Mila Bongco

According to the author, in the popular (base, for the masses) vs. cultured (high brow) debate, comics are considered popular by academics and therefore are not studied critically. At most, books about comics have focused only on the history of the medium. The book tries to rectify this supposed situation but I found it was too all over the place. (I say supposed because I've seen several critical works on comics, although some may have been published after this one. Certainly, there are not as many as there are for high brow literature, but this is true for most genre fiction.)

The first two chapters, which discuss over and over again how comics are seen as popular and therefore not worth being thought of critically, are very esoteric and quite frankly dull. After that, the author looks at how comics are read with their unique combination of text and art interplaying, which is interesting but borrowed largely from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics book that I’ve already read. The next two chapters look at superhero comics from the 1930s to 1970s and reads similar to histories of comics, but do contain some interesting analyses of the significant key genre features, such as the generic superhero plot, costumes, etc. The following chapter looks specifically at The Dark Knight Returns and a handful of other comics from the 1980s to discuss changes in superhero comics, which was the most interesting chapter to me as it dug deeper into discussing the meaning of these books. (It’s worth noting, however, that this chapter is not original work to this author but a translation from a German author.)

The final chapter (which I think was meant to be two chapters) looks first at comics in the 1990s, again largely in a historical perspective of factual stating (as opposed to analytically probing), and then points out some current (at the time of writing) comics that are not superhero comics, which seems odd in a book about superhero comics and reads like a plug for the author's favorite works. It also shows a biased undercurrent that seems to run throughout -- the author himself does not seem to think that superhero comics are all that great, albeit with exceptions like The Dark Knight Returns, Arkham Asylum, etc. He refers to frequently to the "superhero ghetto" and, in this last section, offers up the alternatives to superhero comics as proof that comics can be intelligent (thereby implying that superhero comics are not intelligent). He also ends the books by saying “the next sensible steps for advancement in comics lie beyond superhero comics” (p. 222).

Throughout the book there were typographically errors, which, while relatively minor, were annoying and showed a lack of polish in the publishing of this book. Overall, the book contained some interesting insights here and there and some thought-provoking analysis at times, but the central thesis was not entirely clear and the text often diverged into side alleys of thought.… (altro)