Comix Influx Blog: Pekar and comics in The Guardian

The Guardian seems to be going comics crazy at the moment* . This weekend saw a new strip from Joe Sacco, a review of Daryl Cunningham’s Psychiatric Tales, and an article by Sam Leith about the death of Harvey Pekar and the state of comics in general.

Leith’s article was an interesting but slightly disjointed article, covering the death of Harvey Pekar, and bemoaning the fact that even in trying to escape genre work comics just seems to then invent new genres (for example, all the Watchmen-inspired antihero comics, or the navel-gazing of Ware, Clowes, Seth and Tomine).

I’m not sure that holding up Cerebus as an antidote to these twin genres works, as it is itself a reaction to genre work, but still Leith’s point about the self-referentiality of comics is an interesting one. So many modern comics (in the anglophone, world anyway) are consciously and overtly reacting or referencing earlier works. Whether it is super-hero reboots, or genre subversion (the most obvious progenitor being Watchmen, as noted in the article), or the interweaving of caped heroes in Jimmy Corrigan. As Leith says, many comics are “either fleeing superhero silliness (to become a sort of dour antiheroism) or nervously playing off it.” The message is all about the medium.

Given the eulogising of the aardvark, I’m surprised at the exhortation for comics to cheer up. Still, some interesting points made.

• Just today, Jonathan Ross interviews Jim Steranko. In Comix Influx-relevant, Steranko mentions that as a youth Federico Fellini translated American comics, particularly Flash Gordon, into Italian.