Note: Blame Alert Nerd for this rant when they issued the challenge of “What’s your Scott & Jean?”, essentially meaning what’s “ my geek sacred cow.” More and more, I find myself wanting to pick fights with bloggers and podcasters that I really enjoy who simply write stuff off as “it’s manga” or “it’s superheroes” and miss the excitement that can be found in almost any kind of good comic book story.
Here’s the new cost of admission around here– if it has words and pictures put together in some kind of sequential order, you cannot simply dismiss it as “not a comic book.” Got it? Good.
For some reason, it feels like the last few months many comic book pundits have been trying to define what a comic book is. What imakes up what we call a “comic book?” Is it a 32 page monthly pamphlet? Is it a collection of those monthly pamphlets that comes out maybe once or twice a year? It it an original graphic novel? Or worse, it is maybe something that comes from Japan and that you have to read backwards to follow the story? I’ve read too many articles and listened to far too many podcasts that spend time trying to define what a comic book is, mostly the the exclusion of what the writer or podcaster think that a comic book isn’t. It’s easy to go on and on that manga aren’t comic books or that collected trade editions aren’t comic books or even graphic novels.
Who really cares?
Who cares about what comics aren’t? I’ve always thought that the beauty of comics is tied up in the single fact that they can be anything at all. There’s almost no limit of what you can put on one comic book page, let alone 22 or even 128 pages. You can either have a nice quiet moment like something out of a Jaime Hernandez comic, a massive and sprawling fight like Scott McClouds DESTROY! or even offer up some meta-commentary like Grant Morrison did in his final issue of Animal Man. It’s all possible thanks to the combination of words and pictures. Now take those possibilities beyond comics produced in New York or California. Look at comics produced in France or Belgium or Tokyo. Imagine what the possibilities would be.
Growing up, I was a solid Marvel fanboy and I’ve easily got to thank the 80’s era Marvel comics for expanding my horizons by exposing me to Jean Giraud, a.k.a. Moebius. The local library had a huge comic book encyclopedia back in the late 70s/early 80s that covered everything from Gil Kane to TinTin. So I had seen Moebius before 1985 or 1986 but I had never really paid attention to Moebius so I don’t know why a 15 year old me picked up Gardens Of Aedena but nothing has ever been the same since. It’s not so much what Moebius was drawing or the story he was telling but it was the way he was telling it that hit me like a brick house. Moebius opened up a whole new world to me, even if I’ve been slow to fully explore that world.
The main thing that Marvel and Moebius taught me back then was to look and check out everything, whether it was something called a “manga” or the most obscure black and white comic book or (to put it in today’s terms) something I could only read on a computer monitor. It’s amazing that something with the breadth and depth of comics can have so many people trying to limit what they are, what they can be or what they’re exposed to. Why?
Comic books come in many different shapes, forms and languages but they all rely on the same two elements– a combination of art and story. I can’t really understand people who close themselves off to new experiences simply because it isn’t put out by Marvel or DC, it’s not in color or it wasn’t written by an English-speaking writer. So here’s the deal, can we all just agree that words and pictures make comic books and drop marketing terms like “manga,” “literary,” “superhero” and “black and white?” Can we own up to our likes and dislikes but still keep an open mind toward work that we haven’t even experienced? Naruto may not be for you but it’s not fair to judge all manga by your dislike of Naruto.
[...] Alert Nerd: Our Scott and Jeans Phoning It In: “Trust Me!” Geeked: My Scott and Jean The Book Smugglers: That’s Our Scott and Jean Fantastic Fangirls: Q & A 22 – What is your “Scott and Jean”? Faust’s Fantastically Fantasmagoric Forum: My “Scott & Jean”: You Can’t Spell “Dark Knight Detective” Without “Dark” and “Detective” Love Dat Joker: Mad Love: My Scott and Jean Bill Wendel: My Scott and Jean: Stan Lee The ISS: My “Scott and Jean”: Waid and Wieringo’s Magic Dr. Doom Confessions of a Retconned Fangirl: My Scott & Jean: Or Leave My Hawks Alone! The Discriminating Fangirl: What’s Your Geek Sacred Cow? Ashley Awesome: newsflash: you are an idiot david brothers @ 4thletter!: My Scott & Jean: Knowing When To Let Go Jeff Lester @ The Savage Critics: My Scott, Your Jean: Jeff Takes A Quick Look at His Sacred Cows. Written World: Sir Gawain: Great Knight, or Greatest Knight? Those are your only choices. The Fount of Useless Information: Geek Apologetics: “My Scott and Jean” Nothing Challenging or Specific: Are you f*@$ing kidding me, Brett Ratner? My geek sacred cow… Suicide Aint’ a Viable Career Option: The Geek Sacred Cow aka my Scott and Jean aka Incoherent Ramblings Reporting on Marvels and Legends: My Scott and Jean The Secret of the Wednesday’s Haul: I’ll stick with you baby for a thousand years [...]
Accidently wrote this on the wrong entry, let’s try again….
Very well said sir. I generally don’t care for manga, say what you will but the reading backwards takes some getting used to. However, in the last several years I’ve read a few volumes of Monster, 20th Century Boys, and Pluto. These stories, particularly the last two, are more engaging than anything Marvel or DC is putting out right now. How much smaller my comics world would be had I never read them. I still would rather read comics left to right, but good material is worth the effort…