Turning an Entre-deux Situation into a Third Position – Part 3/3[1]
by Jean-Matthieu Méon
Woodcut novels form a genre of graphic narratives that emerged in Europe at the end of the 1910s with the works of the Belgian Frans Masereel. It was later explored and expanded by several European and Northern American artists, among whom the American Lynd Ward was one of the most influential (Beronä). If the genre waned in the 1950s, its influence has been claimed by diverse artists, especially in the comics field. In recent years, key works of the genre were reprinted in France and they are considered important elements of comics’ heritage.
The three parts of this article analyse this current comics valorisation of decades-old woodcut novels. The theoretical model of patrimonialisation (Davallon) helps to shed light on this process, which relies on a specific relationship with the past, made of both rediscovery and reinvention (part I). The editorial paratext of the current reprints plays here a central role. It’s a means to equate “woodcut novels” and “graphic novels” and to bring together distinct fields of artistic creations (part II). The symbolic stakes of this patrimonialising process are important: for comics and for their publishers, it’s part of a quest for legitimacy and for an artistic autonomy that Masereel and Ward could embody (part III).
The terminological instability in designing Masereel’s and Ward’s books in their current paratext—and the ambivalences it produces— [see part II] can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, this instability reflects the processual nature of this patrimonialisation, consisting in the collective production of an equivalence between woodcut books, and graphic novels and comics. The equivalence is initiated by the publishers, reinforced by its critical reception and then re-appropriated by the publishers. On the other hand, the instability also reflects the symbolic tensions that the editorial paratext tries to manage and to overcome. According to these paratextual indications, the woodcut books are to be seen as comics without being comics, as graphic novels without being ordinary graphic novels, as “wordless novels” but not only, as past works but “modern” and, as such, still relevant. What is at stake here is distinction—within or without the comics field.
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Tags: 25 images, 25 images de la passion d’un homme, adult readership, art history, Art Spiegelman, artistic autonomy, Éclaireur, Belgium, Blexbolex, Charles Berberian, comics history, definitions, distinction, emancipation, Félix Vallotton, film, fine arts, France, Frans Masereel, graphic novel, heritage, History, indistinction, Jan Baetens, José Guadalupe Posada, legitimacy, literature, Loustal, Lynd Ward, Martin de Halleux, Mon livre d’heures, Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, paratext, patrimonialisation, Pouillon, prestige, Rodolphe Töpffer, symbolic capital, Tardi, Thomas Ott, USA, woodcut novel, wordless comics
The Paratextual Apparatus of Patrimonialisation – Part 2/3[1]
by Jean-Matthieu Méon
Woodcut novels form a genre of graphic narratives that emerged in Europe at the end of the 1910s with the works of the Belgian Frans Masereel. It was later explored and expanded by several European and Northern American artists, among whom the American Lynd Ward was one of the most influential (Beronä). If the genre waned in the 1950s, its influence has been claimed by diverse artists, especially in the comics field. In recent years, key works of the genre were reprinted in France and they are considered important elements of comics’ heritage.
The three parts of this article analyse this current comics valorisation of decades-old woodcut novels. The theoretical model of patrimonialisation (Davallon) helps to shed light on this process, which relies on a specific relationship with the past, made of both rediscovery and reinvention (part I). The editorial paratext of the current reprints plays here a central role. It’s a means to equate “woodcut novels” and “graphic novels” and to bring together distinct fields of artistic creations (part II). The symbolic stakes of this patrimonialising process are important: for comics and for their publishers, it’s part of a quest for legitimacy and for an artistic autonomy that Masereel and Ward could embody (part III).
The patrimonialisation of woodcut novels as comics heritage is based on a double movement: a temporal shift—from the present to the past—and a contextual one—from one field of cultural production (comics) to another (fine arts) [see part I]. The first operator of this patrimonialising process is the reprints of the woodcut works. Reprinting these woodcut novels, and distributing them in bookshops and comic shops, is a first bridging of the temporal and sectoral gaps but the paratext (Genette) of these reprints is also an essential aspect of this process. The paratext helps establish the double continuity between past woodcut novels and contemporary comics, creating a double “suture” (Davallon 114), between periods and between fields. As we’ll see, it also makes the suture seamless, thus naturalizing the result of the process.
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Tags: 25 images, 25 images de la passion d’un homme, Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, artistic autonomy, Éclaireur, Éditions du Ravin Bleu, Bart Beaty, Belgium, Blexbolex, Charles Berberian, circular circulation, comics history, Davallon, David Beronä, Eric Drooker, Félix Vallotton, fine arts, France, Frans Masereel, George Walker, graphic novel, Henry Levet, heritage, historical discourse, historiographical paratexts, Idée, indistinction, Joe Pinelli, José Guadalupe Posada, Le Soleil, legitimacy, Les Arts dessinés, Lola Lafon, Loustal, Lynd Ward, Martin de Halleux, Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, paratext, patrimonialisation, Robert Crumb, Samuel Dégardin, satire, Stefan Zweig, Tardi, temporal suture, Thomas Ott, USA, Will Eisner, woodcut novel, wordless comics, Youssef Daoudi
Patrimonialisation as Retcon? – Part 1/3
by Jean-Matthieu Méon
Woodcut novels form a genre of graphic narratives that emerged in Europe at the end of the 1910s with the works of the Belgian Frans Masereel. It was later explored and expanded by several European and Northern American artists, among whom the American Lynd Ward was one of the most influential (Beronä). If the genre waned in the 1950s, its influence has been claimed by diverse artists, especially in the comics field. In recent years, key works of the genre were reprinted in France and they are considered important elements of comics’ heritage.
The three parts of this article analyse this current comics valorisation of decades-old woodcut novels.[1] The theoretical model of patrimonialisation (Davallon) helps to shed light on this process, which relies on a specific relationship with the past, made of both rediscovery and reinvention (part I). The editorial paratext of the current reprints plays here a central role. It’s a means to equate “woodcut novels” and “graphic novels” and to bring together distinct fields of artistic creations (part II). The symbolic stakes of this patrimonialising process are important: for comics and for their publishers, it’s part of a quest for legitimacy and for an artistic autonomy that Masereel and Ward could embody (part III).
Wordless woodcut novels created in the Twenties and the Thirties are enjoying a renewed editorial and critical interest in France. Six “novels in pictures” by Frans Masereel have been reprinted by Martin de Halleux since 2018 and L’Éclaireur, one exhaustive slipcase set of all six of Lynd Ward’s “novels in woodcuts”, was published by Monsieur Toussaint Louverture in 2020 (see list of works cited). But for one exception (in Walker’s anthology), this is the first French edition of Ward’s woodcut novels and only a few of Masereel’s books had been reprinted as individual books in the preceding years by small literary publishers. On the occasion of these reprints, both bodies of works have been praised as forerunners of the modern graphic novels—if not as graphic novels in their own right. Both of them were also selected for the Angoulême festival award dedicated to comics’ heritage: Masereel’s Idée was nominated in 2019 and Ward’s L’Éclaireur won the award in 2021. The place of these works in the history of comics thus seems formally established, as one more milestone in the form’s past. Jean Davallon’s communication approach to heritage (patrimonialisation) offers a heuristic model to describe this process of (re)insertion of woodcut novels in comics history. It also helps to understand its internal logic as well as its specificity: the retrospective look at the past here is as much one of rediscovery as one of reinvention.
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Tags: 25 images, A Contract with God, Angoulême, Art Spiegelman, artistic autonomy, Artists, Éclaireur, Belgium, cinema, comics history, continuity, Davallon, film, fine arts, France, Frans Masereel, Friedenthal, graphic novel, heritage, Idée, illustration, Le Don du patrimoine, legitimacy, Lynd Ward, Martin de Halleux, Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, paratext, patrimonialisation, Pouillon, retcon, reverse filiation, Scott McCloud, superheroes, symbolic annexation, USA, Will Eisner, woodcut novel, wordless comics
Attracting Mature Readers[1]
By Peter W. Y. Lee
Among the 1954 Comics Magazine Association of America’s Comic Code’s many regulations was a directive to company admen: “Liquor and tobacco advertising is not acceptable” (Nyberg 168). The ubiquity of alcohol in mainstream media certainly concerned social guardians in post-war America (Rotskoff). However, liquor manufacturers did not solicit to minors in the comics, but another demographic group: their parents.
The first part of my article looked at how Lev Gleason Publications responded to the public alarm over comic books. Gleason and his chief editor, Charles Biro, pushed comics as a progressive medium with educational and artistic merit. This second part explores their second strategy: courting adults. Gleason hoped that an expanded readership would bolster support and offset rising production costs. However, critics rejected comic books’ potential beyond that of disposable children’s entertainment. The Comics Code sanitised comic books and stigmatised readers beyond middle-school age.
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Tags: Abraham Lincoln, adult readership, Alan Valentine, Amazing Adult Fantasy, anticrime comic magazines, Association of Comic Magazine Publishers, Atlas, Boy Comics, Charles Biro, comics code, comics industry, crime comic books, Crime Does Not Pay, Dell Comics, economics, education, educational comics, Frederic Wertham, Fredric Wertham, Great Depression, Henry E. Schultz, History, juvenile delinquency, Lev Gleason, Lev Gleason Publications, mature readers, Mortimer Smith, pre-code, sexual imagery, social progressivism, St. John Publishing, superheroes, USA, violence, WWII
Countering Critics through Social Reform and Education
by Peter W. Y. Lee
The 1954 Comics Code was intended to protect children by curtailing comic book content that contributed to juvenile delinquency. However, historians have pointed to how overzealous red-baiters wielded the Code to attack the industry as a figurative whipping boy for Cold War anxiety (J. Gilbert, Nyberg, Wright, Hajdu). EC Comics stands out, noted for its “New Trend” of social criticism, horror and crime in severed jugular veins that provoked readers (Whitted). Scholars have pointed to EC’s publisher and editor William Gaines’s testimony before the Senate Subcommittee’s hearing on juvenile delinquency as a show trial of sorts, in which Gaines had hoped to counter the criticism levied against his company, but caved in shortly afterwards instead.[1] But Gaines was not the first to defend the industry, nor was EC representative of many publishers flooding the market. By looking at different titles, scholars can gain a greater appreciation of how other creators negotiated the post-war public role of comic books.
This is the first part of a two-part article that looks at publisher Leverett Gleason’s comic books. Gleason’s publishing house, alternatively known as Comic House or Lev Gleason Publications, used various means to elevate comic books in the public eye. This part examines how Gleason and his gung-ho editor, Charles Biro, predated EC’s touting the educational merits of crime suspense stories and the medium’s potential as an art form. Gleason tried to pass off his crime-centred titles as progressive and artistic literature, belying the genre’s contemporary and enduring reputation as perpetrators of violence. The second article details Gleason’s tactics to expand the scope of comic books as serious literature by appealing to grown-ups.
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Tags: Alex Raymond, art, Association of Comic Magazine Publishers, Bob Bernstein, Bob Wood, Boy Comics, Charles Biro, classism, Comic House, Comics Art, comics code, Crime Does Not Pay, crime suspense stories, Crimebuster, Daredevil, EC Comics, education, educational comics, Frederic Wertham, Fredric Wertham, Henry E. Schultz, horror, Jim Crow laws, juvenile delinquency, law enforcement, Lev Gleason, Little Wise Guys, marketing, Milton Caniff, morals, National Cartoonists Society, National Comics Publication, New York City Board of Education, pre-code, romance comics, sexual imagery, social criticism, social reform, Tony DiPreta, USA, violence
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