Re: TCJ #282
Recently, The Comics Journal got around to reviewing A History of Webcomics. I know you're all sick of watching me self-flagellate on this one, but I thought I'd share what I wrote Tim O'Neill in response to his review, because it covers most of my thinking about this kind of thing now:
It took me a while to get to my copy of the Journal this month, so I'm only just now being surprised, and a little touched, to see the review of A History of Webcomics.
If you haven't read my blog posts about the thing, it may surprise you to learn that I agree with most of your points these days. The book should've used footnotes, not endnotes, should've had page numbers, and now that you mention it, an index too. This is indeed a soggy subject. The ending of the Golden Age is indeed an arbitrary thing, an attempt to follow Scott McCloud's "we's who writes the histories gets to defines the terms" example, as are cute terms like "Pantspressionists" that I hoped would enter the lexicon (and boy, that sure didn''t happen).
The problems multiply after Chapter Four, when it moves from chronology to survey. It was just about achievable to track the beginnings of the form, the early underpopulated days, a few influential cartoonists and a pair of collective brands. It's a lot harder to get the big picture about things like genre, artistic movement and culture without the benefit of some considerable distance. Short essays covering focused topics, like yours, are probably a much more productive response to the field as it exists now. I'm sorry it took me this long to realize that.
Maybe in five or ten years we'll be ready for "History 2.0," but I suspect it'll indeed be written by someone else. I'm hoping to be making history between now and then.
I will take issue on two little points. One, it's "T Campbell," not "T. Campbell" (though my publisher got that wrong on the title page, too) and it's "webcomics," not "Web-comics." I know it's still a conspicuous neologism, but a quick Google search will tell you which term's come out on top.
Two, Achewood. I admit that the reader base for this one had largely escaped my attention-- I knew it existed but not that it was particularly popular. But being critically acclaimed or popular was never supposed to be enough for a strip to be mentioned. Names I dropped were supposed to have noticeably changed the game, or to exemplify some larger trend. Onstad has developed a following but he's not really part of the scene, and because Achewood is so difficult to summarize, I didn't want to use it as a quick example. As you say, there are probably too many comics cited in there as it is. [I got a lot of things wrong in this book but I did get one important thing right: history should not be a favorites list. That's a mistake I see too many people making now.]
But besides that, it's a good, thoughtful review. Now get back to talking about actual comics!
It took me a while to get to my copy of the Journal this month, so I'm only just now being surprised, and a little touched, to see the review of A History of Webcomics.
If you haven't read my blog posts about the thing, it may surprise you to learn that I agree with most of your points these days. The book should've used footnotes, not endnotes, should've had page numbers, and now that you mention it, an index too. This is indeed a soggy subject. The ending of the Golden Age is indeed an arbitrary thing, an attempt to follow Scott McCloud's "we's who writes the histories gets to defines the terms" example, as are cute terms like "Pantspressionists" that I hoped would enter the lexicon (and boy, that sure didn''t happen).
The problems multiply after Chapter Four, when it moves from chronology to survey. It was just about achievable to track the beginnings of the form, the early underpopulated days, a few influential cartoonists and a pair of collective brands. It's a lot harder to get the big picture about things like genre, artistic movement and culture without the benefit of some considerable distance. Short essays covering focused topics, like yours, are probably a much more productive response to the field as it exists now. I'm sorry it took me this long to realize that.
Maybe in five or ten years we'll be ready for "History 2.0," but I suspect it'll indeed be written by someone else. I'm hoping to be making history between now and then.
I will take issue on two little points. One, it's "T Campbell," not "T. Campbell" (though my publisher got that wrong on the title page, too) and it's "webcomics," not "Web-comics." I know it's still a conspicuous neologism, but a quick Google search will tell you which term's come out on top.
Two, Achewood. I admit that the reader base for this one had largely escaped my attention-- I knew it existed but not that it was particularly popular. But being critically acclaimed or popular was never supposed to be enough for a strip to be mentioned. Names I dropped were supposed to have noticeably changed the game, or to exemplify some larger trend. Onstad has developed a following but he's not really part of the scene, and because Achewood is so difficult to summarize, I didn't want to use it as a quick example. As you say, there are probably too many comics cited in there as it is. [I got a lot of things wrong in this book but I did get one important thing right: history should not be a favorites list. That's a mistake I see too many people making now.]
But besides that, it's a good, thoughtful review. Now get back to talking about actual comics!
Labels: BF, History of Webcomics
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