do we really need to reinvent comics?

ming · Post by **ming** » Sun Jan 13, 2002 2:34 am

do we really need to reinvent comics?

i think the evolution of comics is an organic process and is already happening.we are spending our recources wrongly if we are trying to create some kind of revolution.

what we can do is draw good pictures and write good words,improve our craft,and comics will be better off for it.

Jack Masters · Post by **Jack Masters** » Sun Jan 13, 2002 9:42 am

I don't advance the opinion that we should sit around and think up ways to reinvent comics. This forum is for when people have ideas or problems related to comics-reinventing, or when they find something along those lines that other people might be interested in.

As for whether the medium NEEDS us to reinvent it, I think that's kind of an odd way to look at it. We WANT to reinvent comics, and the world would be a better place if we did. Asking if it needs "to be done" assumes (erroneously, I hope) that we're just slogging through the process of reinvention out of some sense of duty rather then because that's what we wanted to do in the first place.

Post by **Scott McCloud** » Sun Jan 13, 2002 12:40 pm

what we can do is draw good pictures and write good words, improve our craft, and comics will be better off for it.

True.

But when the technological landscape is changing under our feet, standing still is good way to fall through the cracks.

Good scripts and good acting (the film equivelent of what you suggested) weren't the only things cinema needed in the early days of that technology. In the days when noboby had even thought to pick up the camera and move it, there was a lot more on that art forms "to do" list than merely improving the quality of the stage productions being dutifully filmed.

gazorenzoku · Post by **gazorenzoku** » Sun Jan 13, 2002 12:47 pm

yeah...

write good stuff, read good stuff, live the comics revolution, and everything will be just fine...

I love the new kind of comics, and this list has really helped me in the following ways:

1) providing technical advice (HTML coding, image creating, site promotion, etc.)

2) Links to other people's sites (especially the loads of great stuff you can find just by clicking on the URL links on peoples' messages... even when they are not blatently advertising their site)

3) a place for me to let other people know about my site

4) info about happenings in the world of comics, with a focus on the "new comic" and ground breaking stuff

5) there is probably something I am forgetting... but anyhow this forum is great.

Yeah, that long string a while back about defining comics might have been the hight of insanity, but it was kind of fun for me... and there are a lot of other things in this forum that make it well worth it to participate.

Tailsteak · Post by **Tailsteak** » Sun Jan 13, 2002 1:41 pm

I agree that, for most artists, deliberate reinvention is not necessary. The world of online comics will be carried forward by its own momentum, and, in later days, it will be the popular comics that are remembered, not the weird ones.

I think, though, that there is a need for reinvention for its own sake. Think of it like evolution-- every piece of art is, conceptually, the child of the art that preceded it. Occasional mutations, while usually not sophisticated on their own, can help to spawn new species, to add vitality to the gene pool.

Post by **Scott McCloud** » Sun Jan 13, 2002 7:15 pm

Occasional mutations, while usually not sophisticated on their own, can help to spawn new species, to add vitality to the gene pool.

Exactly. I've even made specific references to finding a "durable mutation" of comics for over 5 years now. Most will die out, but some of those weird new lifelines could prove enormously useful to future artists.

Martinibianco · Post by **Martinibianco** » Mon Jan 14, 2002 6:14 am

My contention is that comics can't be reinvented -- if you change or remove or 'reinvent' any of their defining characteristics (e.g. the page as narrative unit), they stop being comics, and a new term should be coined. The way I see it, 'sequential art' is the umbrella term and 'comics' is a subordinate artform.

Perhaps the raison d'etre of this forum should be 'Conceiving Commercially Practicable And/Or Aesthetically Equivalent Alternatives To Comics, Which Fall Under The Meta-Category Of Sequential Art'.

I concede that this is not as catchy.

Post by **Scott McCloud** » Mon Jan 14, 2002 10:47 am

if you change or remove or 'reinvent' any of their defining characteristics (e.g. the page as narrative unit), they stop being comics

So <a href="http://www.davidgaddis.com/piercing.html">this,</a> <a href="http://e-sheep.com/spiders/01/">this</a> and <a href="http://www.demian5.com/">this</a> are not comics?

Should we come up with a new name for all three or do we have to come up with a separate new name for each one?

Post by **Scott McCloud** » Mon Jan 14, 2002 10:52 am

On the other hand, I think that "Conceiving Commercially Practicable And/Or Aesthetically Equivalent Alternatives To Comics, Which Fall Under The Meta-Category Of Sequential Art" is very catchy.

I especially like the acronym C.C.P.A/O.A.E.A.T.C.W.F.U.T.M-C.O.S.A.

Martinibianco · Post by **Martinibianco** » Tue Jan 15, 2002 3:30 am

I especially like the acronym C.C.P.A/O.A.E.A.T.C.W.F.U.T.M-C.O.S.A.

LOL!

So <a href="http://www.davidgaddis.com/piercing.html">this,</a> <a href="http://e-sheep.com/spiders/01/">this</a> and <a href="http://www.demian5.com/">this</a> are not comics?

Should we come up with a new name for all three or do we have to come up with a separate new name for each one?

I don't classify these as comics. Narrative sequential art, yes, but not comics. Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Dick Tracy, they're not comics either, they're comic strips or cartoon strips.

And aren't we perhaps doing stories like When I Am King a disservice by not assigning them their own formal categorizations?

Alternatively it might be posited that these works don't deserve to be classified as comics, as they show such wanton, callous disregard for the formal constraints which, with the help of artists such as McCay, Eisner and Moore, defined the very medium.

Comics are to Narrative Sequential Art what the Novel is to Prose, or the Concerto is to Music.

So there.

[ This Message was edited by: Martinibianco on 2002-01-15 02:31 ]

Post by **Scott McCloud** » Tue Jan 15, 2002 12:05 pm

Martinibianco writes:
I don't classify these as comics. Narrative sequential art, yes, but not comics. Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Dick Tracy, they're not comics either, they're comic strips or cartoon strips.

Like most comics artists, I'm using the word "comics" in the same sense that you use the word "prose," i.e., comic strips, comic books and graphic novels are all instances of the art form called "comics." So I'd phrase that last line of yours as "Graphic Novels are to Comics what the Novel is to Prose, or the Concerto is to Music."

Alternatively it might be posited that these works don't deserve to be classified as comics, as they show such wanton, callous disregard for the formal constraints which, with the help of artists such as McCay, Eisner and Moore, defined the very medium.

I can't speak for Moore, and McCay is dead, but just two months ago I was showing the above webcomics to Will Eisner (and Neil Gaiman) in the lobby of a Chicago Hotel on my laptop and I don't recall Will telling me they weren't "comics."