Just one more comics post, promise. Then it’s back to the regularly scheduled programming of sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs. (At least until the next comics post.)

A few weeks ago, Heidi MacDonald (of the PublishersWeekly comic blog The Beat) posted a half review/half commentary dealing with The Best American Comics 2007. One hundred comments and a few days later, she responded to the controversy her post had spawned. Hardly wanting to admit any fault, she quickly reveals that any vagueness was on purpose; a product of her writing style and a means to “inspire debate” (and debate they did). Just like my short digression was on purpose; a means of allowing me to say her dodging any blame was a motherfucking cop-out. But I digress.

Nevertheless, her follow-up post responded to a few comments, and presented a more focused account of her opinion:

What I don’t like is the trend of valuing expressionism, formalism and “comica vérité” for their own sake at the expense of what I would call “mainstream fiction”, or formally conventional but narratively complex stories such as Love & Rockets, Exit Wounds, Ode to Kirihito, Ice Haven (Shock!!) or American Born Chinese.

As much as I may disagree with how MacDonald originally outlined this opinion, or dealt with the responses, it is hard to find anything to argue with the above summary on its own. She sees “comica vérité” (a wonderful term, in the vein of cinéma vérité, coined to describe autobiographical or similar comics) stealing the spotlight, and maybe even the whole stage, and worries about the future of more conventional fiction. This trend is certainly extant in the indie comic world, at least as far as mainstream media like The New York Times or HoughtonMifflin are concerned.

It is this preoccupation with the “face” of comics which I find worthy of criticism. As Steven Hirsch mentions in a comment on the original post:

By reacting to the book the way she does, Heidi implies that it’s canonical and gives it some authority that it doesn’t and shouldn’t have. I see comics as an art form refreshingly free of any rigid canon, and would like to see it remain that way.

We the masses of comic lovers may applaud (or bemoan) on a daily basis the thrusting of comics into the mainstream, but we don’t really care that much. A warm smile may come over our faces when we read the latest issue of The New York Times Magazine, or see a familiar comic in this year’s The Best American Comics, but afterwards we’ll go on enjoying our Batman and Groo just the same. Does it really matter what Chris Ware deems the year’s best comics? Are we really so self-conscious?

To answer the first, yes and no. The narrowing range of what comics we can respectfully call “graphic novels” in conversation with friends and family is unlikely to have any direct effect of any significance. It may be a long time before Bone is taught alongside Maus, but that doesn’t reflect on the greatness of Jeff Smiths’ masterpiece. (And it is great. And Neil Gaiman is writing an essay on it. And I am so excited!) It does, however, reflect on the mainstream perception of comic books, and consequently influences any converts to the comics community. If the community is going to fully push the boundaries of the medium, it needs to present an honest view of itself and attract a new generation of both creators and readers.

No matter how long the media continues to pigeonholes comica vérité as the medium’s lord and savior, there are so many genres that are worth reading. The community deserves a Best American Comics 2008 that acknowledges this.

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