panelology.info - where comic books make sense

Comics are a funny thing.

Not, however, because the comic strip and later on the comic book as we know it today was established in American and European newspapers and magazines of the late 19th and early 20th century as originally dealing with humorous contents.

No. The really funny thing about comics is their ambivalence.

Comics are almost constantly surrounded by opposing attitudes and an uncertainty as to what they are and how they should be seen. Are comics a form of art or just cheap trash? Is there anything of interest in comics for a sharp mind or are they just a shallow form of entertainment for readers with little or no intellect and sociability at all?

Funny also how this ambivalence has stuck with comics ever since they first appeared.

The precursor of the modern comic book, created by Swiss artist Rodolphe Toepffer (1799-1846) who drew his first "illustrated comedic account" in 1827, met with an enthusiastically favourable reception by none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who remarked "Es funkelt alles von Talent und Geist!" ("All of it glitters with talent and wit!") and tried to persuade Toepffer to publish his work. Publication - which was never intended - finally came about in 1833, and the satirical views of 19th century society became highly popular. However, Toepffer himself (who had been appointed Professor of Literature at the University of Geneva by that time) described his work as a medium which worked well "principalement sur les enfants et (...) les classes inferieures de la societe" ("particularly with children and (...) the lower classes of society"). If - as many see it - Toepffer is the father of the modern comic, he is also the father of the sceptical criticism and state of ambivalence surrounding comics: with Goethe on one side and the virtually illiterates on the other, the field is about as open as you could possibly imagine.

And that's the way it's been ever since. The "Yellow Kid", created by the celebrated father of the American comic strip, R. F. Outcault, in 1895 for newspaper supplements lent a hand when the term "yellow press" was coined as a pejorative description for newspapers which feature sensationalist or scandal-mongering content - and, at the time, the "Yellow Kid" comic strips.

The ambivalence surrounding comics probably reached its peak in December 1964 when Belgian comic book artist Morris (Maurice de Bevere) labelled comic books as the "neuvieme art" ("ninth art") in the comic book magazine Spirou #1392. Reportedly, Morris coined the term out of dispair because comics had such a bad public image, but despite these motives (in fact, some think Morris was just being ironic at the time) the label caught on, and the distinction of comics as the "ninth art" is prevalent today in the francophone comic book world and indeed covers an entire concept of comic book criticism and scholarship.

The American influence with regard to such ambivalence may be slightly less poignant, but it works just as well. Consider, for instance, Roy Thomas. Well known to comic book aficionados as fan, writer and editor par excellence who worked for both Marvel and DC, he is also recorded as having remarked that "I love comics, but I always considered them, even now, a lower form of literature".

It may be that what Toepffer and Thomas - and many more in between - are trying to say is that comics, quintessentially, have a fairly down to earth attitude with regard to what they aim to achieve and their own posture. And perhaps the ambivalence surrounding comics can also be an indication of the fact that there are many different ways of enjoying comics, as Paul Ernst puts it in his intriguing little booklet La BD: un art mineur? [Comics: a minor form of art?] (2007).

Personally, I only discovered this by chance when I picked up a copy of Ronin Ro's Tales to Astonish - Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution in early 2007. Thumbing through it, it seemed very odd to me that a book dealing with comics contained not a single illustration, but the price was reduced to such an extent that I bought it. As it turned out, the book was fascinating to read and hard to put down. In its pages I found all kinds of stories around and behind the comics I had read thirty years ago, and after re-reading some of those bronze and silver age Marvel comics (readily available thanks to the Marvel Masterworks series) I discovered that those comics did indeed hold points of interest which simply weren't accessible to a twelve-year old kid in the mid-1970s.

Of course, it's still not Shakespeare (although it is quite possible that Shakespeare, had he had the chance, might well have enjoyed comic books). But with an academically trained way of thinking I came to the conclusion that there's no good reason to say that the same serious approach used to reflect on Shakespeare could not be applied to the subject of comic books - and so I gradually recharted my own map of comics. The pages on this website are really just a side effect of this.

Now I quickly hasten to add that by "academic" I refer to the methodology more than anything else. To me it would seem slightly foolish to approach a subject which doesn't really take itself too seriously in an over-serious way. Basically, it's about what Stan Lee once said: Just because something's for fun doesn't mean we have to blanket our brains while reading it.

What did strike me was the fact that many interesting publications dealing with comics - both books and online articles - are fairly sloppy as regards the way in which they are pieced together. As a reader, you can never be quite sure whether an author is making an original statement or relaying information from someone else, and if so, where this quoted information comes from. In other words: exactly the type of work which will get you to hell in academic circles. The book which got me started, Tales to Astonish, struck me as being especially bad in this respect. Regardless of whether something is attributed to Jack Kirby or supposedly quoting Stan Lee, there is no indication as to where the author got this information from.

Okay, why should this matter. Well, it's a question of how you approach things. Take this page, for example. If you've got as far as this paragraph, you have already been forced to accept fairly large chunks of information as fact, just like that. Did Goethe really praise the first modern form of comics, or was I just making things up because it sounds like a good story and fits my line of thought so well? And if Goethe did indeed say something about Toepffer's work, how can you be sure my German is up to understanding it correctly? And did Roy Thomas really say that about comics? When and where? Could it be that the quote is taken out of context? After all, someone could take this page and quote me as saying that comics are "just a shallow form of entertainment for readers with little or no intellect and sociability at all". Did I say that? Yes, I did, but if you check back on the third paragraph of this page, you will see that I phrased it as a question, not as my own point of view. But how could you know if you can't go back to the source where a given information is said to come from?

This is where I find that a more scholarly, academic approach is more than appropriate. And this is why, on most pages on this site dealing with comics, you will find author indications or footnotes stating clearly where an information used in the text is taken from. The rest is, of course, just my personal opinion and interpretation, and should be taken just as that - although, with all due modesty, it is at least an informed one.

And as for the perhaps slightly odd label panelology - well, it is a hybrid term incorporating the English noun "panel" (as one of the most salient outward feature of comics) and the Greek suffix "-logia" (originally from Greek logein, "to speak", commonly used in the sense of "the study of ...") and was coined by Dr Jerry G. Bails (1933 - 2006). A phycisist and mathematician by trade and appointed Assistant Professor of Natural Science at Wayne State University in 1960, Bails was also an avid comic book fan and collector. After DC editor Julius Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox put Bails in touch with a young fan named Roy Thomas, the two launched the first true comics fanzine in 1961 - Alter Ego. The choice of title (Latin for "the other I", hinting at the secret identities of Superheroes) by Bails illustrates his approach to comic fandom, which paired a sense of enthusiasm with an educated perspective. In this very vein, Bails also created the term Panelology and launched the fanzine The Panelologist in 1968. Bails' original concept primarily served to describe comic book fandom and comic book collecting, but the term seems to lend itself well for designating the general study of comic books if carried out in an academic approach with regard to the soundness of methodology and analysis but avoiding an all too top-heavy perspective on the subject.

Thanks for looking. Any feedback you may have is always welcome.

Adrian Wymann

PS. Goethe's enthusiastic reaction is recorded by Joh. Peter Eckermann in his Gespraeche mit Goethe [Conversations with Goethe] in an entry dated 4 January 1831 (accessible on the web at www.wissen-im-netz.info/literatur/goethe/biografien/eckermann/3-1830ff/18310104.htm) as well as in a letter from Frederic Soret to Toepffer in Rodolphe Toepffer, Correspondance complete vol. II (413-414/Letter 355), published by Droz in Geneva (2004). The remark by Roy Thomas comes from an interview by Jon Cooke in Comic Book Artist issue 13, Son of Stan: Roy's Years of Horror (available at www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/13thomas.html)