work th at und ispute dly provide s insight. If we act as if w e don 't nee d to justify

ou r place, th en the w ork itself will be its most pow erful justification.

Studying comics is challenging not only because of their current cultural locadon

but also because of their disdnctive qualities as texts. One specific reason comics are

hard to study is that they are tough to paraphrase. The obvious answer here is to use

illustradons, but C om ics Studies is com ing of age at a dm e whe n publishers are restrict-

ing the repro duc don of images, partly because of expense, pard y because of a stronger

attendon to obtaining image permissions and an apparent unwillingness to test and to

take advantage of fair-use principles. I've had conversadons with book publishers in

which the first quesdon they ask me abou t a new book project is H ow m any images

do you think the book will ne ed ? In this climate, how do you publish work on comics?

Historical work using materials obtained from archives can make things easier, since

archives are well prepared to deal with scholars' publication needs. But what about

8/11/2019 62244237


Cinema Journal 50 | No . 3 Spring 2011

exhausted your audience. When I go to an SCMS conference, I can assume that my

audience knows the film or television show that I'm discussing (and so I don't have to

at tempt to summarize

Last s

long-running narrative). But without such plot summary

for comics, how do I reach an audience that probably doesn't know the work I'm

discussing?

Comics are daunting not only because of their long histories but also because

of their complex, multimodal expression. Comics combine the arts of drawing and

pa ind ng (in all their various forms from caricature to abstraction to photorealism), the

layout elements of print media, the verbal tropes of literature, the visual narrative lan-

guage of füm, and the storytelling of serials, and then they transform these shared ele-

ments into something different from their uses in other media. What single approach

wo uldn't feel reducdve for exam ining such texts? Ho w would you pre par e yourself to

do a comprehensive analysis of a comic text?

All the comics scholars I know make some sort of apology as part of their scholarly

presentations: I 'm n ot qualified to discuss the art, or You m ay know m ore about the

X -M en history than I do , or some such statem ent. As a scholar wh o deals primarily

with texts, and as a comics read er for several decades, I am frequendy hum bled by how

little I still know. My training in film and television is only the beginning of a full un-

derstanding of comics. Cultural Studies' multifocus approach might seem to promise

an answer, but where is the great Cultural Studies work on comics? And who exacdy

would undertake a sizable Cultural Studies project on comics? What senior scholar

would devote time to this, and wh at jun ior scholar

should

devote that kind of dme to

comics if he or she wants to be tenured?

I apologize for em phasiz ing institudonal and analyd c difficulties, bu t I wa nt to g uard

against the nodon that since comics and füm are related, it should be easy for us füm

and television scholars to study comics. There is no shortcut to good academic work;

there is no substitute for the inter acd on betwee n a sma rt scholar (who uses theor y but is

not used by it) and a closely observed text or context. I believe that b right füm an d tele-

vision scholars have a distinctive contribudon to make to our growing understanding

of this com plex med ium if we avoid the mistake of thinking that comics are basically

the same as film storyboa rds. A groun ding in füm a nd television history, theory, and

aesthedcs is as good a place to start as an u nde rstan ding of a rt history or literary theory,

as long as we finally move away from the Com ics and . . . appro ach a nd recognize

tha t comics are a distincdve form of cultural expression in their own right. *

8/11/2019 62244237


Copyright of Cinema Journal is the property of University of Texas Press and its content may not be copied or

emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.

However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Documents

62244237