Comics and Literature #4: An Alternative By Any Other Name
In which I consider what exactly an "alternative comic" is, and how comics scholarship has considered them up until now
As this history shows, the relationship between alternative comics and the mainstream is often contradictory. There are multiple mainstreams and multiple alternatives. To begin with, “alternative comics” is a necessarily vague term that, while still broadly meaningful, does not have the descriptive or categorical precision of periodizing phrases such as underground comix or the Golden and Silver Ages of superhero comics. These periods were marked by similarities in art and storytelling that aren’t found in the diverse group of titles which fall under the phrase “alternative comics.” Rather, alternative comics was a movement defined negatively, encompassing everything that fell outside the narrow strictures of the superhero comics published by Marvel, DC and their imitators. Thus, alternative comics could encompass everything from the epic fantasy of Cerebus and Elfquest to the bitter realist stories of Eightball and Optic Nerve. What these comics did have in common was an economic and social milieu that consisted of a network of fanzines, small publishers and direct market stores that enabled them to establish relationships with each other and readers. Despite their aesthetic and sometimes political differences, this was a group of artists that largely were aware of each other and influenced by each other. As I will argue, alternative comics also participated in a larger project to create an autonomous form of comics art inspired by what they saw as the core values of literature. This project is what Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo refer to as “comics as literature” discourse, which they argue has been the dominant means of interpreting comics within both literary and academic spheres.
Of course, the word “autonomous” also conjures up a jumble of positive but not easily definable associations. For participants in the discourse of comics as literature, autonomy meant chiefly artists having creative control over their own work. This demand stood in contrast to the reality of Marvel and DC, where editors dictated plots and policy from on high based on commercial concerns. A secondary issue was the right for artists and writers to receive appropriate economic rewards from their comics, including royalties and original art which could be saved or sold to collectors. The Creators’ Bill of Rights, enumerating these grievances and others, was an attempt to codify autonomy as it relates to the comics market. However, this declaration had little effect, and while mainstream comics publishers did make concessions they were never likely to provide the type of creative freedom demanded by alternative artists. Alternative comics turned for this sense of autonomy to another market. Literary publishers promised possible financial reward along with the creative freedom required by these creators’ ideas of autonomy. Thus, rather than autonomy meaning complete separation from and disinterest in the market (as in Bourdieu), autonomy in alternative comics came to mean insertion into the mainstream literary marketplace. As John Guillory argues, autonomy does not “transcend” social institutions, but rather exists “in complex relations to the motors of social change”, and as such leads comics in a different direction than it had literature (496).
Mainstream literature or literariness is itself difficult to define. When alternative comics creators aspired to enter the bookstore, they did not aim to achieve the status of the science-fiction or romance novels within. Rather, they aimed to be considered by the same institutions that considered the elusive subgroup of adult fiction known as “literature.” These institutions include literary awards, academia and prestigious book reviewers. The literary small press would have been at best a lateral move for alternative comics; they wanted the consecration and the platform that came from the major New York publishing houses and large bookstore chains. Fantagraphics, for instance, financially struggled through relationships with several small publishers until finally attaining success via a deal with W. W. Norton. This contradictory motion can lead to a bit of terminological confusion, as alternative comics rejected one “mainstream” (that of Marvel and DC Comics) that was in fact a rather niche cultural element in favour of another “mainstream” (that of the major publishing houses). Of course, proponents of comics-as-literature such as Groth or Pekar were not likely to speak in quite so mercenary terms, instead associating the literary with acceptance, creative freedom and trans-historical genius. Later writers such as Moore and Bechdel would treat the literary in more complicated way, but nevertheless use the platforms and figures of a fairly conventional Western canon.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Eternal Couch Potato to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.