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Dan Mazur & Alexander Danner. Comics, a Global History, 1968 to the
Present.
Pascal Lefèvre
Dan Mazur & Alexander Danner. Comics, a global history, 1968 to the present London: Thames & Hudson, 2014
320 p., 7.4 x 1.2 x 10.1 inches, 289 b & w and colour ill. ISBN: 978-0500290965
In comparison to other similar fields of mass entertainment (like cinema) the research on graphic narratives is still lagging behind by decades. While there are, for instance, several decent historical overviews of fiction film worldwide (think of Nowell-Smith 1999, Cook 2003, Thompson & Bordwell 2009), till recently there was nothing comparable on the international development of graphic narratives (except for a German book from 2004: Andreas Knigge’s Alles über Comics). Most historical overviews focused on one country (or even one region of a country), one genre, one publication format, one author, one publisher... If they tried to give an international overview (for instance Horay’s Histoire Mondiale de la bande dessinée, 1980), they just dedicated a chapter to each country (written by a specialist of a particular national production) without trying to interrelate the various texts. Also the various international oriented comics encyclopaedias present various entries independently. Now, we have for the first time a publication (Mazur & Danner, Comics, a global history, 1968 to the present) that attempts a critical overview of three main comics producing cultures (North America, Japan and Francophone Europe) by giving each of these regions more or less equal attention. While the choice of the year 1968 as a start may be rather arbitrary, Mazur and Donner don’t forget to present briefly what happened in the years right after WW2, so that the reader understands the roots of the changes in the late 1960s. For instance the authors rightly state that demographics played an important role: the postwar baby boom created a mass of children’s comics readers in the 1950s and one they became teenagers and young adults, in the 1960s, they were accustomed to reading graphic narratives and they were ready for graphic narratives with more adult aspirations. The book claims from the very start that in the 1960s “comics began to evolve from a “product” marketed to as broad public as possible, toward a means of expression, made by people who want to tell stories and draw, hoping to find a receptive public.” (p. 9). The authors, however, warn the reader that this dichotomy is oversimplified because “comics-as-expression did not replace comics-as-products, but, gradually came into existence alongside” (p. 9). Furthermore Mazur and Danner have differentiated, for every region, throughout the book the “alternative” form the “mainstream” production. They admit these terms should be understood to be imprecise, but, as they argue, such terms are still useful in presenting the historical developments of this field. Moreover, the authors have split up the last fifty years in three main parts: part one runs from 1968 till 1978, part two from 1978 till 1990, and part three from 1990 onward. Proportionally the
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most recent period (of 24 years) gets thus lesser pages than the first two shorter periods.
The worldwide production of comics of the last fifty years must be too astronomical and impossible, even for two knowledgeable scholars using many sources, to deal with. Mazur and Danner explain in the introduction why they focused on North America, Western Europe and Japan, but in the case of Europe it is foremost the francophone production that receives attention. The term ‘global’ in the title of the book could raise wrong expectations, because, not every, single local comics tradition on earth is included. Some selective attention is, however, also paid to the Italian, Spanish, Argentinian or South-Korean production.
Even with these limitations, it remains an impressive achievement to tackle the three major comics-producing cultures, North America, Francophone Europe and Japan. Not only the most popular or acclaimed titles of the three regions are succinctly presented, but also lesser-known but historically important works. So, I guess that every reader from every part of the world will learn about several new interesting titles or artists. In total almost 1,000 different titles are mentioned. When I asked Mazur and Danner to what extent they had read all these titles, they affirmed they had read of every title at least some pages (in the case of some untranslated manga with the help of translators). By this approach they do more than just summarizing some of the existing literature.
Furthermore even within the selected regions further choices were necessary to digest the enormous quantity of works. While I can understand many of their self-imposed limitations, the author’s decision not to include a publication format like the newspaper comics feels almost like an amputation. Of course, newspaper strips had reached their pinnacle many years before the selected period of this book starts, but even in last fifty years various important series were created (of which Mazur and Danner only mention a handful).
Unfortunately, the authors don’t explain their methodology in the book, but in an online interview (http://comicsalternative.com/interview-mazur-danner/) they talked about certain of their principles that have guided them: “As far as artists and genres, our decision was to emphasize artistic quality, importance and influence, over commercial success. (…) While we wanted to express our own opinion on which creators are great or important, we felt that we were generally channelling a certain critical consensus as well, not imposing idiosyncratic tastes of our own.”
Although this overview is thus for the larger part an aesthetic story, the artistic evolutions are various times contextualized in relation to the magazines that published the first version of these comics. Furthermore sometimes a larger contextualization (economical, social aspects) is offered; for instance the effect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Miller vs. California decision of 1973 on the underground commix distribution. Basically, the discussed works are usually contextualized within the field of graphic narratives, but sometimes also in regards to films as well – though it isn’t always clear if the artists themselves have acknowledged these supposed links. In general, various statements should be more extensively underpinned by references. Admittedly, too many references may hinder a running text, but for a publication with some academic aspiration retraceable sources remain quite fundamental. Now the book contains less than 100 endnotes and less than 140 references in the bibliography, which is relatively limited for such a comprehensive overview of a medium (see the much longer bibliographies
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of the earlier mentioned cinema histories).
Finally, even if one doesn’t read the running text, one may get already an impressive historical panorama by looking at the 289 illustrations (in their original version) and reading the extensive captions. Already at this level the book is a major achievement. On the other hand the presentation of the historical developments could have been improved by using some graphics, diagrams, timelines and other visual means for clearly designing information. Also a brief introduction to each of the three parts might have helped in more explicitly characterizing these chosen periods.
On the whole Comics, a global history is a much expected and very helpful book, which will probably end up on many syllabi of academic courses. It is certainly a fine start of hopefully more global, comparative approaches to the history of graphic narratives.
Pascal Lefèvre is special guest lecturer in the arts at LUCA School of Arts (campus Sint-Lukas Brussel) Email: pascal.lefevre@luca-arts.be
