what you don't know

For all the talk about sales figures, mainstream media coverage, and whatnot, the comics scene is still a fairly insular environment with a public profile on par with that of contemporary poetry. Most people are aware it exists, few outside the bubble of cognoscenti and critics would be able to name even handful of recent "important" works. Comics do have a leg up on poetry in terms of licensability (there isn't exactly a rush to adapt Charles Simic's work into an XBox 360 game or a Hollywood summer blockbuster), but that cross-medium saturation hasn't effectively translated into a boost in interest regarding the source material.

I attended a number of poetry readings back in college. It was part of my "excuses to spend more time with a girl I liked" program, though I do have a certain fondness for verse (mostly Classical, Romantic, and Moderinst stuff). With only a couple of execeptions, the material presented at the readings was tripe of the most self-indulgent variety, sophomoric profundities gilded with free verse sleight-of-pen. Then, a couple of days or weeks after the event, I'd read a review (written by a colleague or friend of the poet in question) in the Boston Globe or The Nation praising the poet's works to the rafters.

What contemporary poetry lacks in Entertainment Weekly coverage, it makes up for in perceived legitimacy. Taking up a pen and composing verse means participating in a tradition stretching from Homer and Ovid to Byron and Shelley to Eliot and Pound. In contrast, to the ears of the American masses "comics" doesn't evoke Eisner, Miyazaki, or Moebius as much as Superman, The Family Circus, and Rob Liefeld's X-Force -- disposable diversions largely targeted at children or scary obsessive fans.

This situation, combined with the insularity of the scene, has led to a defensive mindset, complete with elaborate attempts at self-justification, in some quarters. The people who have tied their sense of self-worth to the hobby, as outlined in Pal Ken's infamous post, are most frequently cited in regards to this phenomenon, but it has wider and more subtle effects than ingrained fan entitlement.

"The easiest way to look handsome and smart," as the old joke goes, "is to surround yourself with ugly, stupid people." Because the comics industry, in perception as well as sales, is dominated by decadent, inbred superheroic material (and manga, which has a similar crap-to-quality ratio as Marvel's and DC's products once one has set aside the lux oriente nonsense), there is a tendency to overvalue relatively decent material. As I said to a friend when Madonna's performance in Evita started to generate Oscar nomination buzz, "Not being lousy is not the same as being great."

Novelty and "purity of artistic vision" (whatever that is supposed to mean) in and of themselves are not enough. It doesn't matter how diminshed one's expectations regarding the medium are, a work has to stand alone on its own merits and not be graded on a scale because the prevailing standard is "barely tolerable, if not worse." Compared to According to Jim, Scrubs seems like a rare work of genius, but the "better of two bad choices" only really works in the realm of politics, and really isn't something a rational person would want to see applied in wider circumstances.

Think of how much the "indie" label has been manipulated and abused, not just in comics, but in film and music as well. The implied sense of artistic integrity and edginess in the term's use is meaningless on an aesthetic level, intended more to engender a knee-jerk "FIGHT THE MAN" reaction. It's a sentiment I can empathize with, but it's not a guarantee of quality or an innoculation against failure.

It's not that I'm saying that "good enough" isn't, well, good enough. I think that the record shows that I have been unswerving in my affection for the "solidly acceptable" class of entertainment choices. How else is one going to pass the time between transcendental works of genius? What I am troubled by is the willingness to laud good-not-great material as the Word made manifest -- replete with suspended critical judgement -- simply because Secret Infinite Invasion Crisis and whatnot have set the quality bar so damn low.

The Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup (from The Very Best of the Foundations, 1995) - Is it bubblegum? Is it soul? A little bit of both? Does it even matter? Not to me, it doesn't. It's a damn fine piece of pop no matter how you tag it.

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Until You Find Out (from God Fodder, 1991) - "I picked up a couple albums from some bands I'd been hearing buzz about -- Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Nirvana. I didn't really like the Ned stuff, but Nirvana was frigging awesome." On that day in 1991, a friendship died.