Comic books ("comics" for short) are a funny thing.

Not, however, because the comic strip and later on the comic book as we know it today was established in American and European newspapers and magazines of the late 19th and early 20th century as originally dealing with humorous contents.

No. The really funny thing about comics is their ambivalence.

 
Comics are almost constantly surrounded by opposing attitudes and an uncertainty as to what they are and how they should be seen. Are comics a form of art or just cheap trash? Is there anything of interest in comics for a sharp mind or are they just a shallow form of entertainment for readers with little or no intellect and sociability at all?

Funny also how this ambivalence has stuck with comics ever since they first appeared.

The precursor of the modern comic book, created by Swiss artist Rodolphe Toepffer (1799-1846) who drew his first "illustrated comedic account" in 1827, met with an enthusiastically favourable reception by none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who remarked "Es funkelt alles von Talent und Geist!" ("All of it glitters with talent and wit!").

Goethe subsequently persuaded Toepffer to publish his work - something he had never intended to do - and in 1833 the satirical views of 19th century society not onyl became available to the reading public but also proved to be highly popular.

However, Toepffer himself (who had been appointed Professor of Literature at the University of Geneva by that time) described his work as a medium which worked well "principalement sur les enfants et (...) les classes inferieures de la societe" ("particularly with children and (...) the lower classes of society"). If - as many see it - Toepffer is the father of the modern comic book, he is also the father of the sceptical criticism and state of ambivalence surrounding comics.

  


The Swiss city of Geneva has named a street and a square after the father of the comic book as well as erected a bust in his honour
 
But with Goethe on one side and the virtually illiterates on the other, the field is about as open as you could possibly imagine - and that's the way it's been ever since. The "Yellow Kid", created by R. F. Outcault in 1895 for newspaper supplements, lent a hand when the term "yellow press" was coined as a pejorative description for newspapers that ran sensationalist or scandal-mongering content - along with, at the time, the "Yellow Kid" comic strips.
 
  The ambivalence surrounding comics probably reached its peak in December 1964 when Belgian comic book artist Morris (Maurice de Bevere) labelled comic books as the "neuvième art" ("ninth art") in the comic book magazine Spirou #1392.

Reportedly, Morris coined the term out of despair because comics had such a bad public image, but despite these motives (in fact, some think Morris was just being ironic at the time) the label caught on, and the distinction of comics as the "ninth art" is prevalent today in the francophone comic book world - and indeed covers an entire concept of comic book criticism and scholarship.

The American influence with regard to such ambivalence may be slightly less poignant, but it works just as well.

 
Consider, for instance, Roy Thomas. Well known to comic book aficionados as fan, writer and editor par excellence who worked for both Marvel and DC, he is also recorded as having remarked that "I love comics, but I always considered them, even now, a lower form of literature".

It may be that what Toepffer and Thomas - and many others too - are trying to say is that comics, quintessentially, have a fairly down to earth attitude with regard to their own posture and what they aim to achieve. And perhaps the ambivalence surrounding comics can also be an indication of the fact that there are many different ways of enjoying comics, as Paul Ernst puts it in his intriguing little 2007 booklet La BD: un art mineur? [Comics: a minor form of art?].
 
I discovered this somewhat by chance myself when I picked up a copy of Ronin Ro's 2005 book Tales to Astonish - Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution in early 2007. At first glance it seemed very odd to me that a book dealing with comics contained not a single illustration, but the price was reduced to such an extent that I bought it. As it turned out, the book was fascinating to read and hard to put down. In its pages I found all kinds of stories around and behind the comics I had read thirty years ago, and after re-reading some of those 1970s and 1960s Marvel comics (readily available in the Marvel Masterworks series) I discovered that those comics did indeed hold points of interest which simply weren't accessible to a twelve-year old kid in the mid-1970s.

Of course, it's still not Shakespeare (although it is quite possible that Shakespeare, had he had the chance, might well have enjoyed comic books). But, with an academically trained way of thinking, I came to the conclusion that there's no good reason to say that a similarly serious approach used to reflect on Shakespeare could not be applied to the subject of comic books - and so I gradually recharted my own map of comics. The pages on this website are, in many ways, just a side effect of this.

  
 
Now I quickly hasten to add that by "academic" I refer to the methodology more than anything else. To me at least it would seem slightly foolish to approach a subject that doesn't take itself too seriously in an over-serious way. Basically, it's about what Stan Lee once said: Just because something's for fun doesn't mean we have to blanket our brains while reading it.

For example, there are quite a few interesting publications dealing with comics - both books and online articles - that leave the reader guessing about whether an author is making an original statement or relaying information from someone else, and if so, where this quoted information comes from. The book which got me started, Tales to Astonish, struck me as being especially bad in this respect. Regardless of whether something is attributed to Jack Kirby or supposedly quoting Stan Lee, there is no indication as to where the author got this information from.

Okay, why should this matter. Well, it's a question of how you approach things. Take this page, for example. If you've got as far as this paragraph, you have already been forced to accept fairly large chunks of information as fact, just like that. Did Goethe really praise the first modern form of comics, or was I just making things up because it sounds like a good story and fits my line of thought so well? And if Goethe did indeed say something about Toepffer's work, how can you be sure my German is up to understanding it correctly? And did Roy Thomas really say that about comics? When and where? Could it be that the quote is taken out of context? After all, someone could take this page and quote me as saying that comics are "just a shallow form of entertainment for readers with little or no intellect and sociability at all". Did I say that? Yes, I did, but if you check back on the third paragraph of this page, you will see that I phrased it as a question, not as my own point of view. But how could you know if you can't go back to the source where a given information is said to come from? This is where I find that a consciously more precise (scholarly if you will) approach is more than appropriate.

 
 

And this is why, on most pages on this site, you will find source indications, notes, and bibliographies stating clearly where an information used in the text is taken from. The rest is, of course, just my personal opinion and interpretation, and should be taken just as that - although, with all due modesty, it is at least an informed one.

Goethe's enthusiastic reaction is recorded by Joh. Peter Eckermann in his Gespraeche mit Goethe [Conversations with Goethe] in an entry dated 4 January 1831 as well as in a letter from Frederic Soret to Toepffer in Rodolphe Toepffer, Correspondance complete vol. II (413-414/Letter 355), published by Droz in Geneva (2004). The remark by Roy Thomas comes from an interview by Jon Cooke in Comic Book Artist issue 13, Son of Stan: Roy's Years of Horror.And the Stan Lee quote comes from his Soapbox column, featured in the March 1970 Bullpen Bulletin.
 

Maybe by reading this far you have asked yourself why I make no mention of the growing interest in comic books which academia has displayed over the past two decades, offering degrees in - broadly speaking - comic book studies. Well, with an academic background in an entirely different field, I am more than happy to simply try to be a fan who looks at his subject of interest in an informed and open way, trying to combine the fun with some insight.

In any case, thanks for looking.
 
 

Originally written in January 2008, updated in May 2024
(c) Adrian Wymann

Any copyrighted masterial used here is considered fair use as set out by the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. par. 107.