Wednesday, December 12, 2007

For the love

Just a couple of weeks ago, I got re-aquainted with a long-time friend & kindred spirit by pure chance (as these things sometimes happen even to me). We got together and it was (besides the obvious catching up) as if no time at all had elapsed, even though the last time we talked was certainly 2 years ago and the last time we really talked must have been a small decade ago.
Strange, but in the best way possible.

Now, as it happens, (and this ought not to surpise you, intrepid reader) during our encounters that decade hence, we spent most of our time in the blissful light exuded by comics and other printed pages, as well as a solid dose of games and the like, as befits adolescents.

No suprise then, that that afternoon some weeks ago, we spent talking mostly about comics, exchanging experiences, memories and the like.
As should be even less of a surprise, your servant is at all times keen to impart his endless wisdom & impeccable taste upon the unsuspecting as well as the initiated (for he would never discriminate) so we leisurely drifted in and out of the available material, picking out interesting objects along the way.

As my tastes have been running (for a good while now) much more towards the U.S. comics & Japanese manga rather than the European BD, and this evidently being evident in my collection, my friend at one point remarks that "I seem to prefer the pulp-side of the medium".

At first, I was defensive towards this term, yet I quickly realised that it concerned merely a difference in definition (furthermore, the term was not meant as a derogatory).
As he'd been weening himself increasingly on BDs when our ways parted many years ago, he'd veered more and more towards what I'll label 'auteur'BDs. I.e. material by Joann Sfar, Blain, Trondheim, Boucq etc. Plenty of Casterman, single volumes rather than series and so on.
These are more often than not a book per year, conserving a certain style that is almost inherent to that section of the medium.
A lot of the material in my collection, then, has monthly frequency, a plethora of styles, ideas, and, I suppose where he was going with the comment: a lot of genre exercises.
Think Stray Bullets, Star Wars, Vagabond, X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman ...

I'd never considered those pulp (as that term evokes images of Tarzan, The Shadow, The Spider or Doc Savage) and certainly not as derivative or inferior in either content or form to whatever
my friend was comparing them to. As the discussion went on, it became clear that quite simply, our definitions differed.

And I could safely conclude that the one cohesive line one could draw through my collection, from Hellboy to Wolverine, from Scott Pilgrim to Doctor Doom & from El Borbah to The Infinty Gauntlet, I think they are good reading.
True, that also means my collection will forever lack Isaac Le Pirate, Donjon, Michelluzzi books and plenty of others besides. I have tried them (more than once) and the detail that they are BD is wholly incidental. A certain rapport between their geographical origin and the creators' influence could no doubt be made, but bottom line, I quite simply don't think they are as good as the tomes making up my own collection.
And the only gauge I use to come to that conclusion is my own taste, no more, no less.

It certainly makes us no less good friends, on the contrary, the criticism allows for a more animated dialogue & it will always be based purely on what we have read and can therefore consider fact, rather than assumptions we make based on not much of anything.

I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and feel the most rewarding was that we found more similarities in our arguments than differences.

Joy.

Say hello to his many talents!

Be seeing you
--nout

7 comments:

willborough said...

I would of course never use the term pulp in a derogatory way as I consider myself a fan of quite some 'pulp' books and comics. There is something immensely comforting in reading about a world of which the bounderies are clearly set and the fun to be had is almost certain. My attraction to these auteurBD's mainly lies in the fact that they seem to combine the best of pulp with a more personal out-of-the-ordinairy touch. We'll have to dicuss it further one of the coming afternoons ;)

B

ampersand said...

Interesting discussion... I wonder if the idea of many American series as "pulp" isn't also related to their particular culture of - well, authorised fanfic/fanart. Because that is what it is, right? Someone invents a character, and other authors elaborate on their stories, invent alternative universes, and other artists redefine the looks to suit their own tastes. It allows the stories to follow one another more quickly, cater to many different tastes, whereas in Europe the great majority of sequential artists guard their creation like a dragon guards its gold. For me as a European reader the American system took some adapting to, and I am still not happy when parts of Y are not drawn by Pia Guerra, or parts of Hellboy by someone other than Mike Mignola, and so on - just because to me the artist's touch is an integral part of the comic, and Yorick drawn by Goran Sudzuka is not the same Yorick, and Hellboy drawn by even P. Craig Russell is not the same Hellboy. Isaac de Piraat, on the other hand, is entirely the creation of Christophe Blain, and it is the Blainerie that makes me love him :-).

Is Vagabond supposed to be pulp? It may be published in manga magazines first, but I doubt that a story with such a philosophical layer can qualify as "popular" anywhere except in Japan ;-)...

willborough said...

I think you're right about how american mainstream comics are fanfiction/fanart. It doesn't come as a surprise that the Americans made comcis into a more collaborative and thus more commercially interesting way of storytelling, while European art sensibilities have pushed it towards an individual artform. Mind you, some countries in Europe have a more American way of comicproduction, notably italy. (e.g. Dylan dog) That being said i wouldn't say all american comics are 'pulp', but a lot of them are genre exercises, which for me would be one of its most important characteristics. At the same time a fair share of European comics are equally 'pulp', but benefit from the more personal storytelling of a unique creator. Correct me if i'm wrong :)

B

the comics expert said...

I still think it's terribly unfair to juge all U.S. comics the same way (I know you're all smarter than this and you're not really doing it, but it still reads that way).
One has to consider the state of the market. Just read up on what Warren Ellis has to say about this: the past couple of years, numerous examples have proved that (apparently) the US market is not interested in what could amount to a mirror of the European system (pre 90's boom-and-bust, this could have worked, but we're way beyond this) so, as a creator, you could toil in relative to ensured obscurity and blame your own readership for lack of success, or run with the wolves, and write Batman, even IF the movie on your creator-owned properties is such hot shit. (spot that not-so-obscure reference)

Equating collaboration as a sort of opposition tot eh Euro-model... Commerce will always (always) be the first dorma to follow. In any model. More discussion for when we meet. Or maybe even a future column.

Saying the works on Spider-Man after Ditko, Batman after Kane etc. is no more than fanfic, (and certainly affirming it so positively, for shame ;_;) is cutting right to the heart of copyright issues and how those were established in the first place in the U.S. as opposed to Europe, or even Japan. I'll not go into that any further here, but we'll talk ^_^

I'm very happy to have my target-audience (however small you are) paying attention, regardless.
Thanks. Sincerely.

donnie darko said...

"My attraction to these auteurBD's mainly lies in the fact that they seem to combine the best of pulp with a more personal out-of-the-ordinairy touch."
"At the same time a fair share of European comics are equally 'pulp', but benefit from the more personal storytelling of a unique creator. Correct me if i'm wrong :)"


Warren Ellis has a unique voice and a more personal out-of-the-ordinairy touch, so do Alan Moore, Garth Ennis and for better or worse, Grant Morrisson and Frank Miller. All English (except Miller), you say. Quite right, but they write american comics (I'll give you some other names Brubaker and Vaughan, they're not english). All tell a story in their own personal way, share their views,...

"I wonder if the idea of many American series as "pulp" isn't also related to their particular culture of - well, authorised fanfic/fanart. Because that is what it is, right?"

Does this mean that whenever something is 'popular' or has lots of fans, it should be considered 'pulp'and thus not (intellectually) worthwile?

ampersand said...

Does this mean that whenever something is 'popular' or has lots of fans, it should be considered 'pulp'and thus not (intellectually) worthwile?

Of course not! But 1) pulp is almost by definition popular; and 2) I think that things that are not creator-owned will for some reason, unrelated to their quality, command less respect from 'the critics', especially on this side of the big pond. I'm not saying that is necessarily justified - it's a result of the general (and sometimes a little absurd) esteem for 'originality', in which originality of treatment alone does not seem to be enough.

...Okay, points 1 and 2 don't seem to bear any logical relation to each other :-)...

Koen C said...

ah, ook hier worden strips meestal gemaakt door fans. (altijd ?)
zeg nou zelf, wie anders zou strips maken, dan fans van het/de medium/kunstvorm ?

een goed verhaal blijft een goed verhaal, of je dat nu met Batman in de hoofrol vertelt, of met een nieuw, zelf verzonnen personage. als je je verhaal verkocht krijgt aan de big two, dan krijg je er gewoon meer geld voor. zo simpel is het.

en het houdt de titel ook wel interessant en fris (nou ja, als het goed gaat, want niet alle verhalen zijn natuurlijk de moeite waard).
ik kan de lang lopende europese reeksen niet tellen, die er beter al lang mee hadden opgehouden, of een ander team hadden gekregen.
fanfic is zo slecht nog niet, dus. :-)

auteurBD = pulp ? hmja. maar zorg dat ze het zelf niet horen.
en eigenlijk kan ook ik daar niet mee akkoord gaan. Strip = Kunst, hoe goed of hoe slecht die strips ook gemaakt zijn ;-). het is al erg genoeg dat we aan de niet-lezers telkens moeten uitleggen dat strips 'al lang niet meer aleen voor de kiendjes zijn'. als we dan zelf ook nog eens gaan zeggen dat het pulp is... dan is het einde helemaal zoek :-).

ah en pulp... als ze in amerika met pulp bezig zijn, dan weten ze dat, en dan maken ze er FUN van. en dat is wat strips toch moeten zijn : Fun, Entertainment. een verhaal moet naast goed, ook leuk om lezen zijn. want als je tijdens het lezen zit te blazen, en met je ogen zit te draaien, dan lees je het boek niet uit (ik toch niet).

en in de dertig jaar dat ik strips lees, heb ik moeten toegeven dat de angelsaksische stripmakers, veel meer dan de franco-belgische stripmakers, inzien dat de strip een kunstvorm is, anders dan alle andere kunstvormen. want zij vertellen meestal verhalen die in geen enkel ander medium zo tot hun recht zouden komen, terwijl de gemiddelde franco-belgische strip evengoed als tv-feuilleton of boek kon worden uitgewerkt.