Hopelessly Lost, But Making Good Time #99

By Pam Bliss
July 27, 2009

Hello, and welcome back to "Hopelessly Lost …", the series about making your own comics for everyone who is able to keep three (or five) balls in the air at once, and every one else who really likes to watch us juggling.

Right now I'm juggling all my other work as I prepare the manuscript for the first Hopelessly Lost, But Making Good Time TPB collection. I hope I'll be able to tell you more about that next month — technical plans are still uncertain. But one thing every book needs is an introduction, and it was while I was in the middle of writing one for the collection that I remembered I needed a new essay to go with all the older ones. Luckily one section dealt with an issue I have never addressed in the series, a section that was, conveniently, just about the right length to act as an installment in its own right.

Never throw anything away, people, and never be afraid to ask one piece of work to pick up a second job.

Comics vs. comics

Those who are completely disinterested in the English language and the struggles of a writer who tries to use it coherently may skip this essay. But please don't. It's really sort of important.

It isn't easy to write about comics. The first big problem is what to call it. Or is that "what to call them"?

See the problem?

What is comics? What are comics? What is the proper name of this oddly compelling medium that we love so much, and which I have been trying to discuss in general terms in 99 of these essays (so far), and how do I use it in a sentence?

In American English, we call them comics, a word that, confusingly, is also the plural noun for finished products of that medium. This isn't true of any other medium I can think of. Literature produces novels and short stories and essays. Drama produces plays. Film produces films, or movies, or more specific variants like documentaries, film noir, and chick flicks. Photography produces photographs. The medium is a singular noun, the products a plural one.

"Comics" the media produces "comics" the finished objects.

Try to write one essay where you use the word "comics" in two different ways about twenty times each in three pages. Try to write 99 of them.

The word "comics" is a problem. The word "comics" has problems.

For someone like me who is bothered by this, there are two possible approaches to solving these problems. The first is to forget about "comics" entirely and try to find another term.

I actually tried this, and I'm only one of many who've made the attempt. "Picture stories", "sequential art," the French term "bande desinee," which translates as something like "strip drawing" or "drawn strip," and my own favorite, "cartoon stories," all appear in early drafts of some of the first Hopelessly Losts. But descriptive terms like this, logical and useful as they might seem, all sound contrived when presented to a general audience. Cartoonists might like them, and endlessly debate the subtle nuances that make one name better than another, but no one else recognizes any of them or has any idea what any of them mean.

I could have picked one, written endlessly defending it, and wasted a paragraph a month defining my terms for the sake of any new readers who might happen to wander by. And I was still taking the risk, every time I used my new term, of failing to communicate with my audience.

Maybe out there somewhere there is a writer with enough charisma, a powerful enough social position, and sufficient personal authority on the subject to individually popularize a new name for the medium. But I am so not her. I'm still convinced it is going to happen someday, but I've given up on the goal of being the catalyst for this vital change.

Living with It

The only alternative to change is trying to find a way to live with the status quo. For what it's worth, "comics" is a term everybody understands. There is still plenty of downside, starting with the problems of all the many, many fine comics out there that are not funny at all, and ending with the trashy triviality of the word. It's incredibly difficult for many of the creators out there who are trying to produce serious work, work worthy of literary consideration if it was produced in any other medium, to have to use a term barely one step above "funny books".

I really respect that position, but I'm not sure I support it myself. Of course, I am no literary cartoonist; my own comics are entertainments first and works of very minor philosophy second, and literature doesn't come into them at all. So maybe it doesn't count for much that I've decided at this late date to embrace the word "comics".

But I still encourage you to do so. There is no disgrace to class even the finest works of sequential art with Little Nemo and Gasoline Alley and Calvin and Hobbes, with Captain Marvel and Superman and The Fantastic Four. The more you know about the history of American comics, the more you learn about titans whose brushes none of us are worthy to clean. And, yes, you learn about hacks too, and comics that are drivel or worse, but negative examples have their own value.

The value of the word "comics" will, in the end, be judged by the comics themselves. If we all attend to our drawing boards and make the best comics that we are capable of making today, then our shared legacy is in good hands.

"Comics" in "Hopelessly Lost ...."

So this is the (longwinded discussion of) the background to my personal choices about That Word as you find it used in this series. I have decided that "comics" is the common term in American English for the sequential art medium, for the stories it produces, and for any publications dedicated to such stories. I don't have to like this, but it is a fact I have to live with, and which I have chosen, perhaps a little backhandedly, to embrace.

I use "comics" for both the medium and the products, and distinguish between the two grammatically. When you see the plural "comics are" that means specific comics, or the physical objects, while the singular "comics is" means the medium in general. Comics are piled up around the studio in unsteady, and untidy, heaps; comics is a form of storytelling built from the creative tension between words and pictures.

And when you see "comics" in quotes, I am talking about the word itself, and probably complaining about it.

In writing these essays, and later collecting them into a book, I had to make a lot of difficult decisions, and this was probably the most difficult. I stand by my choices, but I also know that a lot of people will disagree. If you do, I'm sorry, and I hope you will be able to read past it and enjoy "Hopelessly Lost ..." anyway.

And if you find this installment particularly incoherent, please have pity on the poor writer/cartoonist, who having set a deadline for a book, must wait an almost interminable time in 90+ degree (F) weather for the installation if the new air conditioner.

My brain is parboiled, but that doesn't stop me trying to write, and I hope it doesn't keep you from going someplace cool and making some comics.

Pam Bliss has been making comics since 1989, and the minicomic, in all its infinite variety, is her favorite form. Her cartoon short stories are set in the perfect Midwestern small town, Kekionga, Indiana, where just about anything can happen. Her new ongoing series, KEKIONGA, explores the mysteries of that most mysterious place through the eyes of an innocent young superhero. For more about all the Kekionga stories, visit www.paradisevalleycomics.com. Or, for updates on work in progress, essays on storytelling and other subjects, auto industry comments and random stuff, including a thrilling weekly adventure serial, read Sharkipede's LiveJournal No Silver Cars at http://www.livejournal.com/users/sharkipede/.

Paradise Valley Comics
No Silver Cars
Sparky's Minicomics Tips:
- Part One
- Part Two