I like so many of my friends (Industry goons and non industry goons) are deeply deeply in love with comics. Have been for most of our lives.
For me personally, I can remember being a small pre-teen playing late late at night..pretending like I was on my first day at the Marvel Bullpen (as if there really was such thing). Being introduced to all the industry greats at that time. (pathetic huh? HA! Well I was 12 and huge into comics and it was my fantasy so bite me).
I started collecting comics ever since I could remember, with my big score being a Mint X-MEN #1 and Giant Sized Xmen #1 (don't' ask me how I afforded it...It was not legal. well not exactly...)
It was my first love..and really my original love as far as art goes.
Of course coming along side of it was animation. It really came along at the same time. It just had much less of an impact on me than comics did.
Comics kept me up at night. Through the death of Captain Marvel, to the death of Captain Stacy
From the tylonal drug scare in the early 80's (captured in the Cloak and Dagger mini series) to the drug addled madness of harry osbourne.
The MONUMENTAL earth shattering feeling of loss with the almost poetic passing of Gwen Stacy to the savage brutal killing of Electra in 81'.
The silly fun of Aragones Wanderer ("Groo") to the deadly seriousness of "Watchmen" and Millers "Dark Knight".
Comics..Always worked me over.
One of the things that I just love about comics (and that has probably been one of the things that has always drew me in even as a little kid) has been the sheer variety of work.
There was EVERY sort of style and EVERY sort of genre! THERE WAS EVERYTHING!
You don't really have it in animation. Oh sure...maybe you have it in doses.. I mean, you might see something pop up that's edgy or different in some way..But its rare. Its all format. Its for the most part formula.
Even Pixar while brilliant, has its audience and its that 'feel good' audience. And they go for it. And its awesome and beautiful...but its 90 minutes with a wrap up that makes you walk out and head off to find a Wall-E lunch box or nemo slippers. That's animations main goal, which is essentially an infomercial for plastic or plush.
Nothing wrong with that. Its just what it is.
Its what the artists have to come to terms with. Those that can get past that, stay. Those that can't..leave for what they long for. True Artistic freedom.
Comics are different..
Comics (like animation) is meant to tell a story-- visually.
Comics ( unlike animation) is meant to tell an ONGOING story.
You don't just go with the characters through 90 minutes..but you ride with them through 90 minutes and 60 plus years.
One could say that comics have more in common with soap opera's (or professional wrestling) than animation.
:)
Another thing about comics...Along with the diversity in styles, genre, story telling etc...there is also the wonderful feeling that YOU could do it.
You didn't have to be a genius artist, if you had a great idea and story...you could team with someone to do the art and put a makeshift book together..or even..(if your idea is strong enough) tell that story with crude art.
Take a look at any small press outfit and you see tons of this type of stuff.
The possibility is out there..and the possibilities are endless.
It is with those endless possibilities that makes and keeps comics fresh. Keeps them new!
Dirty and edgier. Raw.
Ironically while comics are keeping true to themselves and remaining one of the last TRUE art forms..Animation is going the other way.
Animation is and has always been a monumental collaborative effort. There's tons of us people that go into making one of these lil cartoons. You got your Vis dev goons, you got'cher story goons, your animation goons, blah blah blah blah..and in the end you have (if your lucky) a cohesive product.
More often than not, a film that has been made with a lovley pair of fuzzy slippers with the head of your main character on them. Or a watch if its a classier pic.
Your film is meant to sell other things. So its made for that purpose.
while Animation used to be one of the most incredible art forms..it has and is more and more becoming less an art form with every passing year. A slick, smaltzy version of what it used to be. Sans art.
Now while it will never stop being an art form all together, it will get (i'm afraid) very close to that unfortunately.
Again...let me say, I think 'UP' is probably wonderful, Nemo is great, Toy story and Monsters InC fantastic...but you know what you get. You know what TONE you get....Its all pre-packaged left over from the film before.
Formula....
ironically, where it is different (and has for some time ) is in the Television realm.
"Samauri Jack", "Fosters house for Imaginary friends" even throwbacks like the "Simpsons", offer you a different type, style and feel than the 'Disney', 'Pixar' etc movies.
Too many people, spending a crap load of money, working to make a similar movie to sell an all together different product. What do you get.....stale.
Not so in comics. Comics reminds me of the purest form of expressionism. OLD SCHOOL.
Or experimental art...where so many come from all around and throw ideas at the wall...styles, stories...color or black and white! Slick paper or crappy newsprint! Rough pencil line or beautiful inks! Neal Adams or Sergio Aragones!
Barry Windsor Smith or Jeff Smith!!
ENDLESS!!
And all you need is a pencil and paper...and a stapler..and you got a comic.
You don't need an entire tech crew.
You don't even need a publisher!
Its that simplicity that makes and keeps comics as the best and most pure artform.
To this date!
And the lack of simplicity that is making animation a very expensive and stale dying artform.
And becoming less and less of one with every passing year.
EPILOGUE:
Now I know that there are going to be some wise A$ out there that will say "oh what about beavis and butthead and this and that.
My point is that there just isn't the scope of freedom that comics has that makes for so MUCH of a wide variety of work. In STYLE AND SUBSTANCE and QUANTITY.
With creator rights now in comic books, the sky really is the limit. Unlike animation where you really are tied down if you work in a studio. And in order to do anything of any legnth...you ARE going to be working in a studio otherwise you (more likely than not) won't have a budget or man power to do squat in animation.
CG opens that up abit...but not much.
Plus the very idea of using computers in and of itself lowers the artform. (sorry to my bruthas in the biz..but it does.) Not that it isn't beautiful..It's just that the artform is lessened.
So! I tip my hat at both the dying art form of yesterday and salute the 'what was'.
As well as....
Tip my hat at the art form of yesterday and today, that goes on to remain fresh and grow..
In order to continue on to be WHAT IS the artform of tomorrow .
Barack Obama has a knack for riding political waves. I put that down to his upbringing in Hawaii, where surfing is second nature. He also yearns to make history. I put that down to his time as editor of the Harvard Law Review, where it dawned on him that a son of a Kenyan and Kansan could be president, and a path-breaker in the process. But now the president's skill at riding well-timed waves into history is being tested. In fact, he's in danger of wiping out. The reason is health-care reform. Why? Because his timing isn't good and his plan, at least what we've seen so far, isn't "reform."
Obama and his aides, fearing a loss of momentum, are trying to stoke a sense of urgency in hopes that the Senate will feel compelled to pass a 1,000-page-plus measure before its August recess. I asked a very plugged-in Hill Democrat whether the Senate would do so. "Less and less likely," he said. That doesn't mean that health-care reform is dead. It does mean at best that the fall is going to be dominated by a ferocious national debate, and that the outcome is far from clear.
Obama's timing is bad because of the recession, which puts more strain and focus on the federal budget, even as it makes devising a health-care plan that moves toward erasing deficits in the decades ahead—what's known as "bending the curve"—more difficult. The president knows that he needs to sell health-care reform both as a matter of morals and of money: that we can only avoid irreversible national bankruptcy by controlling health-care costs.
But every one of the three proposals put forth so far on the Hill would, as written, add to federal deficits, not ease them. What would have been a tough sell in the best of circumstances is now all the more difficult in the face of deepening worries, especially among independent voters, about the long-term federal debt.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told me that there are "curve-bending" provisions scattered through the three bills, but that those provisions need to be consolidated into a final bill for the whole thing to work. Here's another political problem: most of Gibbs's so-far-unaccounted-for curve-bending would be derived not from additional cuts in spending, but from raising taxes to generate revenue.
The president has vowed to make sure that his final plan is paid for, meaning that it won't add to long-term deficits, but that's far short of what he and his budget director, Peter Orszag, originally said they were aiming for. It's not a curve—at least not a downward one. If Obama is going to argue that we can't not afford to do this, the numbers have to show the chance for radical savings. So far, they don't.
The second reason why the health-care wave is fading is this: so far, this isn't "reform" in any thoroughgoing sense. The original idea was to rethink the entire convoluted and overly complex system, and to find ways to truly change the way we think about health care to both improve care and save money. There ought to be ways to do that. But the three bills to emerge so far seem like more of an attempt to buy off existing constituencies than a real rethinking of the mess.
Insurance companies are a good example. Yes, they would be required to sell coverage to people with preexisting conditions, but they would get something monumental in exchange for tighter regulation: a government mandate that everyone buy their product. No wonder an industry group has released an ad praising what Congress is doing. Yes, there would be tighter regulation of hospitals, doctors, and other caregivers, and cuts in Medicare and Medicaid spending, but all of the players would stay in place in pretty much the same relation to each other that they now have. So, yes, millions of people would get subsidized coverage at taxpayer expense, but we would be sending them into a system that everyone admits is dysfunctional and unsustainable now.
And why is Obama keeping his surfboard on this weakening wave? For one, he thinks that he can broker a deal among Democrats, which, in theory, would be enough. He believes that his powers of persuasion and patience for detail will prevail. He also wants to be able to proclaim that he's has made health care "available" to all.
But that's not technically what the bills do. They don't contain an entitlement in the strict sense; they don't directly state that every American is entitled to health care. But by forcing people to buy—and forcing companies to sell—insurance, and by offering assistance to those who can't afford coverage, the measure comes closer than we ever have to the vision of a national health-insurance program that President Harry Truman put forth more than a half century ago.
Obama wants to say, "I've redeemed the Truman promise." In other words, "I've made history." But this president is a long way from the beach, and no one knows which way the tide is running.
© 2009
