A respectable medium

Hey guys! You know what's artistic? Sex! You know what else? Nudity! Pussies! Fucking! Rape! Child molestation! Sexual abuse! Masturbation! Cunt! It's true!

You know what else is artistic? Sucky drawings! Amateurs with no experience! Professionals with plenty of experience who want to reject convention or some shit! Disturbing images! Surrealism with no apparent meaning! Gore and death! They're facts of life!

Real-life, autobio stuff is artistic too. There's nothing quite so artistic, dramatic, meaningful as the mundane. Wow! That shit I had this morning was just so fucking thought-provoking.

Psychological problems are artistic, too! You can tell, because every fucking psycho in the U.S. draws comics.

Fuck those superhero comics, by the way. They're so fucking uninteresting. And the art put into them? The stories sprawling generations of readerships? Fucking garbage. Where's the art? Where's the rape? Why do these drawings look like someone put effort into them? They're so fucking clean, so fucking commercial.

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I don't really hate the more contemporary or underground comics that much. There's occasionally something I like in the piles of muck. Really, it's exactly the same with manga, and to an extent, big-name comics themselves. And anyway, I'm not one to say what's muck and what's not -- if you have something to say, and if you want to say it through comics, I don't really care. Not until you ask me to read it.

What bothers me is the "greater than thou" vibe I get from these comics. The rejection of convention, of attractive art, of good storytelling. Is it because the artists suck at drawing or writing? And for God's sake, what is with all the sex? What is the obsession with pornography being used for, for... I don't even know what! I simply don't understand it! Will someone explain it to me? Is it supposed to be shocking? Is it supposed to be thought-provoking, spiritual? Or is it seriously supposed to be arousing? 'Cause ... 'cause ... it's really, really not.

I'm also bothered that this is what the "cultured world" seems to associate with comics these days. If you ask some, I dunno, New York Times goon or someone to show you an excellent comic, you'll probably get something out of the underground, or a lame autobio minicomic or something, probably not something filled with character like Spider-Man, or with intelligent art and writing, like Usagi Yojimbo. Meanwhile, there's still so much untapped potential in the genres and themes between superheroes and underground. Where are the westerns, the soap operas, the space operas, the comedies, WHATEVER else? Anything! Bone is a great recent example of something different and well done. Castle Waiting is another, though from what I've read, the feminist themes get in the way of telling a good story.

I guess that's my real problem with contemporary comics: they don't feel like stories. At best, they might be anecdotal or autobiographical. There are exceptions, of course: some tell full stories and I tend to like them better, but not always; some are completely anecdotal and I really enjoy them. But often they have themes of trying to find meaning or, or something, through unusual means -- sex, sucky drawings, world views, whatever -- and they really don't have a story to tell, or even a point to make.

Guh, I was afraid I would have this reaction to CCS...