Literature Compass 4/4 (2007): 1169±1182, 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00478.x Manuscript in Print: The Materiality of Alternative Comics Emma Tinker* University College London Abstract This paper forms part of a Literature Compass cluster on Modern Book History. The full cluster is made up of the following articles: `Between Then and Now: Modern Book History', Kate Longworth, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00474.x. `Ezra Pound's Cantos: A Compact History of Twentieth-Century Authorship, Publishing and Editing', Mark Byron, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/ j.1741-4113.2007.00475.x. ` ªThe Making of the Bookº: Roy Fisher, the Circle Press and the Poetics of Book Art', Matthew Sperling, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/ j.1741-4113.2007.00476.x. `Bakhtinian ªJournalizationº and the Mid-Victorian Literary Marketplace', Dallas Liddle, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00477.x. `Manuscript in Print: The Materiality of Alternative Comics', Emma Tinker, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00478.x. `Lost in a World of Books: Reading and Identity in Pre-War Japan', Susan C. Townsend, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00479.x. *** This article argues that the writers and illustrators of alternative comics show a particular interest in the material form of their work, and that this preoccupation is linked to the publication history of these texts. It begins by discussing the changes in publication of alternative comics over the past thirty years, including the shift from single issue to trade paperback or `graphic novel' format, the decline of specialist retailers, and the growth in production of small press comics and fanzines. It then considers some implications of this shift, and examines two texts in which authors have directly addressed the materiality of their comics in the books themselves: Craig Thompson's Blankets and Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan. It argues that comic book authors, who are also readers and collectors, have a strong personal investment in the physical form of comics, and that this interest is also manifest in the content of these texts. The career of a comics scholar is one of such routine self-justification that amongst those of similar interests it is no longer worthy of comment. Analysts of more widely accepted literary media regularly ask with a puzzled expression, `You mean like Superman or The Beano?' There are some, © 2007 The Author Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1170 . Manuscript in Print: The Materiality of Alternative Comics however, who have been paying attention to recent trends in the Sunday broadsheets and will ask,`Do you mean graphic novels?'This magical term often seems to catalyse a significant mental shift: novels and graphic design are both familiar and respectable areas of research, a long way from flimsy, faded Dandy or garish Spiderman comics. In short, comics scholars are always already students of book history because it is impossible, in this field, to avoid constantly encountering the opinion that textual format matters, that it affects and even defines interpretation of a visual narrative. With this in mind, it is perhaps necessary to start by outlining what is meant by the term `alternative comics', because the argument I wish to present here does not apply to Superman, or The Beano, or any of the other multiple-authored comics owned by major companies like DC and Marvel. However, the category is so broad and so widely contested that it makes more sense to suggest a set of commonly shared characteristics than to insist upon a rigid definition. Alternative comics grew out of the underground scene of the 1960s and 70s, and the term itself appeared during the 80s as small press and other independent comics became increasingly diverse. The people who write these tend to define their work by its distinction from a perceived mainstream of superheroes, formulaic sci-fi or fantasy, and children's humour. The range of visual styles and narrative content found in alternative comics is infinitely broader and often more imaginative than in the comics produced by the mainstream publishers. These alternative comics are generally created and controlled by one or two people, apart from the covers they tend to be printed in black and white, they sell in tiny numbers, and they are either self-published or produced by small independent publishers.1 In his Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, Charles Hatfield emphasises the importance of the physical form of the comic book itself. Beginning with the underground comics of the 1960s and 70s, he points out that part of the artistic success of these comics derived from `the way that they transformed an object that was jejune and mechanical in origin into a radically new kind of expressive object' (7). Underground comics artists like Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and Spain Rodriguez appropriated a textual shape whose associations were ripe for subversion. As Hatfield explains, there was a deliberate formal irony in their adoption of a package that had for so long been associated with `faceless industrial entertainment' (11). From the beginning, in other words, the physical product ± the size, shape and feel of ink on cheap, folded paper ± played a crucial role in the reception of alternative comics. Equally significant was the way in which the products of these artists were marketed and distributed. Underground comics were generally produced by small, independent presses and sold via `head shops' (where they existed alongside posters, dope-smoking paraphernalia and all manner of other counterculture-related products). However, the 1970s saw the development of specialist comics shops, and the underground publishers developed into alternative and independent publishers like Fantagraphics, Top Shelf and Black Eye Press.2 Specialist shops generally sold both © 2007 The Author Literature Compass 4/4 (2007): 1169±1182, 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00478.x Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Manuscript in Print: The Materiality of Alternative Comics . 1171 mainstream and alternative comics, supporting innovative work alongside the traditional superhero material. These shops gave comics a home as the newsstand market dried up and the head shops closed down, but they also had the effect of insulating the market. As comics were segregated from other products, consumers were no longer likely to pick up a comic book while shopping for something else, and soon comics became the preserve of a largely male fan culture. Alternative material continued to flourish throughout the 1980s, both through the publication of individual comic books and with the help of anthologies like Art Spiegelman's Raw and Robert Crumb's Weirdo. Towards the end of that decade, however, a number of articles began to appear in the mainstream press proclaiming the `birth of the graphic novel'. This was partly due to the almost simultaneous publication in 1986 of three major comics texts ± Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen and the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus.3 This publication conveniently coincided with a gradual relaxing of the criteria by which `culture' was generally defined, with the result that new readers began to perceive comics as sophisticated and cool. Suddenly ± the story went ± comics had attained adulthood. As Roger Sabin notes,`it was, and is, a seductive interpretation of events, and has become one of the enduring clichés of arts journalism' (Adult Comics 1). In reality, what was changing was not the content of comics but their form, readership and cultural status. Richard Kyle had coined the term `graphic novel' in the 1960s (although it is often attributed to Will Eisner, who used it in 1978 to describe his A Contract with God) and its adoption by comics creators and publishers' marketing teams in the 1980s represented little more than the lucrative repackaging of comics to appeal to an audience more comfortable with book-length works of fiction. Single issues ± that is, comics of thirty or so pages, usually folded and stapled together ± still exist today, but their sales are in steady decline. In the 1970s, print runs of half a million were not uncommon for mainstream comics; now even these rarely manage more than a hundred thousand per issue.4 These slim booklets rarely, if ever, make it onto the shelves of mainstream booksellers, whereas a two-hundred-page trade paperback is rather more marketable to readers who would not generally go into a specialist comic book shop.5 Numbers of specialist comics shops have declined dramatically throughout recent decades, while numbers of graphic novel sections in mainstream book shops like Waterstones and Borders have increased substantially. In many ways, the graphic novel format seems the preferable choice ± writers and artists publishing material in this form are more likely to have their work reviewed in the national press alongside prose fiction, and because their books can be sold in mainstream bookshops they are able to tap a much wider market. Nevertheless, there are several serious disadvantages to publishing a comic solely in trade paperback format. A graphic novel can take a decade or more to complete, and © 2007 The Author Literature Compass 4/4 (2007): 1169±1182, 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00478.x Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1172 . Manuscript in Print: The Materiality of Alternative Comics publishers of alternative comics cannot afford to pay advances even to relatively well-known authors. Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, for example, was published in ten instalments between 1989 and 1996, with the single-volume edition finally published in 1998. The comic book medium is nothing if not time consuming, and ten years is a long time to work on a project without getting paid for it.