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Comics Journalism: Towards a Definition

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Comics Journalism: Towards a Definition Volume 4 Issue 3 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND December 2017 CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926 Comics Journalism: Towards A Definition Kenan Koçak Bilecik Şeyh Edebali University Turkey Abstract The origins of comics journalism are in the Glasgow Looking Glass magazine which is also accepted as the first modern comics. Today’s understanding of comics journalism goes back to Joyce Brabner and Lou Ann Merkle who published Real War Stories in late 1980s which coincides with the rise of graphic novels. It was Joe Sacco who popularised the comics journalism genre in the early 1990s with especially his books on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Bosnian War. There are undeniable similarities between comics journalism and new journalism of the 1960s and 1970s such as subjective reporting and effort to liken the genre to novel writing. Both comics journalism and new journalism are a kind of literary journalism and have roots in the underground tradition of the 1960s. Like that new journalism grew bigger as being against the Vietnam War, comics journalism has expanded after September 11 attacks. Whereas before 9/11 there were only a few comics journalists, this number has grown more than three times after September 11. The issues covered by comics journalism are mostly shaped by American politics although there are also a number of examples dealing with topics like global warming and protests movements. Comics journalism is the last phase of the long history of visual journalism which can be even traced back to cave paintings. This study aims to make a definition of comics journalism by focusing mainly on war journalism. Keywords: Comics, graphic novel, journalism, comics journalism, graphic journalism. http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index Page 173 Volume 4 Issue 3 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND December 2017 CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926 1. Introduction Journalism has frequently impacted upon the novel since the rise of the latter as a literary genre in the early modern period. There are many examples of men who were both great journalists and novelists. A selective list of such figures will here suffice to prove the point. Daniel Defoe is not only recognised as one of the founders of the novel, but also he is regarded as one of the world’s first exponents of modern journalism for his account of the hurricane that hit Britain on 29 November 1703, though The Storm was not published until the following summer, and newspapers and newsbooks had already been intermittently or regularly published for some sixty or seventy years in Germany, England and France and since 1541 in Mexico.1 Conversely, Mark Twain contributed to a newspaper run by his older brother, Orion Clemens, as well as to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise before he gained his popularity thanks to a short story called Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,2 which was published in The Saturday Press.3 Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell were two journalists who voluntarily went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, and produced two fine novels filled with their war memories, viz. For Whom the Bell Tolls and Homage to Catalonia respectively. Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote were two pioneers of the New Journalism movement that flourished in 1960s and 1970s, and their reporting underpinned works that are regarded as novels today. Possibly the most recent development in the fusion of journalism and literary prose fiction is comics journalism. It combines drawings and text in order to inform people about events, issues and situations. Additionally, it resembles New Journalism in that both aspire to the status of novel-writing. This paper aims to examine comics journalism in four sections. After the introduction, the first main section seeks the origins of comics journalism together with introducing two important figures who contributed today’s comics journalism. The third section analyses comics journalism in terms of journalistic aspects within its historical, social, and theoretical contexts whereas the following one compares comics journalism with new journalism. The last section tries to give a definition for comics journalism. 2. On the Origins, The Pioneers, and The Populariser of Comics Journalism 2.1. The Origins The origins of comics journalism could be sought in the Glasgow Looking Glass – a title that was changed to the Northern Looking Glass with the sixth issue –, which is now becoming accepted as the first modern comic, created by William Heath (c. 1795-1840), published in nineteen instalments between 11 June 1825 and 3 April 1826. An additional reason in favour of the claim to chronological precedence as a modern comic is that the Glasgow Looking Glass includes sequential stories. Sequentiality is the main feature that sets the publication apart from coetaneous graphic journalism as will be broadly discussed later. 1 John J. Miller, ‘Writing Up a Storm’, The Wall Street Journal, 13 August 2011, <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424053111904800304576476142821212156> [accessed 3 October 2017] 2 Later he altered the title into The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. 3 Mark Twain, ‘Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog’ The Saturday Press, 18 November 1865, pp. 248-52. <http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/cdm4/nysp_viewer.php?DMTHUMB=1&search=&ptr=605&CISOPTR=595> [accessed 3 October 2017] http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index Page 174 Volume 4 Issue 3 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND December 2017 CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926 To illustrate the magazine’s being first example of comics journalism, let us examine the front page of the first issue of the Northern Looking Glass (the sixth one in the series), which satirizes the then King of France Charles X. On our sample page, the King of France is satirised with eight sequential frames interrelated with each other under the subtitle of France within the title of Politics. The page is divided into two columns having four frames each, and creates a flow of narrative from the top to the bottom of each column. The comic strip is introduced with the caption ‘The following is the manner in which the King of France passes his time at St Cloud’, and the King is portrayed as a coward, tired, unhappy, long-suffering, weak and almost deaf ruler. So, the Glasgow Looking Glass has all the qualities necessary for it to be considered comics journalism: sequentiality, a theme, newsworthiness and even meta- narrative. 2.2. The Pioneers The Cleveland-based liberal social activist Joyce Brabner (1952- ) together with fellow- activist Lou Ann Merkle, who coedited the two-volume comics Real War Stories4 can be seen as the pioneer of comics journalism as they predate Joe Sacco. Even though Brabner is often referred without mentioning Lou Ann Merkle, it is clear from what Braber wrote in the first volume of the Real War Stories that it was actually Lou Ann Merkel who came up with an idea of publishing a pamphlet, which was possible put into this shape by Joyce Brabner herself with her background in comics: 5 ‘When I first met Lou Ann, CCCO [Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors] was thinking (reasonably) about getting some stories out by self-publishing a black and white quick-copy pamphlet, drawn by anybody they could find.’6 Brabner and Merkle’s story ‘A Long Time Ago & Today’ in the first volume of Real War Stories7 can be accepted as very close to our understanding of comics journalism today which has been mostly shaped by Joe Sacco. This story is a clear-cut example of subjective reportage. Brabner and Merkle appear in the story as herself, a journalist, sitting on her desk, asking questions to Felipe who tells his own account of Salvadoran Civil War. 4 Joyce Brabner and Lou Ann Merkle, Real War Stories 1 (Forestville, CA: Eclipse Comics, 1987); Real War Stories 2: Citizen Soldiers (Forestville, CA: Eclipse Comics, 1991). The others who contributed to the volumes are as follows: Bill Sienkiewicz (Artist), Dean Mullaney (Publisher), Catherine Yronwode (Editor-in-Chief), Mike W. Barr (Writer), Steve Bissette (Artist), Brian Bolland (Artist), Mark Farmer (Artist), Rebecca Huntington (Artist), Mark Johnson (Artist), Steve Leialoha (Artist), Paul Mavrides (Artist), Alan Moore (Artist), Nancy O’Connor (Colorist), Denny O’Neil (Writer), Sam Parsons (Colorist), Leonard Rifas (Artist/Writer), John Totleben (Artist) and Tom Yeates (Artist). 5 Joyce Brabner’s other works include: Joyce Brabner and Thomas Yeats, ‘Flashpoint: The LA Penca Bombing’ in Brought to Light: A Graphic Docudrama (London: Titan Books, 1989) [A Flip Book]. Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner and Frank Stack, Our Cancer Year (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994). Joyce Brabner, Mark Badger and Wayne Vansant, Activists! (Stabur Press, 1995). Joyce Brabner and Mark Badger, Animal Rights Comics, 2 vol. (Stabur Press, 1996). 6 Joyce Brabner ‘How This Happened and Who We are’ in Real War Stories #1, p. i. 7 Joyce Brabner and Lou Ann Merkle, ‘A Long Time Ago & Today’, in Real War Stories 1 (Forestville, CA: Eclipse Comics, 1987), pp. 38-51. http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index Page 175 Volume 4 Issue 3 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND December 2017 CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926 Brabner and Merkle’s story has real characters and is newsworthy. The main difference from Joe Sacco is that they do not tell their account of the incident, just reflect it from the point of a real character.8 2.3. The Populariser Such is Joe Sacco’s importance in the history and development of comics journalism, that he merits a section (if not several theses) of his own, especially as his name recurs throughout this study. Joe Sacco was born in Malta, on October 2, 1960. When he was one year old, his family immigrated to Australia.
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