COMIC BOOK FANS: PRODUCTIVITY, PARTICIPATION AND CREATIVITY Submitted by Denis Keegan B.A. (Hons.) Communication Studies For consideration for the award of a Master’s degree (research) In Communication Studies As awarded by Dublin City University School of Communications Supervised by Luke Gibbons May 2000 One Volume / hereby certify that this material, which I now submit fo r assessment on the programme o f study leading to the award o f Masters degree (research) Communication Studies is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work o f others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text o f my work. Table of Contents List of Illustrations List of Tables Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Popular and the Individual 4 Chapter 2 A History of Comic Books 19 Chapter 3 An Audience and Industry Profile 69 Chapter 4 Struggles, Strategies and Postmodernism 75 Chapter 5 Form and Discrimination 105 Chapter 6 Productivity, Capital and Pleasure 131 Conclusion 158 Appendices Bibliography List of Illustrations 1 Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay, October 3rd 1909 24 2 Superman issue 1, by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, 1939 28 3 “Murder, Morphine and Me!” by Jack Cole, 1947 34 4 Vault of Horror by Johnny Craig, 1954 37 5 Fantastic Four by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, 1966 42 6 Untitled by Robert Crumb, 1981 46 7 Love & Rockets issue 33 by Jaime Hernandez, 1989 53 S The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, 1986 59 9 Judge Dredd, 2000AD prog. 78, by Brian Bolland and 66 Pat Mills, 1979 List of Tables Table One 110 Abstract Denis Keegan Comic Book Fans: Productivity' Participation and Creativity This dissertation is an examination of the consumption practices, the criteria used for judging comic books and the use of comic books to create a social identity or habitus on the part of comic book fans. It also looks at how these fans use comic books as a resource or a starting point for their own creativity. To do this, I carried out a series of directed interviews over a period of more than two years in places where the fans would feel comfortable. The rationale behind this research was twofold: firstly, to place fans, and comic book fans in particular, within the context of general cultural consumption. Secondly, to test the validity of John Fiske’s adaptation of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, as it relates to fans, through research. My results seem to contradict the notion that there is an essential difference between the consumption of popular culture and official culture and the cultural capital created therefrom. The comic book fans interviewed displayed a multiplicity of strategies and criteria to explain their tastes, including those of official culture and, crucially, a canon of work enunciated independently by the fans themselves. This leads to the conclusion that comic book fans, operating in the context of a decentred postmodern culture, are neither unusual nor abnormal in their creation of distinction. Instead, like all agents in postmodern culture, they use a variety of sophisticated and conscious decisions which mix productivity, participation and creativity in order to create a sense of identity which stems from the pleasure they derive from consuming comic books. INTRODUCTION Introduction This study attempts to place comic books and comic book fans in the context of general cultural consumption. It may also be viewed as a riposte to the majority of critical attention that has periodically been paid to comic books: it is not a discussion of the merits or demerits of comic books, nor is it a profile of the effects of comic books on comic book fans. This study does not carry out a content analysis of comic books, rather it examines fan discrimination and the development of a canon of creators and titles. This study does not investigate the relationship between the overwhelmingly male audience for comic books and the power/body fantasies so prevalent in comic books, but it does consider how narrowcasting has led to a self-referential language in comic books, which is filled with parody, pastiche and repetition. This study differs from the majority of analyses of comic books and their audience because it concentrates on the creation of distinction by comic book fans, examining how they view comic books, from the inside, rather than applying theory from outside to ‘explain’ comic books. In Comics: Ideology, Power and the Critics, Martin Barker gives an extended exposition of how and why comic books and comic book readers, and by extension popular culture as a whole, have been ill-served by commentators. The problem, as Barker correctly states, is that most commentators turn their attention towards a particular facet of popular culture, analyse it based upon their pre-existing theories and fail to see textual subtleties and to differentiate between texts. This would be similar to lumping Saving Private Ryan together with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre because both contain scenes of graphic violence and dismemberment, or failing to see the difference in 1 intent and effect of the nudity contained in Blue Velvet and Showgirls. Many commentators also fail to consider the ability of the audience for popular culture to distinguish between different texts. This study attempts to counteract the misrepresentation of popular culture and its fans caused by such simplification. I have based my research on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of distinction within fields, creating cultural capital. This study is explicitly based upon subjecting John Fiske’s adaptation of Bourdieu’s concept to accommodate fans, put forward in The Cultural economy of Fandom (in Lewis, L., 1992), to scrutiny through research. I wanted to see if Fiske’s assertion that fan discrimination and creativity formed a ‘shadow cultural economy’ (ibid., p. 30) which operated alongside (and occasionally intersected with) the official cultural economy. My original thesis was that fans, and comic book fans in particular, through this shadow cultural economy, were involved in a semiotic guerrilla warfare, following a neo-gramscian oppositional approach to popular culture. What I found was more complex. I found distinction to be crucial to fans in ways that could not fit easily into a hegemonic or oppositional model. The interviewees in this study failed to constrain themselves within the boundaries of an oppositional stance, showing themselves unwilling to associate themselves with other comic book fans and using a multiplicity of strategies and criteria to explain their tastes. This led me to question the idea of the popular and to ponder it in relation to alienation and seriality (Chapter One: The Popular and The Individual). Following on from this, it was essential to place comic books and comic book fans within an understandable context. Thus, Chapter Two gives a history of comic books which, in trying to explain the development of the medium, of formats and of the audience for comic books, cannot claim 2 to be comprehensive but does discuss most major changes. Chapter Three strives to give a snapshot of the industry and the audience for comic books as it is at present and gives weight to this study’s claim of representativeness. In Chapter Four, I have attempted an exposition of Bourdieu’s theory of distinction within fields, showing how it related to notions of agency and structure. I also introduce other approaches to cultural production and consumption, in particular in a postmodern context. Chapters Five and Six are based upon the findings of my research and concentrate upon form and discrimination (Chapter Five) and productivity, capital and pleasure (Chapter Six). These two chapters are constructed with the aim of giving a fair representation of the fans’ creation of habitus, of the criteria they use to appreciate (and more importantly) reject texts, creators and practices. This study challenges the notion that popular culture can be reduced to a simplistic oppositional stance or that culture can be reduced to a dichotomy between official and popular culture. Furthermore, I have striven to show that postmodernism is not the result of a collapse of theory or distinction but rather due to a multiplicity of criteria and strategies, showing both creativity and discrimination. The subjects of this study do not read comic books because they have no other choices, but rather as a result of a variety of sophisticated and conscious decisions which give them pleasure and a sense of identity. 3 CHAPTER ONE The Popular and the Individual The Popular and the Individual Introduction Because comic books are a form of popular cultural artefact, it is necessary to discuss the emergence and development of the popular culture/official culture dichotomy. As this dichotomy has always been, and remains, a site of politically impelled discussion, it would be impossible to do more than introduce certain points of view. This chapter strives to show how these different points of view have informed this study, and as such, it revolves around my engagement with these different schools of thought. My argument is necessarily partial but should make explicit my position in relation to the findings of this study. In order to contextualise the popular culture/official culture distinction, this chapter also addresses some notions of the individual and society in the growth and development of capitalism and how these ideas have been treated, and have changed, in the works of writers like Marx, Gramsci, the British Culturalists and the Structuralists amongst others. The concept of alienation is crucial to my understanding of the individual agent’s place in society, as I feel it is extremely informative in relation to the position in which comic book fans find themselves.