If Not Superheroes, What? Part XIII - Multi-Genre and Genreless Books

Previous columns in this series explored the origins, history, talent, and conventions of comics that more or less fit into discrete and distinct genres. One might, from such exploration, overlook both the notion that comics need not constrain themselves to single, particular genres and the correlary notion that they need not use genres at all. However, if we choose to look beyond the single form most associated with comics - the much-maligned domain of superhero comics - the question eventually occurs when one follows such an exploration to its limits.

Must comics have a single genre? and Must comics resort to genre at all? belong among perfectly legitimate aesthetic concerns about the medium. Genre provides form which creators can use to organize and constrain imagination to allow it focus, in the same way that a concrete slab foundation gives integrity to a building; but, at the same time, the conventions of genres also provide borders beyond which some creators wrongly fear to transgress, and, through frequent misuse, can replace the process of imagination, spawning endless redundant formula tales that often little enough new that a reader could interchange them. The western, for instance, could degenerate to little more than some small ornamentation prior to the final gunfight that resolved matters in favor of the protagonist, with the greater tapestry of the setting becoming less important to the point of namelessness.

Genre works best as a starting point rather than a finish line, and true creativity, while not fearing to use it, dares to violate, blend it, or ignore it as the tale demands, following storytelling opportunity rather than safe, well-trodden pathways.

The "Hayseed Dixie" Hook

Recently a random click on an ad in a browser window exposed me to an album entitled "Hayseed Dixie," a piece of work exploring the better known songs of the band AC/DC as interpreted through a bluegrass lens, replacing overdriven electric guitars with the Dobro, the fiddle, and, at least in spirit, the washboard. Though generally my tastes do not tempt me to buy a lot of AC/DC derived material - although I can listen to it without displeasure - and, furthermore, I enjoy a similar benign aloofness towards most bluegrass music, the combination of these two elements seemed somehow very precious, sly, and humorous without cruelty.

The drastic crossing of genres works because the contrast created by playing hard-rock standards in a bluegrass style makes genre itself stand out more pronouncedly; and, in the fusion of two styles that have drastically different symbolic meaning, the combination teases the listener, whom it tempts to join with it in winking at the self-importance of the notion of purity of genre itself. We could call art of this sort "genre discord" works, evidenced by many pieces since the dawn of the nineties (as, perhaps, a reaction to the pompously exclusive and overstated genres that dominated certain corners of the music market). Genre discord works as humor because it deflates the importance of the genre posturing of the source material; hence, lounge interpretations of Led Zeppelin numbers, metalized versions of Tammy Wynette songs, and, of course, the amusing but also quite listenable album "Hayseed Dixie."

Such juxtaposition tempts the question "Why have genres?" and, possibly, the related "What do we do with them when we have them?" Genre, after all, need appear with no more clarity or purity than artists so wish; and, in more than one form, in more than one medium, creative souls have dabbled with the effects that result either from a softening of genre or a hardening of it. The latter approach comes in handy when artists wish to create an effect that derives from the discord between distinct genres placed together; and, logically enough, for such approach, more exaggerated, or at least exclusive, approaches make the contrast all the more garish. One can milk genre for what one wishes to achieve, and some effects - particularly some types of irony - come off with greater impact in the context of a crossed, or violated, convention.

As with music, so with comics.

Where Comics Genres Collide

The reader who scrupulously prides himself on clarity of logic and consistency of nomenclature will have to suffer, once again, a fuzziness of definition of genre here as I continue to straddle the fence on the topic of the funny animal comic as a genre-and-non-genre. In part because the funny animal concept lends itself to recognizable genres of comics without abandoning its own anthropomorphic conventions, and in part because some ideas synergize when brought together, some comics thrive on the borderlands between the funny animal convention and established comics forms. For instance, we have the previously-mentioned historical/political/funny animal fusion Maus, which already appears in the canon of contemporary comics classics. Or we have the territory where the mainstream superhero book and the funny animal concept collide in Scott Shaw and Roy Thomas' early eighties piece Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. Or, stepping back about twenty years from the latter work, we have Gilbert Shelton's timeless cross-breed between the superhero comic and the underground comic, with just a bit of funny animal thrown in, in various incarnations and treatments of his creation Wonder Wart-Hog.

Nor do the aforementioned types, genres, and conventions represent the limits of intersecting forms. For instance, Heavy Metal in the eighties printed a series that combined elements classifiable both as horror comics and as western comics in a series called "Tex Arcana." The latter piece did not take genre especially seriously (in the sense as viewing such as inviolable and beyond tampering with), combining certain conventions of the American western with the occasional grotesque horror element (such as a violinist who sells his soul for excellence and ends up having a demon play his intestines with a bow) and EC-esque pre-story and post-story commentary by ghoulish mascots.

Or, for that matter, how might one choose to classify Jeff Smith's Bone? Some elements suggest the independent fantasy comics of the early eighties, including the whole sylvan setting, pseudo-archaic clothing, and the occasional unlikely beast showing up to create trouble, but these pieces do not dominate the concepts or storytelling in the way one would expect with a fantasy work; and the emphases in these stories steer away from high-powered violence, either with ancient metal weapons or through some invented kind of magic, with character interaction presenting the more important canvas. If we identify this work as "not really fantasy," we can similarly place it beyond the bounds of funny animal strips, even though in some particulars Smith seems to echo the much-missed strip "Pogo" in his character design (the proportions of two of the characters together strongly evoke the duo Pogo Possum and Albert the Alligator in a manner that hardly seems accidental). But does it cross genres, fuse genres, or transcend them? As another instance of a work that contains elements of diverse forms, we might consider the classic Mike Barr - Brian Bolland collaboration Camelot 3000, a work which centered around Arthurian myths (placing it, perhaps, near fantasy or historical / mythical in some kind of hypothetical Library of Congress classification for comics) but also included window-dressing from its futuristic setting that one might appropriately designate science fantasy. And, as time goes on, more and more clever pieces either cross, blend, fuse, or ignore genre. One could list the examples unto and beyond the obvious limits of tedium.

Moving Beyond Genre

Genres can do many things as comics. They can direct the concepts; they can constrain them; they can advance notions by providing a stage from which to perform; they can create friction, either humorous or disastrous, when intermixed; they can provide a rich supply of conventions to fall victim to self-parody; and they can become dogmatic barriers beyond which some storytellers refuse to reach, and, thereby, suck the life out of a comic.

By themselves, though, in the absence of real creativity, they can't do much for a comic, even where the genre itself has numerous elements to help the creator along. Indeed, when uninspired creators have little more to work with (including an imagination taxed beyond its powers), genre can become a burden.

One might note that genre conventions provide excellent targets for parody and ridicule. Superheroes, for instance, invite derision for things like the code names used by the principal characters (which the canny can easily twist into something absurd and amusing); the notion of circus-tight costumes (which invite parody by comparison to, say, jockey shorts and long underwear); the notion of changing into costume as a preliminary to fighting crime (derided through mechanisms such as the enormous Wonder Wart-Hog fitting into the somewhat small and dumpy Philbert Desanex outfit); and the themes of powers (for example, animals like bats).

Following the Arrow of Time

With occasional dips for anecdotal events - like the very early days of the Image phenomenon, which presented a very minimal interpretation of superhero comics that simplified and exaggerated the genre - the strict-definition genre, beyond occasional tribute pieces, seems much less typical of comics in the territory we could identify as the vital, the clever, the innovative.

A form, after all, goes through a life cycle. It begins with a formative period, during which the conventions gel, as experiments by creators weed out what does and does not work in the form. Then it runs in its maturity for an indefinite interval, depending on consumer interest and creator enthusiasm, with market forces and tendency to creative burnout defining the duration of this phase of its life. As the mature phase begins to falter - and, though it usually does, we need not assume that deterministic forces compel it to - it enters its senescent, decadent phase in which the formula angles either become a rigid orthodoxy forbidding too much imagination or liveliness or in which bizarre experiments and incomprehensible ornamentation dominate. This phase generally numbs interest, but the genre does not truly die; instead, it enters a phase of dormancy pending some bright soul's ability to resuscitate it in a slightly or drastically redefined form. And, at this point, it could spawn schools in the same sense that the Marvel Comics editorial model of the sixties became a dominant school of superhero comics.

New genres can continue to spawn indefinitely, as the territory of imagination allows. But as more and more styles and forms run through the life cycle into the decadent phase, readers themselves may tend to divide on the meaning of the defining conventions. The purist will here appear and become either heroic or ludicrous, depending on the balance between considerations of the quality of art and the tendency of consumers of art to fabricate tastes as a tool of self-promotion and self-congratulation.

As more genres pass through their evolutionary cycle, what it means will tend to shift. With few available options, these can afford a certain inflexibility, but we might expect this to change as the kinds available increase. Genre itself will also tend to soften - in the sense of becoming less important as a thing unto itself and also relative to other elements of comics - as standards change even without explicit intent to transcend or ignore it. Looking at some of the early Vertigo pieces published by DC Comics shows the possible beginning of a transition of superhero comics away from its genre conventions - note, for example, the general abandonment of the costume gimmick in Starman, and the rarity of seeing Sandman in costume in the early issues of Sandman Mystery Theater. Other Vertigo works, such as Gaiman's Sandman and Moore's Swamp Thing, sometimes brought in the occasional costumed hero, but in ways that tended to show the foreignness of the signature features of costumes and superpowers. And, at least on the periphery, Vertigo elements seem more and more inclined to feed back into the mainstream to which the Vertigo line once appeared as a tangent.

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Column 287. Completed 08-DEC-2001.