ART SPIEGELMAN ON THE FUTURE OF COMICS

Even as newspapers are expiring on every hand, taking the newspaper comic strip with them, Art  Spiegelman finds hope for the form: “I like Richard Thompson’s work [Cul de Sac],” he said to Michael Cavna at ComicRiff.com. “They’re good gags, and graphically it’s on a very high level. It really seems like the inheritor of the Calvin and Hobbes mantle. It’s amazing when any strip can electrify and bring life to a form [the comic strip] that is on life support.”

Some prestigious others have applauded Thompson’s strip: he was one of three finalists for the Best Comic Strip division award from the National Cartoonists Society in May. Mark Tatulli’s pantomimic horror-child Lio won in this category; the other candidate was Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine.

I don’t think I’d go so far as to say Cul de Sac is the inheritor of the mantle of Calvin and Hobbes: Thompson’s strip is a unique creation, it’s very good, and I enjoy it immensely. But its humor is of a different sort than Bill Watterson’s in Calvin and Hobbes. In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin behaves as a child would if he knew some of what adults know; in Cul de Sac, the kids behave as kids, seen from the inside without any contamination from the adult mind. The two strips have in common, however, the ability to make us see ourselves as a little less important.

Art Spiegelman’s hopeful assessment of the future for comics does not include newspapers. “Comics in general,” he said, “are doing great. They’ve moved into another cultural space successfully. It’s not really about the newspaper anymore.” He’s talking about comic books and graphic novels; not the newspaper funnies.

Like most observers of the medium, Spiegelman sees web comics as the future: “Online, pages get to crackle in a different way. It’s a different medium — it’s a real difference. As the medium evolves as something that’s on my screen, online comics will become as different from comic books as comic strips are to comic books. The rules are different online.”

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[Richard Thompson]

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