THE ORIGINS OF IMAGINATIVE ART

And is Comics Art REAL Art? (Uhm. Yes. Yes it is.)

Hopefully there's some interesting stuff here for anybody considering this as a career, or for anybody who wants to be any kind of creator. It's a big old post edited, reworked and expanded from a blog started some years back, but it might even open some eyes to the reality of day to day creative drawing. Some of it may appear quite sweeping - we can only draw from our own experiences and the people we have met and known along the way. I hope you'll forgive me for that! And I'm not sure I completely agree with myself in hind-sight, but it’s an interesting deep dive that will, I’m sure, be ongoing…

THE ORIGINS OF IMAGINATIVE ART, AND IS COMICS ART REAL ART?

As an artist I don't know that I've ever entirely succeeded in what I set out to do (who does?) That said, I believe I have done what was right for me at any given time - given constraints both time-wise and bearing in mind editorial constraints. But does that mean it isn’t REAL art? Generally I dislike a lot of what I've done because it was never as good as I wanted it to be. I had no rigorous formula to fall back on, and drawing never gets any easier. Plus I have a tendency to set my own bar much too high, drawing a few insanely detailed pages that burn me out and take too long, meaning I then have to play catch-up with the dread of the deadline looming ominously like the Grim Reaper-lite!

People might think that in comics skill alone will get you there. But it's a lot like the music industry. Talent might be one thing, but somebody in a position to publish your work has to actually LIKE what you do. And taste is a VERY subjective thing. There are thousands (actually, millions) of people who like their entertainment in easy-to-swallow bite-size chunks. They don't want to stretch themselves when they get home from work or school or wherever they’ve been. They don't want to think too hard in the cinema, or watching the TV. Or to read stuff with words they have to look up in the dictionary. They want music to dance to, or as a background soundtrack to their lives, not to challenge or confuse them. It is a pop culture we live in, on pretty much all levels. This makes it harder for more alternatively creative people to find a sizable audience from which to make a living. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-pop, though on the whole it's not my thing. I became more appreciative seeing how much my kids loved it when they were young, and that was a joy! But other than that, not really.

I sometimes suspect there are two types of people:

Those that think a little deeper, look inward and outward and have genuine compassion and empathy for other people. Those that philosophize on the metaphysical. Those that push back the levels of what the human body or mind can achieve. Those that try to be better people on a daily basis, and honestly attempt to find moral equilibrium within themselves.

Then there are those for whom the primary concern is acquisition. Those whose sole aim is apparently to become as wealthy and infuential as they can in their lifetime, and who admire that in others. For whom what car they drive is a priority, as is the town, city and neighborhood they live in. What watch they wear. Whose dresses and suits are in this season. The morality of this is irrelevant. Other people's lives are irrelevant.

Sometimes I wish I slotted into this second category! I have friends I dearly love that exist in this tougher, dog-eat-dog world. Classically born with the silver spoon at their lips (though not always), they are blissfully ignorant of the creative worlds of art, science, literature - except for what they have been INFORMED is good (usually by some style magazine or program. Consumer cool). Their shelves have Jane Austin and Thomas Hardy lining them, often unread. They might even have a book on Piccasso, or a preraphaelite print framed in the living room. They might, if they are very wealthy, have an original painting by some hot young thing they've been told would be a great investment, and which goes well with the couch.

These are things to control, or to consume, or to sell. They look at my pictures with a kind of smug bewilderment! Briefly, distractedly, interested. They are unencombered by any creative drive, and the doubts and frustrations that are inevitablely associated with creativity. Wouldn't that be nice?

I'm not judging them. I'm not saying one way is right, the other, wrong. I sometimes suspect they are closer to our natural state than creative people. They exist on a more savage, animalistic level in many ways. Animals seek the very best of what they can get out of their existence. The best mates, the best feeding grounds. The most beautiful plumage wins the most attractive partners. The strongest win pretty much the best of everything. What the so-called libertarians might promote as purely Darwinian.

Obviously the above is very general, and I know people from the monied world who look at me with envy. Who dream of the ability to create stuff. ANY stuff. But the moneymen DO rule the world, and they DO say what goes and what doesn't. They pull the shots. They rule the media. They own the companies that distribute and produce the music, the movies and, naturally, the comics. How many people do you know that wanted to do art or drama at school, but whose parents wouldn't let them? It's not seen as REAL work. It's not percieved as viable, socially acceptable. In my youth art was often seen as a subject slackers took. Something wierdo libtards and hippies did. That's not a proper subject, they’d opine. Get a real job!

Ruskin said:

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts; the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art...of the three the only trustworthy one is the last."

I'm not sure this can be said to be the case any longer as art becomes commodity. The masses only get their share of it when, and if, it becomes stylish.

A non-artist friend of mine once wrote:

"Why bother to go and NOT try to get that big deal and draw batman issues every day for the rest of your life?

And then it hit me - that this is something you like to do, not to get paid a crapload.

I had a time figuring this out, just because I assumed that all artists love their jobs and would kill for that chance on whatever popular title."

He's right. Most artists and writers DON'T just do it to get paid a "crapload". We can't. We have to be driven. There has to be a point. I long ago realized that I'm not driven by money at all - though we certainly all need it, and if I did ever get rich I wouldn't be unhappy about it! No. I'm driven by either the deadline, as I hate letting people down and causing problems. (This is the WORST form of motivation!) Or by inspiration, wherein the shear pleasure of drawing takes over and I just HAVE to do it.

Realistically, I'd say the latter accounts for maybe 30% of it, as mostly it's just hard graft. No matter how interesting comic art might seem on the outside, try drawing the same faces over and over again, day after day after day - it really is Groundhog Day! It only gets truly fun for me when I get to splash out creatively, and try new techniques, or new ways of lighting, etc. But mostly it's just graft and craft.

I do know some artists who can motivate themselves with the paycheck. They have formulated a technique that they don't have to deviate from. They can replicate this technique on any title and with any subject matter. This is where I draw the distinction between draughtsmen - the above - and artist, ie. myself. And again, in many ways I'd rather be the former.

Draughtsmen, like architects, have tremendous skill and are able to interpret their commissions with clarity and technique. It's a business proposition between the publisher and the creator. They are highly disciplined and work to their tried and tested formula.

Artists are a much trickier creature. They tend to be less consistent, and often more mercurial. We're trying to change things. Move the industry on. It's not enough to just have a series, you want it to be a GREAT series. One that provokes, and that has meat. One drawn in blood and sweat, not just ink. One that might be a little controversial - but, paradoxically, you also want it to be a success! The starving artist in his garret is a romantic notion, but we all have to eat!

On the "starving artist" front, it's often not in our hands - even if we DO have a mainstream style. Over the last decade a great many of my contemporaries have had to drop out of the industry entirely because there simply hasn't been enough work. And many of them were awesome. Around the year 2000 I had two years without any work, and in that time I looked for illustration work, children's book work, computer design, etc. What else could I do? I'm not qualified to be anything other than an artist. But there is massive competition in all these fields. And often you have to have an agent. I was unable to find an agent to represent me because I'd spent the previous 17 years as a comicstrip illustrator. British graphic art agencies HATED comic art at that time! They didn't get or appreciate it. One agent actually told me I should work on my expressions! They don't understand that comic artists have to be able to draw anything. That we work at great speed. That we have to understand design, form, lighting. That we explore and are skilled at many techniques. That we can actually DRAW - an ability rapidly fading from the world. All they saw was the panels. The comics. This mongrel under-dog subculture artform.

Those two years were soul destroying. Agents and publishers rejected me because of my comics roots.

So if it is going to be tough, then it's important that you try to be the very best artist that you can be. And I just couldn't be anything other than what I am because that is WHO I am. I am a part of my art, like it or not.

In truth, comics is not the ideal medium to try to be an ARTIST in. It is, after all, commercial by its very nature. Disposable. (And again - this is fairly sweeping stuff.) We are of course a little of both, a blend of draughtsman and artist, and we're very confined by those little boxes and the page to page narrative. But I still believe MOST of my comics heroes have been genuine artists of the capitol "A" variety, and it's this I aspire too - whilst still realizing that it's a fun medium, not to be taken TOO seriously ALL the time.

Confusing, huh? My head hurts...

Regarding all of the above: If I've come across as pretentious or overblown in anyway, I apologize. These are views from one perspective and one personal experience and that doesn't make them right! But they are ideas I've explored and I felt it might be of interest to you to know some of the thought process that goes into producing comic art - my creative desires, and what I set out to achieve. It's an incredibly hard discipline, you have to be able to draw ANYTHING, and make it sequential and appealing. And you're on your own with your own demons and doubts. Self-belief is hard won. But in the end, it's just comics. Disposable entertainment.

Pop.

Or IS it...?

Because what, in my opinion, makes my work 'art' as opposed to graphic illustration? Am I deluding myself?

Well, it IS graphic illustration, but so was the Sistine chapel ceiling - not that I'd compare myself realistically with Michelangelo! But I would argue that it's the aspiration, the want and will to push boundaries. Whist I've aguably done nothing as groundbreaking in the genre as say Sienkewicz and Miller's 'Electra Assassin', I feel I have pushed at the boundaries of books not usually considered avante garde, such as The Green Lantern, The Man-Thing, Batman: Reptilian, and moreso in my own series, StarHenge. This attempt to alter the way these books can be done iIS aspiring to greater things. It's an attempt to raise the bar and move the medium forward, see where it might go. Again, I'm not sure that the end result IS, in fact, Art - but I WANT it to be. I never saw my comic work as impermanent when I did it. I've tried always to do the best, the most creative drawing I can, within any given constraints.

But still - does this make it art?

Well, usually it's up to whoever is viewing it. But that also means that creators who don't see comic art as real art can be perceived as the genuine article too. (The whole art debate is a messy one, but very interesting!) I also think there's a big problem in the self-styled serious Arts world with anything that is considered related to science fiction or fantasy.

But why is this?

Looking at literature, the most ancient epic poem known to us is a heroic fantasy piece called Gilgamesh. There's a beast-man, a mighty hero, tragedy, companionship, all we have come to expect from that genre.

Follow this through and we get works such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The Trojan war. Fabulous, fantastical characters such as Achilles with his famous weakness - his heal. Destined to be pierced by a poisoned arrow. Hector, whose dead body was dragged four times around the city of Troy in a terrible act of revenge verging on hubris. And Odysseus and his twelve year journey home. The great quest. The fellowship. The unsurmountable obstacles. And of course, the monsters!

The Romans give us their version in Virgil's Aeneid. Here it's Aeneas - the fictional ancestor of later Roman Emperors and a propaganda device of great complexity - that visits the underworld. He, again, makes a great journey. Out-witting and defeating any and all obstacles - even resisting the love of the queen of Carthage, Dido. Eventually founding Rome. (His son, Brutus, an ancestor of Arthur, would later found Britain - as detailed in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘histories’! (See below.))

Europe has a great host of heroic fantasy characters. Germany gives us Siegfried and the dragon, it's epic ring cycle. Ireland gives us Cú Chulainn, it's greatest hero who had to be rolled in the snow to cool him down after battle. And the Tain - the famous cattle raid. Somewhere out of europe, possibly france, arose the legend of the roman Artorus, laterly King Arthur, who became England's most famous mythic monarch. Geoffrey of Monmouth is the first writer to mention Merlin, in his history of the King’s of Britain, and speaks of Merlin’s three-fold death. (A common thing in mythology. Even Christ suffered three fold. The nails, the spear, the drowning in lungs filled with liquid. Similarly, so did Odin on his tree.) Here Merlin is simultaneously stoned, impaled on a spike, and drowned. A very different character from the Merlin we picture today! (Much of this is featured in StarHenge BTW, if you haven’t read it!)

Then there's England's most ancient written poem concerning a certain Viking called Beowulf. The beast, Grendel, and his (originally) monstrous mother out in the swamps.

The list is endless, but the point is clear: In literature, at least, the heroic fantasy saga is one of the highest and most ancient of art forms. It is the form from which sprang ALL literature, all stories. It confirms man's struggle against nature, against his enemies. It empowered those that listened. It emboldened them before battle. It gave them strength in times of famine or hardship. It ennobled them, giving them heroic ancestors of astonishing strength and vitality. Ancestors who's parents were gods, and which linked them, in turn, with their creators. It gave them hope beyond life.

And STILL we continued to dream. The early scientists speculated on the nature of the universe from the time they first noticed the stars. Alchemists made their blind experiments and eventually we were starting to predict our own future with uncanny accuracy. Leonardo Da Vinci with his helicopters and gliders. In literature, H.G. Wells predicting time travel. Asimov and AI. Arthur C. Clarke and space walks, moon landings, elevators to the stars. Looking into the future. Imagining the not-yet-possible. The seemingly impossible. Visualizing worlds we have never seen. Speculating on how thing might be on planets entirely different from our own a billion lightyears away.

SO where did it change?

At what point did the inteligentia decide this was all hocum? Merely interesting diversion? Swift's Guliver's Travels was a biting satire, sure, but it still used that ancient quest format and was peopled with incredible creatures, giants, so on and so forth. Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland books are, of course, drug fuelled quivering meditations on denial and frustrated longing - but it's primarily a fantasy. The rest is subtext and retrospective dissection based on what we know of the man today. (Such a text would be unlikely to be published now. Most agents wouldn't have a clue what to make of it. It would be considered too obscure!) H.G.Wells was a respected literary figure, not purely regarded as a fantasist, yet shortly after him things were already starting to change. Of those who's work survived intact and respected as genuine literature into the 20th century, we have George Orwell's 1984 - but again they focus mainly on the political satire as opposed to the genre - Future fiction. Maybe a handful of others. Brave New World. A Clockwork Orange. Stranger in a Strange Land. But what else? Even Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings - despite it's clearly drawing on ancient and noble source material, despite the sheer magnitude of it's creativity, despite his intellectual pedigree - even this is belittled, shrugged off and discarded by so-called serious literary and art critics.

Given the above. Given that we used to comfort ourselves with great flights of fancy. Given that that we put our fears in the hands of the epic saga writers, and our hopes in the hands of visionaries - why have we now turned our back on both? What is it the educated elite hate or fear? Why are they so disparaging, given the opulent treasures of the past? Is it that they believe we are above such trivialities as escapism? That removing ourselves from the horrors of this world is somehow a BAD thing? A kind of running away? That for literature and art to be worth it, it has to reflect our current condition? Our current state? It must be all about context and concept, never escapism - the only true freedom we can ever experience.

What is so low-brow and anti-intellectual about escapism?

My point is - I can't help feeling that those of us who can imagine and create visually or with the written word worlds we have never seen, could never see, are using a unique facility. The facility that drove us across continents, and eventually to the moon. I would argue that it is our ability to IMAGINE what might be that defines us as human beings.

And that's a part of what we do in our pointless, trivial, artless little comics. We imagine.

So hell yes! Fantasy art, sci-fi art and comics are ART!!!!

Spread from ‘THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD: WONDER WOMAN AND BATMAN’