Copyright 2013 Shawn Patrick Gilmore
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Copyright 2013 Shawn Patrick Gilmore THE INVENTION OF THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: UNDERGROUND COMIX AND CORPORATE AESTHETICS BY SHAWN PATRICK GILMORE DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Michael Rothberg, Chair Professor Cary Nelson Associate Professor James Hansen Associate Professor Stephanie Foote ii Abstract This dissertation explores what I term the invention of the graphic novel, or more specifically, the process by which stories told in comics (or graphic narratives) form became longer, more complex, concerned with deeper themes and symbolism, and formally more coherent, ultimately requiring a new publication format, which came to be known as the graphic novel. This format was invented in fits and starts throughout the twentieth century, and I argue throughout this dissertation that only by examining the nuances of the publishing history of twentieth-century comics can we fully understand the process by which the graphic novel emerged. In particular, I show that previous studies of the history of comics tend to focus on one of two broad genealogies: 1) corporate, commercially-oriented, typically superhero-focused comic books, produced by teams of artists; 2) individually-produced, counter-cultural, typically autobiographical underground comix and their subsequent progeny. In this dissertation, I bring these two genealogies together, demonstrating that we can only truly understand the evolution of comics toward the graphic novel format by considering the movement of artists between these two camps and the works that they produced along the way. Ultimately, I show that comics became graphic novels by invoking notions of visual parataxis, holistic forms, and Modernist unity, which allowed for book-length comics that were much more than just collections of comic-book pages, but instead were a new publishing form. My dissertation traces a series of moments in the history of the graphic novel. In my introduction, I take up the current field of comic studies and establish the terms by which we iii distinguish the modern graphic novel from other book-length comics. In my first chapter, I examine the cross-pollination of Modernism and comics, arguing that they share an emphasis on unifying disparate elements, with an emphasis on the problem of visual or graphic narrative. In my second and third chapters, I take up the rise of the first comic-book auteur, Jack Kirby, who helped shape the early comic-book industry and show how Gil Kane and Richard Corben took his model to create the first graphic novel to imagine itself as such in 1976. In chapters four and five, I examine the works of Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, and Alan Moore, who all, in 1986-87, published works that established the graphic novel in the public consciousness as a viable sales format. Finally, in chapter six and my coda, I take up the works of Alison Bechdel, Chris Ware, and an argument by Eddie Campbell that allow us to consider the ramifications of the codification of the graphic novel. iv Acknowledgements In the process of imagining, researching, writing, and rewriting this dissertation, a number of people have been immensely important in my life. First and foremost, late in my graduate-student career, I was lucky enough to wed my wonderful wife, Kirsten, who has stuck with me on sleepless nights and research binges, on family trips and bad-movie nights, and to whom I owe a great deal. Thank you, my love. I must also thank my parents, Harlan and Joyce, for their generosity and patience, as they now know that these projects take much longer than they ever seem at the outset. And an immense thanks to my amazing committee—Michael Rothberg, Cary Nelson, Jim Hansen, and Stephanie Foote—who helped shape this project, gave me such good feedback along the way, and guided this dissertation to completion. Along the way, I have made too many friends to count, and there are too many people to thank that could possibly be listed here. In particular, I want to thank the incomparable David and Kate Roark, Joe Peeples, Alaina Pincus, Sarah Sahn, Carl Lehnen, Ezra Claverie, Patrick Fadely, John Moore, Stephanie Clark, and the many others with whom I’ve enjoyed coffee, beer, lunch, complaining, sharing teaching tips, reading drafts, and generally making graduate school and the dissertation process possible. A special shout out to my trivia teams and those outside academia who have reminded me to get out and play more often. And a big thanks to the Graduate Employee Organization, my fellow instructors and lecturers, and the English Department at the University of Illinois, including the many offices and secretaries who have helped with the little details along the way. And thanks in particular to v the individual faculty with whom I’ve worked, taught, and collaborated, especially Gordon Hutner, for the projects, ideas, and support. Finally, I want to especially thank my students over the years, who have helped me think more clearly about the specifics of this project, who have challenged my assumptions, and who have reminded me again and again of my love of teaching. Thanks, all. vi Table of Contents Introduction: The Invention of the Graphic Novel ....................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: From Comics to Modernism and Back ....................................................................... 34 Chapter 2: Jack Kirby, the “King” of Comics, and the Emergence of the Corporate Comic-Book Auteur ................................................................................................................... 85 Chapter 3: Between Corporate and Underground: Gil Kane, Richard Corben, and the Birth of the Graphic Novel .......................................................................................168 Chapter 4: “Now It’s Safe for Adults to Read Commix...Or is It?”: Art Spiegelman’s Work from “Maus” to Maus and the Codification of the Graphic Novel ........................250 Chapter 5: The Auteur and the Superhero in Dark Knight Returns, Miracleman, and Watchmen ..............................................................................................................................299 Chapter 6: The Role of the Individual in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan .............................................................................................................................356 Coda: Imagining the Graphic Novel ............................................................................................416 Bibliography .....................................................................................................................................423 vii A Note on Figures Figures throughout this dissertation have been omitted to respect their copyright status. Placeholders have been included, in order to retain both formatting choices throughout and citation information for reference. 1 Introduction: The Invention of the Graphic Novel To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… that is the crowning unlikelihood.1 —Dr. Manhattan, Watchmen (1986) The modern graphic novel as a standardized publication format is a fairly recent development, existing since the 1970s within the comic-book community, since the mid- 1980s in the public consciousness, and since the mid-1990s on bookstore shelves. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, graphic novels are being reviewed alongside prose novels in major book reviews, their sales included on bestseller lists, and their production values on the rise, with coffee-table books, prestige editions, and luxury versions not uncommon. And though the graphic novel has obviously become codified as a format and the stigma of its origins from the (incorrectly) maligned world of the comic book lessened, there is still hemming and hawing about what constitutes a graphic novel, how they came to be, which was the first, and perhaps most tendentiously, how to establish their relationship to the more firmly-established aesthetic traditions of the prose novel, the visual arts, the illustrated text, and previous graphic narratives. To be clear, the term graphic novel is primarily a publishing and marketing term, originally referring to a specific format: a cloth-bound codex comprised of comics pages, usually containing a single narrative. The name for this format was gradually introduced throughout the 1960s and 1970s, until it became the de facto standard in the 1980s. As Paul Gravett usefully summarizes: 1 Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen #9 (May 1987), 27. 2 in several ways [the term] graphic novel is a misnomer, but, unlike other words invented in the past in an effort to overcome the stigmas of humor and childishness of the word “comics,” like Charles Biro’s “Illustories,” Bill Gaines’ “Picto-Fiction,” or even Will Eisner’s “Sequential Art,” this term has caught on and entered the language and dictionaries, for all its inaccuracies. It has been around since 1964, when American comics critic and magazine publisher Richard Kyle coined it. Kyle was among the first to import and champion European comics, especially French bandes dessinées in color hardback albums, and thick Japanese paperbacks of manga. […] Here he had evidence of […] the medium’s potential being realized abroad. Kyle came up with “graphic story,” and