I will never understand so many comics readers’ apparent desire for “hugely popular” comics, and the implied belief that that popularity goes hand in hand with being “aesthetically vital”….I don’t care if comics in the future are aimed at 13-year-old girls or 31-year-old boy-men or both. I don’t care what genre they fit into, or what country they’re produced in. All I want are comics that are good.
Right on:
After all (the theory goes), one must be interested in what is popular and therefore relevant. (You see similar arguments being made against comics readers who don’t read a lot of manga, incidentally.) My question is, what is it about hip hop (and manga, I guess) that has enabled popularity to replace quality in terms of the reason why a listener/reader/critic should or should not get into a particular work?
I think it’s people using the same term different ways. From a critical standpoint, there is something to be said for engaging the works that are actually out there shaping the larger culture; expecting a critic to have an “interest” in the larger culture, even if only to highlight microculture, seems to me to be a valid suggestion.
On the other hand, if by “interest” you mean a non-critical appreciation….well, that strikes me as being a pretty hard sell.
Why the interest in comics being “popular”?
1. Out of genuine enthusiasm: “Hey, this Cloak & Dagger comic is really cool: wouldn’t it be great if more people could experience how cool it is?” ::shoving said comic in your face::
2. Out of fear of extinction: “Those fuckers at Marvel cancelled Cloak & Dagger: if only comics were more popular, that wouldn’t have happened!” ::shakes fist in the air::
3. Out of lingering anxiety over Jr. high bullshit: “No, no, no – see, comics aren’t just for deviants and droolers: everyone likes them!” ::wiping drool from mouth::
4. Out of an allegiance to certain cultural studies-style theories: “People who ignore popularity are perpetrating an elitist appropriation of the art forms of the masses! (Also – please read all about this issue in my thesis on Cloak & Dagger – I posted it on my blog!)” ::burns copy of Raw::
It’s a very different instinct than the ones I’m familiar with from my formative years, that’s for sure. And it only applies in certain directions. It’s much rarer to see someone argue that you have to be into, like, Nickleback or Dave Matthews or Big & Rich to matter in terms of music, or that you have to be into Civil War to matter in terms of comics.
Metacomics: newest hippest latest
There are other ways to treat comics as a commodity rather than an art besides viewing them as product. Probably the most prevalent these days is to implicitly (or explicity) equate–or supplant–quality with popularity. Here’s an example of that minds…