Cultures of Comics Work

Over the past 40 years, Australian comic book production has been comprised of individuals who form social networks of production and consumption, with an emphasis on creating product as authentic artistic expression. Economically, Australian comics production could be considered a small creative industry, and culturally, it could be considered a scene. In order to understand more about the creative identity and the thought processes behind comics production, I interviewed creators from scenes across Australia. Using primary data from artists in order to understand their ethos is a method frequently utilized within creative identity studies (Hackley and Kover 2007; Wang and Cheng 2010; Taylor and Littleton 2008).

Historically, in Indian comics culture, a corporate model of production has predominated that is predicated upon a division of labor. As Mark Rogers (2011) notes, such a mode of production requires writers, pencillers, inkers, and others to perform their step in the creative process with limited interaction with other steps or the people behind them.¹ While such an approach has helped certain companies flourish, the obvious cost has been the inability of creators to make a living from their work. Furthermore, there is little space for an active and critical community in corporate production. Accordingly, contemporary comics creators, editors, publishers, and many of their readers have recently begun to take a different approach toward creativity.

There is a common saying that goes, “Colombia is well known for all products that start with the letter C.” Sadly, comics are not among the products that come to mind directly after that statement. This chapter presents Colombia’s (non-existent) comics industry, and the works of those who, on the fringes of the economy, have strived to continue with their trade. We want to start by stressing the perspective from which we draw this incomplete picture of the Colombian comic world: we have been at both the academic and creative ends of comics. We grew up in a country filled with comics in the shape of small magazines, mainly American in origin and mostly translated into Spanish. We grew up reading Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, some Marvel and DC Superhero comics, the occasional Tintin and Astérix, but very few Latin American comics, with Condorito and Kalimán taking the lead.

The creation of the OIAA in 1940 (at the time named the Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics) was a new step in the development of the economic and the political relationship between the USA and Latin America dating back to the nineteenth century. In 1823, the Monroe Doctrine defined the efforts of European powers to colonize Latin America as acts of aggression that would require US intervention. Although largely disregarded in Europe, in Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine operated as a unifying belief in the special link between the new Western Hemispheric republics (Sexton 2011). In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine claimed that the USA had become “an international police force” and therefore had the right and the power to intervene into the internal affairs of Western Hemispheric countries (Roosevelt 1927, 114–115). The Clark Memorandum of 1928 claimed that the USA held a self-evident right to defend itself and its political and economic interests. Unsurprisingly, this foreign policy of intervention, used whenever the USA felt its economic and political interests threatened, placed the country in an unfavorable position with many Latin American republics. To combat this Pan-American hostility, in his 1933 Inaugural Address, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the Good Neighbor policy, which re-imagined Pan-American unity through respect for national sovereignty (Pike 1992, 272–296; Pike 1995; Green 1971; Gellman 1979). The operations of the OIAA emerged from the larger Good Neighbor policy, both in cultural and in economic terms (Cramer and Prutsch 2012; Rankin 2009; Cramer and Prutsch 2006; Pike 1995, 251–254; Green 1971, 88–89, 133–134; Gellman 1979, 149–167). Since its inception in 1940, the OIAA aimed “to assist in the preparation and coordination of policies to stabilize the Latin American economies, to secure and deepen U.S. influence in the region, and to combat axis inroads into the hemisphere, particularly in the commercial and cultural spheres” (Cramer and Prutsch 2006, 786). Mass culture was called upon to help attain these political and economic goals.

Comics have been well established as a social practice in Brazil since the 1930s, as Brazilian newspaper supplements regularly published North American syndicated comics during the decade. The following years saw the first activities of major publishers like Editora Brasil América Limitada [Brazil America Limited Publisher], EBAL, and the beginning of a comic book culture in Brazil. During the 1940s and 1950s, discussions about the multiple significances of comics and their limitations for the education of young readers caught the attention of many educators, politicians, journalists, and intellectuals. During the 1950s, comic books starring characters such as Superman, Batman, and Zorro led EBAL’s sales, reaching 150,000 copies; during the period, the same press published more than 30 different comic book titles (Júnior 2004, 284–291). Many important names in the Brazilian press, politics and culture, such as Samuel Wainer, Edmar Morel, Gilberto Freyre, Roberto Marinho, and Carlos Lacerda, were involved in the debates about comics. Despite the political interests of each of these men (Júnior 2004), their engagement with comics controversies demonstrates that comic art was not well-regarded in Brazil. Not only it was considered a kind of pernicious and lowbrow literature that should be controlled, as the US comics industry had been with the Comics Code (Hajdu 2009), it was also considered a foreign contribution to the acculturation of Brazilian readers.

In a January 2012 interview for BBC4, Matthew Cain questions the painter David Hockney on his use of assistants. Cain is trying to get at whether Hockney’s three assistants produce any of his art. But Hockney doesn’t bite. He says that he made “all the marks” and that an assistant would never pick up a paintbrush. The role of the assistant is purely that of the logistical helper; he or she does physical work, but not the work most associated with the production of capital “A” art: the relationship of the hand, the eye, and the heart. David Hockney is an art star, significant as both commercial brand and artist. His name confers value to his artwork. An anonymous painting that looked like a David Hockney piece, but wasn’t, would be dismissed as either a valueless imitation or a forgery. Even people who cannot afford a David Hockney work have some stake in its authenticity, otherwise interviewers like Matthew Cain would not ask questions about it. It is a relief that Hockney “made all the marks.”

The oeuvre of the graphic novel author Guy Delisle provides a unique window into the relationship between work and personal life in graphic novel creation and in cultural work more generally. In two books set in two non-Western countries, Chroniques de Jérusalem (2011) and Chroniques Birmanes (2007), Delisle considers his experiences as an expat father and graphic novelist, while at the same time depicting daily life and political realities in fraught locations. In another series, Le Guide du Mauvais Père (2013–15), he focuses more specifically on fatherhood.

Root Hog or Die: The John Porcellino Story, a 2014 documentary, draws to its conclusion with a scene in which Porcellino describes a conversation he once had with his father about cartooning. “My dad eventually realized I’m a cartoonist,” a middle-aged Porcellino explains, “but his thing was … why can’t you do Luann? Or…Garfield is funny, everyone loves it. You could do that! My dad would read King-Cat, and we would talk about it … he totally understood the whole [King-Cat] thing, but he would say ‘you could come up with your own Garfield,’ because he wanted me to not be suffering” (Stafford 2014). The scene is introduced by a silent title frame, white, smooth, sans serif text on black, using this phrase to preface Porcellino’s description of his father and his father’s perception of his cartooning, ensuring a narrative payoff and the sting of irony when Porcellino repeats the phrase “you could come up with your own Garfield!”

It cannot be argued that creators are neglected, certainly not in comics scholarship’s rush to establish comics as literature, visual art, or its own specific medium. As the field discusses form, function, and definitions, creators are often integral to the conversation. Though this conversation is expanding in many directions, absorbing theories and methodologies from many different fields to great advantage, scholars regularly neglect the collaborative nature of comics. It is taken for granted that a “main” creator loads a work with meaning waiting to be activated by readers.

Everyone knows that comics—or, at least, properties based on them—are big business today. But, like creative labor in general, the work behind this success is often misunderstood by the general public and even by many dedicated comics readers. The average fan of North American comics, for instance, probably knows that Siegel and Shuster, Jack Kirby and other writers and artists were denied—or signed away for significantly less than their value—ownership of characters that have since generated billions of dollars for media conglomerates. They may know that some creators have ended up in penury, since the freelance model of work does not provide health insurance or pensions. But, then again, they may also know that some creators (John Byrne or the Image founders, say) made millions in royalties, and that others successfully licensed their creations for television, film and merchandising. Similarly, many fans probably have ideas about what the day-to-day working life of a comics creator is like, but the accuracy of these ideas varies widely. Do they imagine spending hours with pencil and brush at a drawing table, or working on a Wacom tablet with Photoshop or Manga Studio? Do they think of attending editorial summits and postconvention parties, or of frantically photocopying, folding and stapling minicomics late into the night?

The 2014 output of comics scholarship in English is focused on only a few substantive areas. The predominant focus is on superheroes, and to a lesser degree there is interest in social issues (such as the representation of minorities) and biographical histories and works of individual artists.¹ In contrast, other areas, such as the economics of comics publishing, are largely neglected. Yet before the widespread introduction of the internet, publishers were the only way to get a comic mass distribution.² It was (and largely still is) the publishers who invested their money in the material production, distribution, and promotion of a comic, and even today they take on greater financial risk than all other players later in the chain, such as distributors or retailers. Book publishing remains, after all, “a complex, adaptive, semi-chaotic industry” (Greco 2013, 5).

The consolidation of the manga market signified by the emergence of gafotaku¹ readers and the current popularity of the national graphic novel are two parallel streams within the comics industry in Spain which are only now beginning to overlap. The worldwide shift from comics to books began in the late 1980s with the development of the graphic novel. In recent years, this trend has culminated in a surge of popularity in Spain. New works receive acclaim and critical review in newspapers and other publications, while alternative “avant-garde” manga titles join these graphic novels on the shelves of major bookstores.

This chapter explores the production of culture as represented by comics work. It explicitly recognizes the diverse inputs of the larger network which ultimately delivers comics work (i.e. graphic narratives in a variety of formats) into the hands of readers, the ultimate consumers of the work. This network of individuals and organizations fulfills a number of vital tasks that directly influence the finished work and its viability in the marketplace. Some of the contributions of that network are traditionally overlooked and are not fully recognized by consumers, or, indeed, even by scholars of comics work. One of these necessary but routinely disregarded roles is that of distribution. The role of distribution is often ignored or minimized because it is not customarily viewed as a creative activity, especially in the context of an industry which views itself as “artistic” or “creative.” Distribution is considered to be a mundane activity, and its profound impact on the success (or failure) of comics work is therefore easy to overlook. Comic book historians can better understand and interpret the full richness of the American comic book industry and its history by explicitly incorporating a more thorough investigation of distribution into their analyses. To explicitly make the role of distribution in the production of comic books as culture more visible, this chapter applies the notion of constraints on the production of culture developed by Richard A. Peterson (e.g. 1982, 1985) to an analysis of a number of pivotal events in the comic book industry. This analysis is augmented by also integrating concepts from strategic management, especially those of Michael Porter (1979, 1980).

Comic book publishing in Brazil is guided primarily by the general principles of supply and demand. However, internal specificity in the field of comics produces certain economic configurations. Thus, to understand how actors organize themselves to succeed in this field, it is necessary to explore production strategies and possibilities. One of the methods now used by comic book artists to produce material is crowdfunding.

The translator and comics scholar’s fascination with humor in the medium is due, partly, to the misconception of what comics are notionally “supposed” to be or do, that is, be funny. The misnomer of the medium can lead to a variety of misconceptions about it, such as believing that all comics are synonymous with “the funnies.” Furthermore, humor is extremely difficult to define, which makes creating an objective, practical framework for its translation very complicated (e.g. Vandaele 2002).

The 2006 autumn AnimeCon in Budapest was a milestone for the Hungarian anime and manga¹ market and fandom in several respects, one of which was the introduction of official Hungarian tankōbon.² The first volumes of Usagi Yojimbo (which is in fact a US comic, rather than manga), Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy, Princess Ai (both global manga) and Shin Angyō Onshi (Blade of the Phantom Master in English, a manga or manhwa depending on categorization) were all released at this event.³ The four publishers present (Vad Virágok Könyvműhely, a then-fledgling independent comics publisher; Delta Vision, an established Hungarian science fiction, fantasy novel, role-playing and board games publisher; Fumax, also a rookie independent comics publisher at the time; and Mangafan, the now leading domestic manga publisher debuting at the event), all of whom would go on to publish a string of titles aimed at this market, exemplify the most important areas of interest from which actors emerged who would play the leading roles in the exponential unfolding of the anime and manga fan market in Hungary. The explosive growth of the supply side⁴ of this market was predicated upon the existing networks and infrastructure of not only the core of early adopter domestic anime and manga fans, but also of related subcultures and fan cultures already established in the country, most notably comics fandom and SF/fantasy role-playing culture. This interdependence of related fan cultures and subcultures involved in localized manga production and the pertaining fan market is the focus of this chapter.