[2005-06-26] Comic books, as mass media, have always been dependent on the technologies of their production. While the tools of the cartoonist—pens, brushes, ink, and paper—have remained much the same over time, the methods of preparing and capturing the original art for publication and the machinery that impresses and reproduces the final product have undergone massive transformation. The familiar newsprint paper and blotchy four-color separation utilized for decades by mainstream publishers like Marvel and DC Comics in their unending drive to maximize profit have been replaced in recent years by a variety of formats made possible by advances in digital prepress techniques and the move from letterpress to offset printing. For the mainstream publishers, this improved printing technology has meant that comics are now published on higher quality, more durable paper stock and embellished with a wider palette of colors, complete with computer-finessed shading and 3-D accents. Meanwhile, the growth of a collector consciousness among buyers has resulted in the proliferation of 'deluxe editions,' multiple covers, card inserts, and a host of other gimmicks.

However, it is the small press comics publishers (for whom making money has never been as much of a concern as simply staying solvent) who have truly benefited from the new possibilities. The comics underground is certainly a stunted industry, but it is here that the technological advances in publishing and shifts in audience taste have had an enormous impact on the final product, the most striking of which is the end of the economically-enforced marriage of independent comics and black and white publishing that had existed since the inception of the American comic book underground in the 1960s.

In the decades that followed the self-imposed adoption of the neutering Comics Code Authority by the major publishers (a massive repression that set the stage for the later re-emergence—distorted into more extreme forms—of the 'degenerate' content as a component of 1960s counter-culture), publishing black and white comics represented, in addition to an autonomous but financially inconsequential career path, a vaguely constituted political action. While Marvel, DC, and their ilk published four-color comics, assembled by a 'creative team,' that garishly depicted the exploits of costumed super-heroes, cheaply produced black and white comics were the domain of the solitary artist, the cartoonist who, through monumental effort, persevered against commercial indifference and public disdain to write and draw the unfettered image of his or her own inner world. Often deliberately crude, gleefully profane, and adolescently raw, underground comics were the realm of perverts, freaks, and all enemies of mental hygiene. They were decadent materials out to seduce innocents with their enticing, iconic graphics, and hedonistic subject matter. In a word, they were free.

The work of contemporary North American independent cartoonists is a descendent of the underground and has inherited from it a preference for style and expressiveness over narrative and characterization. Cartoonists working today harness new technologies to complement their diversity of subject matter and artistic style with books printed with dimensions, paper stock, and ranges of colors deliberately selected to best suit each individual project.

Two major works have been published in the last year that, through their scope and magnitude, serve as comprehensive documents of today's North American independent comics scene. Kramer's Ergot Five and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13 are both 250+ page, full color anthologies that feature the work of the best cartoonists working in the U.S. and Canada. KE5 is an exemplar of the underground comics' DIY tradition that focuses on the work of emerging cartoonists, while the McSweeny's anthology represents a gamble by publisher Pantheon/Random House that an endorsement by today's coolest literati will lure readers new to comics and inspire them to purchase the publisher's other fine, hard-covered, and die cut graphic wares. Both offer a nearly overwhelming survey of the contemporary scene and are suitable for insiders and newcomers alike.

The hip McSweeney's publishing group devotes the entire thirteenth issue of its Quarterly Concern to comics and prose about comics with a collection that, in form and content, is a distillation of two decades of North American underground publishing. As guest editor of MQC #13, Chris Ware (creator of Acme Novelty Library) presides over an exquisitely designed and encyclopedic anthology that makes the case for comics as art on par with more distinguished media. To this end, the comics are interspersed with comics-inspired prose, essays on the history of comics, and critical examinations of the oeuvres of the medium's greats. This erudition is presumably meant to quiet any nagging doubts about the 'worthiness' of the work on the part of the buyer, but it can go too far. Whereas John Updike's recollection of his youthful passion for cartooning is insightful while also suitably literary, the essay attributed to Malachi B. Cohen, "Independent Comic Book Publishers of the Pre-Independent Era," is too precious and self-loving to bother reading in full, and Ware's own examination of Charles Schultz's late-in-life preliminary sketches for Peanuts strips seems almost creepy, relying as it does on reproductions of crumpled paper drawings that suggest that Ware was staking out the old master's house and rummaging through his curbside trash on garbage day to gain access to the coveted primary resources.

Thanks to the combined clout of Chris Ware, Pantheon, and the McSweeney's crew, nearly all the essential cartoonists, including R. Crumb, Dan Clowes, Kim Deitch, and Art Spiegelman, are represented. Careful not to neglect any style of comics, MSQ #13 also incorporates nods to alternate formats that are larger and smaller than its own tastefully chosen dimensions with an oversize foldout dust jacket that features a labyrinthine rendering of the plight of mankind in general, and the cartoonist in particular, by Ware, and mini comic supplements by Ron Rege, Jr. and Jon Porcellino that are tucked into the cleverly folded pockets of the jacket. Massive, formally unified, and inclusive, itself a representation of representations, MSQ #13 is a flawlessly curated and assembled collection that amply displays the wealth of the last two decades of North American underground comics, but that, for these very reasons, seems more a memorial for a beloved companion than a celebration of a vibrant and living art form, as though the aesthetes buried these comics alive.

Happily, Sammy Harkham's similarly massive Kramer's Ergot #5 does not suffer from the same problem. Slightly more domesticated than 2003's eye-popping edition of the annual taste making anthology, KE5 nevertheless remains true to the 'more is more' aesthetic of its predecessor. The immense volume swallows other works whole, its large pages acting as a screen that establishes a space of representation without determining the forms that are to play across it. McSweeney's offers excerpts of significant ongoing comics in progress (including Charles Burns' Black Hole and Seth's "Clyde Fans" storyline from Palookaville), but KE5 contains within it complete works that have been engulfed whole and incorporated into its teeming, varied interior. Flipping through the book provides a giddy rush of sensations: full-page psychedelic collage art, black and white sketch book sheets, rainbow hued divider pages, rambling stories of metaphysical journeys. No particular style or theme prevails; Kevin Huizenga's sober and carefully drawn narrative investigation of a theological debate on the status of hell is followed with selections from thirty years worth of Gary Panter's sketch book drawings, and the blistering day-glo fever dreams spawned by the artistic collective paper rad.

Though KE5 does make some small concessions toward marketplace considerations when compared to its immediate predecessor (which lacked text of any kind on its cover and spine), Harkham retains the future primitive feeling by wrapping his collection in an inscrutable cover with technically informative, though elaborately disguised, cover text. Not every piece in KE5 is essential, but as a whole, it is the most exciting comic published in the last year.

As today's heirs to the underground, Kramer's Ergot Five and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13 prompt the question: What do these comics offer that is not available elsewhere? Sadly, little here seems really dangerous. Perhaps shocking is passé? At a time when the literary establishment is more vulgar and filthy than ever, comics, for so long a safe haven from mass market consensus and a squalid shelter for the undiluted id, have dressed themselves up in an(other) stab at respectability and bigger sales. Independent comics need and deserve to sell in greater quantity, but if the result of success in the marketplace is merely bland, book-of-the-month-club ready works printed with lavish production values, then we may have been better off staying underground.

a-diction.com