Entertainment is something that the media can't get enough of lately.

News on celebrities, movies, TV shows, etc, is easier to find then news on social unrest in some far off country. The reasoning is simple: entertainment is more popular then reality. Thus, blurring the line between entertainment and news will ensure higher ratings, which leads of course, to higher profits. But we already know all that.

What doesn't fit the rule in this age of 24-7 entertainment networks, is the shunning of sequential art (less pretentiously referred to as comics or comic books). When sequential art is lucky enough to garner some media attention, the story deals with product value, or centers upon children's aspects of sequential art; more specifically, superheroes.

The media's perception of sequential art seems to contain a few definitions- a spectators industry, a juvenile entertainment industry, or a feeder industry for film and TV. Thus, the mass media's coverage of the form is either non-existent, since these definitions leave nothing important to write about, or the reporting is limited to those three aspects. Thus, a form rich with artists, writers, and thinkers all full of potential, is “ghettoized” into an obscure area of public awareness, unlike any other major form of entertainment. The state of sequential art might have been compared to that of independent film, before networks such as The Sundance Channel, or the Independent Film Channel began to pop up. Of course, even before such inventions, Indy film was still known to much of America, with personalities such as John Waters, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and even Orson Wells or Ed Wood.

While Indy film may not reach as many people as mainstream film, the icons of it are household names nonetheless. And in a sense, that is another parallel to comics. Icons of the comics world are household names: Superman, Batman, Spiderman, etc. But unlike Indy films, these icons are not seen as icons. Rather, superheroes are seen as the beginning and end of comics. To the general public, that is all that comics, beyond the daily newspaper, will ever be. Of course the general public gets this idea from (drum roll please) the media.

Considering the media's apathy towards sequential art, movies like Terry Zwigoff's Crumb (an amazing, and immensely well-reviewed documentary on underground comic master R. Crumb), remain all the more un-expected and scarce. Crumb was the work of a friend and fan to R. Crumb, and that is important to note, because the only journalists who seem to cover sequential art, are those who are associated with it in some way, or avid fans.

To sum it up, sequential art faces a number of obstacles within the mass media: If one produces a work of art within the medium of comics, it will not be seen or reported on by the mass media, due to their misconception of the form as juvenile entertainment. Thus, the general public retains the same views on sequential art; no matter how well informed (and I use this term loosely) they are by the mass media.

Perhaps a tougher question is this: has sequential art produced anything of merit to deserve the attention of the mass media? Despite the obvious choices such as art spiegelman’s Maus (which received this opening line in a review by The New York Times: "Maus is not a comic book"), the recently accepted-by-the-art world work of R. Crumb, and a few others that have received the mainstream stamp of approval, someone with a small knowledge of sequential art would respond "No." But, again, the mass media has not informed such a person of large bodies of work by Dan Clowes, Jamie and Gilbert Hernandez, Harvey Pekar, Chris Ware, Jason Lutes, Will Eisner, Seth, Julie Doucet, Aline Kominsky Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman (although some might say Kurtzmans Mad was a great success. Still, have you, the reader, actually heard of Kurtzman?), and a host of others.

All of the above mentioned creators are true artists. They have stories to tell about their lives (autobiography is one of the most popular forms in alternative comics), about life in general, and execute these stories in a beautiful manner. There one difference between them and an artist whose paintings are all the rage this month, is that they choose to add words to their painting. Really, that's all sequential art is: the combination of art and words. But, since the majority of the medium is comprised of juvenilia, the true artists are ignored.

The disturbing aspect of this argument is that, there is the possibility that even if the mainstream media accepted those artists, sequential art may still be ignored. One of the great masters of the form, Charles Schultz (Peanuts), is one of the best-known creators in America. A true icon of the country. Yet, even though perhaps every single person above the age of 5 has read his strip once, sequential art is still ignored. The same goes for popular creators (although all less popular then Schultz) such as, Winsor McCay (Little Nemo), Walt Kelley (Pogo), Matt Groening (an underground comic star in the form of Life in Hell before The Simpsons), the above-mentioned art spiegelman, and others. This trend suggests that even though comics as art can gain attention in the mainstream world, the media stigma towards comics is so deep, that even a Pulitzer Prize winner (Maus) cannot overcome it.

The tide may change though. The young/alternative media seems to have a far different attitude. Alternative newspapers (i.e. San Francisco's bay Guardian, or Chicago's New City) have a very different attitude towards sequential art. Comics by Tom Tomorrow, Lloyd Dangle, Chris ware, Ben Katchor and others populate the newspapers, as do reviews on current alternative comics. Comics are reviewed beside novels and art shows, breaking down the line between sequential art, and “real” art. Again, art spiegelman is helpful in this area, writing editorials on comics for the New Yorker. As America becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the shock/sensationalism of the current media moguls, as well as the lack of any value in the entertainment they spend most of their time reporting on, perhaps sequential art's day will come.

Only through the death of the old media, and the birth of a new one, can the fortunes begin to change for sequential art and all ignored, yet worthy art forms.

Copyright © 1999 Austin English

Austin English was born in San Francisco where he continues to reside to this day. His interviews with alternative cartoonists have appeared throughout the Internet, most notably at www.indymagazine.com. He also has a self-published mini-comic entitled The Tenth Frame available for just $1.00. You can contact him at three1145@aol.com, or P.O. Box 460584 San Francisco, CA 94146-0584.