SCOTT MCCLOUD first emerged on the independent-comics scene in the '80s with Zot!, one of the most intelligent and character-driven (and, for the time, least violent) superhero series around.
But he found his real calling in discussing comics, and making comics that discussed comics.
He's now followed his '93 bestseller Understanding Comics with a bigger, even more ambitious work,
Reinventing Comics.
McCloud's first volume was an introductory explanation of the art form, and an argument about why it should be considered an art form instead of the kiddie pap many Americans have treated it as.
His new one also has two tasks, divided into two sections.
In the first half, he bemoans the sorry state of the comics scene in North America as both an art form and a business. Daily strips are following the newspapers they appear in on a slow road toward oblivion or at least irrelevance in many people's lives. Comic book stores, and the publishers and creators supplying them, took a financial shellacking in the mid-'90s when the speculator market collapsed. The so-called "mainstream" comic book publishers still concentrate too tightly on selling one genre (superheroes) to one niche audience of white male fanboys, neglecting the diversity of subjects, styles, and creators that could attract a wider clientele.
(Although, he acknowledges, some strides have been made in creator's rights; and indie publishing has slightly increased the breadth of both content and diversity of contributors.)
In the second half, McCloud looks to possible solutions to comics' artistic and business dilemmas. Guess what? They all have to do with the medium on which you're reading this.
NASDAQ speculators and venture-capital funds may have written off the Net as a content medium, but McCloud insists its only problems are simply bugs to be worked out; mainly involving most users' slow modem speeds and still-developing display technologies.
McCloud remains a mostly-unwavering advocate of the Internet (or what it can evolve into) as a force for decentralization, disintermediation, and creative breakthroughs.
The thing is: If and when all these revolutions come into being, will the result be anything approaching comics (or "sequential art") as we know it?
If you define "comics" as printed documents comprising hand-drawn still images in linear sequence (sometimes with written narration and/or dialogue), maybe not.
If you define comics according to McCloud's definition, maybe.
By the time Web comics really take off, they could become something closer to today's Flash animations or the narrative elements of CD-ROM games than to silent still images in frames.
A new art form, perhaps; or at least a new blend of existing forms (comics, animation, film/video).
But it still wouldn't mean the preservation of the existing comics form; many of the strengths of which lie in the disciplines of its limitations (no motion, no sound).
TOMORROW: A guest columnist remembers the worst job he ever had.
REMEMBER: It's time to compile the highly awaited MISCmedia In/Out List for 2001. Make your nominations to clark@speakeasy.org or on our handy MISCtalk discussion boards.
NEWSPAPER STRIKE UPDATE: Just as the excitement of a Presidential non-election finally wound down, the Seattle scab newspapers returned to their previous levels of bulk and dullness. Indeed, with their no-name staffs they're even duller than before. Meanwhile, the Seattle Union Record has quickly blossomed into quite the spunky li'l alterna-rag. I still want it to go permanent and daily.
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