One of the hottest topics in comics recently has been the role of the artist in the grand scheme of comic creation. Is the artist a 50/50 creative partner when it comes to developing a complete comic story? Is he or she more than that, less than that, or is it a fool hardy game to even try and quantify that? The conversation has ebbed and flowed back and forth and went off in all sorts of tangents, and as one of the people who runs Multiversity’s yearly Artist August feature, I think it’d be pretty easy to state that we as a site recognize the value and importance of artists as comic book storytellers. After all, without them, wouldn’t comics simply be prose?
To me, it’s an easy distinction to make, and it’s a shame that it’s a topic to begin with.
However, with any such debate, there will be collateral damage. Shots are fired and people make statements taken out of context, which leads to groups of people being vilified or, worse yet, categorized as non-factors.
In this debate, the concept of “comic journalism,” or simply the reviewers, has been called into question. Or rather, perpetually devalued as part of the course of this conversation.
This stems from the patient zero moment of this topic, which was artist Declan Shalvey responding to a question on Tumblr, and the whole thing spun from there.
Shalvey is one hell of a nice guy, and someone who isn’t trying to lay waste to the comic reviewing game. When he spoke of the subject, he was being completely and utterly fair. There are sites – both big and small – that do effectively write a synopsis of plot and call it a review, and ones that save mention of any and all art as almost a consolation prize at the end (“artist X ably rendered writer y’s brilliant story”), if they mention it at all.
Shalvey is right to point that out, and the discussion that took place on Twitter on the heels of that and continued in Pat Loika’s excellent artist roundtable podcast with Shalvey, Reilly Brown, Nick Pitarra and Gabriel Hardman wasn’t just people complaining about something lacking from the comic review game, it was suggesting solutions and pointing out flaws in the existing system. I, for one, found the whole deal to be educational and fun to read/listen to.
Since then, however, the discussion rages on and with that comes a bevy of diminishing statements towards no one site or reviewer in specific, but the idea and concept of comic journalism. I’ve seen people derisively mocking the idea of “comics journalism” being an actual thing, and others scoffing at the idea there is any real viability to what comic websites do. One prominent writer even described reviewers as “functionally useless,” which I admit was particularly harmful.
I understand where they’re coming from, as I previously said, because there is a lot of crap out there. However, taking the entirety of the comic reviewing community down a peg for the actions of those who summarize rather than review is akin to me stating that all artists are hacks because Rob Granito is an artist. It’s a blanket statement that unfortunately ignores some of the very excellent pieces out there that analyze and praise the work of the artists who are feeling underrepresented and misunderstood, which were quite often created simply because they are passionate about these comics that they love.
While they aren’t uniformly what you get, some sites like TCJ, Comics Alliance and Robot 6 manage to create some truly thoughtful and balanced pieces about this artform that we all love. Some pieces analyze the storytelling and technique for both writers and artists in a thorough and proficient fashion, and while they can’t tackle everything (for one, Loika’s artist podcast underlined how much artists contribute to the actual story, which is hard for us as reviewers to know from the reading experience), I do believe many appropriately address the artform in a way that respects all creators involved.
Like with anything, you have to take the good with the bad, and hope that the former outweighs the latter.
Continued belowI realize this isn’t a uniform position by creators out there, and some, even many, greatly respect the efforts of the comic review community. After all, I can’t speak for everyone out there, but we at Multiversity write everything with absolutely no payment coming back to us. We’re a site filled with volunteers who love comics and want to talk about the people who make those comics that we love. Many sites are like that. That doesn’t invalidate any of the misgivings that creators may have towards the work that we do – as I’ve said, I agree with many of them – but I do hope it gains us a little leeway when it comes to the often thankless work we do.
As the immortal @ComicsBlogger noted, no one cares about the work that we do typically. And by that, he doesn’t mean other comic readers, many of whom regularly read comic sites like our own, he means publishers and those who work to bring these comics to life. In that piece, he outlines why comic journalists effectively get no respect, and to be honest, I knew all of the reasons before he ever made the post. But that does not mean it’s fair for these comic journos to only hear about what they’re doing when they hear about how wrong they are, and it certainly doesn’t make it fair that we’re receivers of friendly fire in this ongoing debate.
We want what you want. We want comics to be great and enjoyable and one hell of a way to have a story delivered, and we want them to be represented well in reviews and articles online and in print.
Once upon a time, Multiversity was awful. I’m not going to lie, it was Matt Meylikhov, myself and a few other guys writing fanboy rants and raves about why Green Lantern and the Wolverine movie (the one from years back, not the recent one) were totally awesome. We’ve grown quite a bit since then, and I like to think that we treat creators and comics of all varieties with an equal amount of respect…unless they’re comics written by celebrity chefs. We learned through trial and error, reading other quality criticism being done in the field and pushing ourselves to want more from own work, just like creators do.
I can tell you, that works as a way to improve journalism that is done 100% free with no incentives other than because we love to do it, or at least far better than shaming us and calling us “functionally useless.”
Final note: for fellow reviewers, I highly recommend checking out the previously mentioned artist roundtable podcast and pursuing great criticism. It’s out there, you just might have to look a bit.
