Molrak.com
Daily Digital Wanderlust

Note: The following post is based off a longer post originally posted on January 11th, 2005. I wasn’t very good about maintaining my blog back then and lost the 3-4 posts from this era, but thankfully the Internet Wayback Machine saved them for me.

I’ve been a life-long lover of animation and have been watching cartoons for as long as I can remember. Unlike most children, I never really stopped watching cartoons. The Simpsons began in 1989-1990, while I was still in elementary school, and I’ve been watching almost every Sunday (and Thursday) night since season two or three. I was also indoctrinated in the usual Disney fare as a youth. I really was a great time to love cartoons, as Disney’s second golden age came around the same time The Simpsons first aired. I still recall going into the theater to watch Oliver and Company-not Disney’s best effort, but the film that preceeded the immensely popular The Little Mermaid.

While Disney’s films were popular with kids, they struck a false chord with me. My parents were big believers in reading to my sister and I when we were young, and thus we knew Hans Christian Anderson’s wonderful tale before we saw The Little Mermaid. Even as a child, something just didn’t quite feel right about the Disney company’s treatment of their source material. As I’ve grown, I’ve learned to accept the sugarization of Disney’s fare while still resenting that feeling that kids couldn’t handle the classic fairy tales that served kids well up until the motion picture arrived.

I’ve also been a long-time fan of Looney Tunes, which are grand examples of short cartoons which appeal to young and old alike. In a perfect world, Warner Brothers would recognize the brilliance in that cast of characters instead of butchering them with the recent series of films and tv shows they have appeared in. The only recent decent effort that I can think of off the top of my head was the short-lived Duck Dodgers series, but even that was followed by the unwatchable Loonatics Unleashed.

Of course, if copyright laws around the world were more sane than they are today, corporations would have less incentive to milk old cartoon characters (or dead celebrities) in horrible ways. The last thing I want to see in the retirement home is He-Man trying to sell me robotic vacuum cleaners.

Gary Larson was the cartoonist behind The Far Side. I read a lot of strips as a kid–mom and dad always had newspaper subscriptions, and I lived for The Far Side (although once we lived in M’town, I’d often have to read it at school, since the local paper in M’town didn’t carry it and we only got The Des Moines Register on weekends). To fill the void, I picked up the collections and calendars. I also picked up The Complete Far Side after the Xmas it came out and always thumbed through it, but never really sat down to read it.

I’ve been going through the last 6 months or so during the last couple of weeks. The individual comics are awesome, but the real treat is Larson’s commentary before the start of each year. Topics vary from the grind of comic’ing to his upbringing and where some of the ideas came from. (The other great treat are letters from people who hated the strip so much that they sent in letters to local newspaper editors or even the syndicate, including the infamous Jane Goodall strip.) Prior to 1991, Larson compares and contrasts cartoonists with comedians, then goes on to compare cartoonists with writers (novelists really):

“Actually, I think cartoonists have more in common with writers than we do with comedians. The following writer-cartoonist parallels come to mind: loners, quiet room, favorite chair, hand puppet (just me?), and our trusty writing/drawing tools.”

Larson then goes on to contrast the difference between completing one comic versus completing a novel (the novelist goes out to fine restaurant while the comic eats a bowl of cereal).

When we were covering pop art, our art history prof asked the class who thought comics were art. I didn’t raise my hand. I believe that art is largely defined by the will or intention of the creator. Due to the demands of the industry and the sheer volume writers and artists go through, I find it hard to classify comics as a whole as art–comic strips and comics are more lit (or lit lite/pulp). Bad art can ruin a (good story) graphic novel, but seldom can good art overcome a bad story. You don’t often hear many people uttering how great the art is in any sort of fiction, unless it is coupled with quality writing. Sure, there are a few exceptions (I think the art in say, Kingdom Come helped make the book more than the story), but I think that the true triumphs in comics are the coupling of great art with great writing.

Visual art has a level of abstraction and ambiguity to it. A painting should be open to interpretation, perhaps in a similar (but more limited) vein to classical music. Comics are more akin to pop music in the 20th century–largely dialog (or lyric) driven, while the backing (visuals or music) comes in to complement the written work.

That’s not to say that I don’t think comic art is without merit. It can be incredibly moving if well done. But a lot of U.S. comic work today fails to connect with me, it’s almost too busy. In some ways, the adventure line of novels which used the D.C. animation style of art almost appealed to me more because they were simpler.