Between the Punk and the Curator: The Past, Present, and Future of Alternative Comics

Art Spiegelman's Maus

During my last semester of library school, I took a class on graphic novels. For the class, we  studied different genres of graphic novels: graphic novels for young readers, traditional literature, folktales, superheroes, horror/supernatural, science fiction, contemporary realistic fiction, historical fiction, illustrated classics, humor/parody, and non-fiction. I must admit to having been only an occasional graphic novel reader before taking this class and some genres, like science fiction and fantasy, were a bit difficult for me because I don’t typically read fiction in these genres. I didn’t feel that I fully engaged with the readings for the class until I read the nonfiction selections, particularly the autobiographical titles. I was impressed by the way the text and illustrations interacted in these graphic novels; the illustrations seemed wedded to the text in ways that were different from the graphic novels in other genres. The pathos and emotion of the stories were reflected in the eyes of the characters in a way that was understated, yet quite moving, and very personal. While autobiographies have the capacity to be powerful texts, I discovered that graphic autobiographies have the ability to be powerful pieces of art. 

One of the most fascinating graphic autobiographies I read that semester was Maus, written and illustrated by Art Spiegelman.  As I did research on it, I discovered that it first appeared in a magazine that featured alternative comics. I was surprised to learn that Maus was an alternative comic. It is very well-known, read in schools (even grad level classes like the one I was in at the time), and Spiegelman received a Pulitzer for it. I’d always considered alternative comics to be underground—not accepted by the mainstream, because they flouted traditional comic styles, and certainly not acknowledged by academia as acceptable literature for study. I decided to delve into this topic to find out more about how and why this change in the acceptability and mainstream potential occurred and what it means for the future of this format. In this post, I will briefly discuss the history and evolution of alternative comics and examine how alternative graphic novels in the nonfiction genre, particularly autobiography, transformed this format into a true literary form and helped this segment of the comics industry, which had always flown just under the radar, cross over into the mainstream and academic world. I will also be reviewing and analyzing a small sampling of the massive amount of extant professional literature on this topic, focusing specifically on articles about Art Spiegelman’s Maus, to demonstrate the impact these autobiographical works have had in the academic community.

 

Alternative Comics: A Brief History

The roots of alternative comics can be traced to the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Underground comix came from several sources: ‘zines, college humor magazines, underground newspapers, and psychedelic rock poster art (Hatfield 9, 28).An argument against the idea that comic books are just for children, comix were geared toward adults and were different in tone; they were personal, self-regarding, satirical, critical, and  political (Hatfield 35). 

R. Crumb is widely considered to be the father of this movement. Though there were certainly other underground comics before Crumb came along, many agree that the first underground comic book to be published independently and in the traditional format was Crumb’s Zap Comix No. 1. This publication signified a very distinct break with the past (Hatfield 29, 34). It established the comic book as subversive literature, an instrument for change, and a vehicle for self-expression. 

Crumb’s style, while unique and revolutionary, is inspired by newspaper cartoonists and comic book artists Carl Barks, illustrator for Disney comics, and Basil Wolverton, illustrator of Powerhouse Pepper. Crumb’s comics are edgier, sometimes crass, and most definitely for a more mature readership. His illustrative style is broad and exaggerated and each panel overflows with minute details that sometimes catch the eye only after several viewings. His characters—rubbery, spindly men, women with outrageously exaggerated assets, and anthropomorphized animals—alternate between cute and grotesque (Hatfield 35).  Underground comix were rooted in humor and parody but the style was personal and brutally honest. As this movement segued into the alternative comics movement, this style would continue to evolve and lead to the creation of a very unique style of autobiography. 

Alternative comics started appearing in the late 1970s and were seen regularly in magazines Raw, published from 1980-1991, Weirdo, published from 1981-1993, and Love and Rockets, which began publication in 1981 and was influenced by both underground and mainstream comics. The writers and artists of the alternative comics movement were part of the independent comics movement but their immersion in the underground movement inspired them to more aggressively spurn the formulaic styles of traditional comic books (Hatfield 9). In Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, Charles Hatfield describes the approach taken:

Crucial to this new movement were the rejection of mainstream formulas; the exploration of (to comics) new genres, as well as the revival, at times ironic recasting, of genres long neglected; a diversification of graphic style; a budding internationalism, as cartoonists learned from other cultures and other traditions; and, especially, the exploration of searchingly personal and at times boldly political themes. What’s more, alternative comics invited a new formalism, that is, an intensive reexamining of the formal tensions inherent in comics…” (10).

Trying to pin down an actual definition for alternative comics can be a daunting task. In his article “A Librarian’s Guide to Independent Comics” Michael R. Lavin describes them as “any comic that does not feature super-heroes as the main characters,” (29). In a chapter in Graphic Novels: Beyond the Basics, Lavin expands this definition:

Not too long ago and before manga’s arrival in America, everything comics-like other than superhero titles and genre fiction was lumped into the vague catchall of “alternative” comics, especially those not produced by mainstream comics publishers. Today, we find more specific descriptors—a good thing, because the medium is far too rich and diverse for such ‘either/or’ analyses. Now the Alternative label is used mainly to describe experimental or trendsetting comics—those exploring unusual themes or employing notably different storytelling devices or artistic styles (85).

The well-known writers and artists of alternative comics include Harvey Pekar, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Lynda Barry, Chester Brown, Joe Sacco, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Art Spiegelman, whose work I will discuss in more detail in the next section (Hatfield 20).  

Evolution: Dipping into the Mainstream

Alternative comics flourished in the underground but, at some point, they began to catch the attention of the mainstream—and even academia. Though there may have been some earlier titles that filtered through, the biggest cross-over was Art Spiegelman’s autobiographical Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. 

Maus and its sequel Maus II: And Here My Trouble Began, tells the story of Artie Spiegelman and his father Vladek, exploring Artie’s complicated relationship with his father, who survived the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps (Artie’s mother also survived but later committed suicide). Spiegelman uses animals---mice stand in for the Jews, cats for the Nazis—to depict the parties involved. Spiegelman uses “the seemingly innocent art form of the comic strip to underscore the horror and depravity of the Jewish Holocaust…” (Fazioli 84). Even Spiegelman’s ironic choice of representing the Jews as mice underscores the horrors of the Holocaust, as they were referred to as “filth-covered vermin”; Spiegelman includes this quote, taken from a German newspaper article from the mid-1930s, at the beginning of the second volume (Spiegelman, introduction). 

Maus covers many themes—father-son relations, death, suffering, survival, and memory, just to name a few. It uses a layered narrative so that the reader sees the story from both the perspectives of Artie and Vladek. The simple black and white illustrations stand in stark contrast to the miseries that unfold in the story. The result is a tremendously powerful historical-autobiographical work of both literary and visual art.  Maus won a Pulitzer for Spiegelman (Hatfield 12). It also signaled a change in how graphic novels were perceived by the academic community. Through Maus, the lowly graphic novel was transformed into a true literary form—one worthy of extensive study.

Literature Review

Following is a small sampling of the vast amount of professional articles, from a wide array of disciplines, which examine Maus. These articles demonstrate the impact this graphic novel has had on academic study. These articles focus on the thematic and illustrative aspects of Maus.

“Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: A Bibliographic Essay”

Hye Su Park

 This article provides a survey of existing Maus criticism and focuses on the themes dealt with in the story: trauma, postmemory, generational transmission, autobiography, history, posthistory, ethics of representation, postmodernism, narratology, photography and art, gender, Jewish identity, and use of English. Park provides suggestions for future critiques of Maus in an attempt to “broaden and enrich the field with an eye on expanding critical discourse” (Park 146). The author notes that the same thematic ground continues to be covered and rehashed in Maus criticism and that there is a lack of criticism addressing issues such as gender, religion, and critical pedagogy (Park 148).

“Art Spiegelman’s Maus: Graphic Art and the Holocaust”

Thomas Doherty

 In this article, Doherty discusses the inherent difficulty in classing autobiographical graphic novels as strictly fiction or nonfiction, since there is a perceived overlapping of genres. In addition to this confusion, is the confusion produced by a serious subject being depicted with illustrations. Doherty says:

 

From a traditionalist vantage point, the readily accessible, easy-on-the-eye comic-book format of Maus would in itself disqualify and indict the work. Spiegelman’s medium is associated with the madcap, the childish, the trivial. By its very nature it seems ill-equipped for the moral seriousness and tonal restraint that have been demanded of Holocaust art. But—also by its very nature—the cartoon medium possesses a graphic quality well-suited to a confrontation with Nazism and the Holocaust. (71)

According to Doherty, the medium and the message are inextricably linked; the style and purpose of the illustrations are inspired by cartoons and cinema, “the two graphic media whose images make up the visual memory of the twelve-year Reich,” (71-71).

Literature Analysis

As we see in Hye Su Park’s bibliographic essay, there is a wealth of themes to examine in Maus and, though these themes have been discussed and deconstructed to a seemingly exhaustive extent, there are still some themes that require deeper consideration. Park offers advice for future critics because it is a given that this text’s themes will continue to be examined.

The themes and illustrations in graphic novels function as a unit, as Doherty points out in his article. Themes can be enhanced and extrapolated through the illustrations and, in the case of Maus, the reader may perceive many layers of meaning because of the interaction of the text with the graphics. The graphics in Maus also provide the reader another perspective by which to view the historical context of the story. The illustrations are linked with the story, obviously, but also entwined with the history of the Nazis, adding yet another layer of irony to Spiegelman’s story. 

 

This small sampling of the professional literature written about Maus is undeniable proof that the academic world has indeed accepted the graphic novel as a true literary and artistic form. By approaching Maus with the same critical and theoretical tools used to dissect traditional literature, some scholars are putting graphic novels on the same level as literature.  

The autobiographical graphic novel takes a multimodal approach to the same themes as the traditional autobiography or memoir; it is able to depict, describe, and elucidate history, ideas, and experiences through the interaction of text and illustrations. Maus is a work of nonfiction but it is also allowed to dwell in the land of “historical fiction”, as I learned in my research. Some consider all graphic novels—even autobiographies, memoirs, and other historical accounts—to be literary fiction (O’English, Matthews, and Lindsay 174). This makes such works even more appealing to critics because they can discuss them as autobiography/memoir and as fiction, a sort of gray area that does not typically occur with traditional fiction and autobiography.

Between the Punk and the Curator

Charles Hatfield points out in Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature,

Alternative comics, coming as they do out of a marginalized subculture, uneasily straddle two different attitudes about comic art: one, that the form is at its best an underground art, teasing and outraging bourgeois society from a gutter-level position of economic hopelessness and (paradoxically) unchecked artistic freedom; two, that the form needs and deserves cultural legitimatization as a means of artistic expression. (That would include academic legitimization.) Alternative comics waver between these two positions—between the punk and the curator, so to speak.These contrasting values may not ever be reconciled but both must be acknowledged (13-14).

Alternative comics creators who feel the weight of these warring values keenly may feel they are, analogously, in the same situation as bipolar artists who refuse to take mood stabilizers because they are worried they will lose their edge—the mental spark that fuels their creativity. These ideals—mental health vs. creativity, underground anonymity/integrity vs. mainstream success—are perceived to be mutually exclusive but they do not have to be. Mainstream success does not lessen the impact of the work but it does give it greater visibility. The DIY/independent/underground attitude of alternative comics does not have to be compromised by legitimization through the mainstream or through the academic world. Persepolis has proven that alternative comics can be critical and mainstream successes, without losing their subversive edge.

Conclusion

Literature departments aren’t the only places graphic novels are being studied; other fields, including art, communication, history, sociology, linguistics, and sociology departments are also finding them useful tools for instruction. Significant academic interest has been shown in alternative comics in particular in the last few years (O’English 167-168). While some worry that study in the seemingly stiff and serious milieu of academia or being consumed by the mainstream masses will dull the edges of alternative comics, they will most likely continue to retain the personal, brutally honest, and subversive style of their ancestor comix. 

The professional literature demonstrates that graphic novels can be serious literature. The autobiographical alternative comic Maus signaled the change and continues to inspire today, several decades after it originally appeared. In the future, the graphic novel’s reputation as a true literary form will continue to grow as the format earns more respect, academically. These texts tell us things about our culture, society, and history and, as Maus demonstrates,  can be valuable tools for teaching students, not just about the facts of history, but the implications of historical events and the people involved and impacted by them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SUGGESTED READING

B, David. Epileptic. New York: Pantheon Books, 2005. Print.

Bechdel, Alison. Dykes to Watch Out for. Ithaca, N.Y: Firebrand Books, 1986. Print.

Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print.

Brabner, Joyce, Harvey Pekar, and Frank Stack. Our Cancer Year. New York: Four Walls 

Eight Windows, 1994. Print.

Clell, Madison. Cuckoo. Portland, OR: Green Door Studios, 2002. Print.

Clowes, Daniel. David Boring. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000. Print.

Clowes, Daniel. Ghost World. Seattle, Wash: Fantagraphics, 2001. Print.

Clowes, Daniel. Ice Haven. New York: Pantheon Books, 2005. Print.

Clowes, Daniel. Wilson. Montréal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2010. Print.

Green, Justin. Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. San Francisco : McSweeney's

Books, 2009. Print. 

Pekar, Harvey, Kevin Brown, and Gregory Budgett. American Splendor: The Life and

Times of Harvey Pekar : Stories. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003. Print.

Pekar, Harvey, Dean Haspiel, Lee Loughridge, and Pat Brosseau. The Quitter. New

York: DC Comics, 2005. Print.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. Print.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. New York: Pantheon Books, 2004. Print.

Spiegelman, Art. In the Shadow of No Towers. New York: Pantheon Books, 2004. Print.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor's Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997. Print.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus II: A Survivor's Tale : and Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991. Print.

WORKS CITED

Doherty, Thomas. "Art Spiegelman's Maus: Graphic art and the Holocaust." American

Literature 68.1 (1996): 69. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 27 July 2011.

Fazioli, Carol. "Maus: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History/Maus II: And Here

My Troubles Began (Book)." School Library Journal 49.11 (2003): 84. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text. EBSCO. Web. 27 July 2011.

Hatfield, Charles. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson, MS: The Univesity

Press of Mississippi, 2005. Print.

Park, Hye Su. "Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale: A Bibliographic Essay."

Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 29.2 (2011): 146-164. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 27 July 2011.

Lavin, Michael R. “American Comics: Beyond the Superhero, Part Two, General Fiction

and Nonfiction.” Graphic Novels: Beyond the Basiccs: Insights and Issues for Libraries. Ed. Martha Cornog and Timothy Perper. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2009. Print.

Lavin, Michael R. "A Librarian's Guide to Independent Comics: Part One, Publisher

Profiles." Serials Review 25.1 (1999): 29. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 27 July 2011.

O’English, Lorena. “Comics and Graphics Novels in the Academic Library Collection.”

Graphic Novels: Beyond the Basiccs: Insights and Issues for Libraries. Ed. Martha Cornog and Timothy Perper. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2009. Print.

O'English, Lorena, J. Gregory Matthews, and Elizabeth Blakesley Lindsay. "Graphic

Novels in Academic Libraries: From Maus to Manga and Beyond." Journal of Academic Librarianship 32.2 (2006): 173-182. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 27 July 2011.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale II: And Here My Troubles Began. New York:

Pantheon Books, 1991. Print.