Seven Deadly Sins of Comics, Part VII: Gore and Raunch

Many comics readers beam with pride about comics having "grown up," feeling that the easing of restrictions equals some great improvement in the medium. If dripping, splattered entrails decorate the inside of Youngblood, and if we free Mike Grell to portray the nude human form in Green Arrow, or if we simply amuse ourselves with an underground sex-and-drug romp, this provides polemical ammunition for claims that allowing adult content into comics has improved them.

We shake our heads at the notion of some designated (or self-appointed) authority dictating what reading matter may contain, for, after all, this involves an important matter of principle.

However, we confuse ourselves in this. The presence, or absence, of adult content does not guarantee (or foreclose) the quality of a work any more than the color of paint guarantees the quality of an automobile.

We accept as dogma that censorship must compromise the quality of art. However, in acknowledging the inverse relationship between outside dictation of content and the likely quality of the resulting content, we slip into an illogical association of the forbidden elements with quality.

What Makes a Good Comic?

Certain "adult" trends in comics seem to provide a missing dimension to what can become a rather flat medium. Consider the case of comic book violence, and the use of realism therein.

If we visualize a 1940s-era comic of dubious quality, with all the strictures about sex, violence, drugs, and profanity, and visualize a murder portrayed in such a work, the worst we expect to see is (perhaps) a panel with a large sound effect (of a scream or a pistol report), followed by a clean, serene looking cadaver on the floor.

In these more adult times, we may enjoy this murder with more of its meatty goodness intact. Imagine, if you will, some body-count heavy comic, perhaps starring Marvel's Wolverine or the Punisher. Imagine whatever death offers the most satisfaction: the Punisher strafing a mob goon with bullets, say, or Wolverine shredding some similar figure, in four colors, splattering blood, saliva, and particles of flesh in excruciating detail.

If this kind of realism offered the essence of quality, then we might produce a work with only this element of guaranteed quality within; for instance, sell a monthly portfolio of pinups and panels showing "best kills." However, would a twenty-page depiction of a stream of graphic homicides actually demonstrate what we call "quality?" Or, alternately, would such depictions remain incidental to the actual quality of the kind of work that might place them in a larger context?

In the second case, which seems more likely, we would seek quality elsewhere and (perhaps) employ the incidental gruesome violence as the logic of the work required. However, we could craft a work without it; furthermore, we could create a work of excellence without it. We could treat graphic violence as one type of window-dressing.

Consider this true for all the "adult" elements of a comic book. The profanity, the violence, the nudity, the drugs, the questionable ethics, controversy (or, more likely, one-sided presentations of issues that we might call "versy") all provide ornamentation for the quality that either appears within a book or does not appear at all.

The violence in a story about Wolverine or the Punisher serves the abstract goal of quality only indirectly, through a channel we might call "truth to concept;" the absence of such violence would represent an inconsistent characterization. In the same sense, Superman punching the guts out of his opponents (literally) would represent a lack of quality, since in such a case these actions would dispense with "truth to concept."

If violence, per se does not constitute a necessary element to quality, as previously demonstrated, and if violence can either enhance or undermine quality, as in the example of the Wolverine/Punisher/Superman comparison, then we may conclude that it represents an altogether irrelevant property rather than a constituent of quality.

"Adult" or Just "Lurid"?

"Adult" has become a euphemism for words like "lurid," "erotic," and "pornographic", as well as an accurate descriptor of concepts like "topical," "complex" and "difficult." Misuse derives from the euphemistic qualities of the word or from the confusion of the accurate and euphemistic qualities of it.

We can consider a work discussing the suicide of a character and its effects on the survivors as a legitimately adult work. We can consider superfluous content of a salacious character as simply lurid. For instance, in the Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan, the analog to Charlton's Captain Atom, appeared, through most of the story, completely nude. This did not intend to titillate. The character's progressive dispensing with clothing, as depicted through flashbacks, mirrored his development away from human norms; his nakedness argued for his growing inhumanity. In such a case, we can consider this depiction "adult."

However, in a work like Little Annie Fanny, "adult" serves as a euphemism to mask a puerile obsession with sex and nudity; the term becomes, in such a context, a semi-Orwellian piece of doublespeak for a work of adolescent-minded erotica. Outside of the sexual content, the humor of that strip often remained true to the Kurtz/Elder form that its creators brought from Mad comics in the 1950s. When not steeped in swarming nude human forms, such humor reaches both adult and juvenile; therefore, we should not describe it as "adult."

The insulting nature of the description "for kids" suggests a flaw in our thinking. This comes from the impact of a culture that equates "for kids" as meaning no more and no less than "devoid of questionable content;" the property typically described with this term indicates the absence, not the presence, of features. Material "for kids," furthermore, frequently results from a long process in dumbing down so that the result does not expand upon the vocabulary of a first-grade primer and actually offers nothing "for kids." One may see an example of this in children's shows like "Barney," that, while presumably education, probably teaches children no more than how to change the words of nursery songs in the public domain.

One branch of readers wants comics material of an "adult" nature, by either definition, and resents comics that do not contain it. This seems like a crucial matter of self-esteem to them; to read a comic book devoid of profanity, graphic violence, or nudity seems to reseat them at the children's table, and they will let you know this. Unfortunately, to cater to this market does much to foreclose a younger market. Even in the age of Jerry Springer, some parents do try to oversee what their children read, and gratuitous sex or violence can set a parent permanently against the medium by a single appearance.

Of course, some readers demand of all comics that they target only the adult reader. Having already passed childhood physically themselves, they nonetheless fail to grasp that the world exists outside of them, independent of their desires and needs. The inanity of this position becomes clear if you think about a hypothetical book reader who objected to children's books because he considered the material inherently juvenile. This would leave one with the question: Why can't children have books? So, too, we can think of this in the context of comics. DC Comics, more so than the rest of the industry, has attempted to create a "kid-friendly" line of books similar in style and content to the Warner Brothers cartoons about Superman and Batman. Unfortunately, according to comics merchants, this style does not necessarily attract youthful buyers; sometimes older readers provide the main body of sales of the "kid-friendly" line. In some examples, furthermore, creators do not understand well the concepts necessary to produce such work; making a comic with art in the style of a cartoon version does not necessarily mean that the book remains accessible to younger readers. An eight-year old may well be capable of appreciating the likes of Neal Adams artwork even though his verbal skills do not follow the dialogue that accompanies it.

In truth, though, the medium would do well to attempt an approach that includes more than one generation of readers. The cartoons of the forties managed this quite well, by combining the elements that attracted short attention spans and required little education to understand (Bugs Bunny making Elmer Fudd's shotgun go off in his face) with topical jokes more likely to reach adults (celebrity caricatures and overreacting "wolf" characters that went berserk in the line of sight of a female) without containing anything to render them altogether inappropriate for either group.