As a teenager, History, Literature, and the Arts Professor Martha Kuhlman, Ph.D., frequently visited The Forbidden Planet, a Manhattan-based comic bookstore where she’d sift through shelves of comics and magazines— typically gravitating toward French and artsy comics. It was this initial spark, and her first stint as teaching assistant at New York University, that fostered her love for the genre and eventually led to the development of Bryant’s “Studies in Graphic Novel” course.
Today, the comic book publishing industry is thriving, currently valued at $2.2 billion in the United States. The genre consists of graphic novels, comic books, and digital comics —with graphic novels holding approximately 72 percent of the market share, according to IBISWorld.
“People are finding it increasingly important as a medium of self-expression and dealing with more serious topics,” says Kuhlman, who’s translated two graphic novels from Czech to English and serves as the Comics Studies Society’s second vice president.
In celebration of National Comic Book Day on September 25, Kuhlman discusses the history of comic books, the complexity that goes into creating them, and artists that new and seasoned comic readers should check out.
When were comics created?
The origin of comics dates to 1890s newspaper supplements with some of the earliest reoccurring comics being Hogan's Alley, Krazy Kat, and Little Nemo.
“These were very colorful and accessible to immigrant populations because there wasn't a lot of difficult language, and you could understand stories through pantomime,” Kuhlman says. “Publishers discovered that people were so into these supplements they started to publish them as standalone products.”
Once the 1930s rolled around, The Funnies became a popular, separate booklet of comics intended to entertain. In 1938, the first serial superhero comic book, Action Comics, was published and featured Joe Siegel and Jerry Schuster's character, Superman. Up to this point, Kuhlman explains that comic artists had the freedom to create any kind of story they wanted. That self-governance came into question when horror comics rose in popularity in the 1950s.
“There were actually congressional hearings about banning comics because they were ‘corrupting the youth’ and were considered to provide a negative example of how to behave,” Kuhlman says, nodding to examples of violence and sexual innuendo.
How were comics regulated?
Following American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, which claims that comic books have a damaging impact on the morality of impressionable youth, people started to organize public comic book burnings. Following this bad publicity, the comics industry voluntarily adopted the Comics Code Authority to determine what comic artists could and could not show. Kuhlman notes, for instance, that creators couldn't depict criminals succeeding; couldn’t challenge authority or show the police in a bad light; and couldn't show sexual situations out of wedlock.
The Comics Code Authority sparked backlash and the creation of underground comics and Mad magazine. This was the context in which Art Spiegelman — creator of Maus, a story of a Polish Jew during the Holocaust — emerged in the 1980s.
“When Maus won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, it was the first time a comic of this kind got coverage in the national press,” Kuhlman says, noting that Maus helped to inspire the graphic novel movement, particularly for memoirs and work on serious topics. “It was on the bestseller list and suddenly people were like, ‘You can tell a story about a serious topic through this medium with it being thought-provoking, personal, sensitive.’”
How do comics convey complexity?
While a comic’s illustrative style and limited word count give the impression of simplicity, there’s immense complexity that goes into how readers understand and respond to someone’s work. Because images are the first thing you see, Kuhlman notes that an accomplished cartoonist will prioritize art treatment over additional copy.
“You don't need all that prose — you want to pare it down to only what's necessary,” Kuhlman says. “If you explain too much, then it gets boring. You just want to let the image do most of the work.”
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Page layout is also intentional and is determined by how fast the comic artist wants readers’ eyes to move across the page and take in information.
“If you use the whole page and it's a bleed, it gives this sense of timelessness, or you're involved in that space. Whereas, if you break it into lots of tiny little panels, then it feels more claustrophobic, and it changes the pace of reading while increasing the awkwardness of the situation,” Kuhlman says.
Where should I start with comics?
For those looking for an introduction into comics, Kuhlman suggests readers begin with Maus as a foundational text. Additionally, superhero fans will enjoy Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen while those who enjoy more literary books will like David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp.
“Asterios Polyp is about a relationship between an architect and his wife. They have different ways of seeing the world, and Mazzucchelli does this clever thing where, when we're looking through the architect's perspective, it's in this cyan blue; when we're looking from his wife's perspective, it's this magenta pink. Sometimes, the two colors combine in different ways,” Kuhlman says, noting his exceptional work with layout.
For more experienced comic book readers, Kuhlman recommends Chris Ware's Building Stories, which consists of fourteen printed works packaged in a boxed set. Ware’s style is daring and experimental, notes Kuhlman — who is currently editing a special issue of INKs: the Journal of the Comics Studies Society on Ware’s work.
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She also recommends cartoon journalist Joe Sacco's The Great War, which documents one day in the Battle of the Somme during World War I.
“The way Sacco did it is insane; it's just in a gigantic accordion book. There are no words,” Kuhlman says. “It takes a lot of time to look at this, but you can see the trenches, you can see individual people, you can see explosions, you can see the passage from night to day. He is definitely showing, not telling.”
Beyond reading comics, Kuhlman notes that individuals may want to seek out local opportunities to learn more about the genre, such as visiting Rhode Island’s Comics Creator Con where people can view independent cartoonists’ work and chat with artists about their craft.