#comicsforward

So I was the last person on the internet to find out about this little op-ed by Jill Lepore. When Harvard professors are throwing shade on you from the rarified heights of the New Yorker, you have officially arrived in life, or at least in comics. So I was rather chuffed by this piece, though I do want to respond to some of the points raised, because they tie into some of the broader conversations we’ve been having lately in the comics community. I’d like to give a shout-out to Valkyrie Leia Calderon for drawing my attention to this piece–you can read her thoughtful and candid open letter to Dr. Lepore here.

If you are an avid comic book reader and/or follower of industry trends, none of what I’m about to say will be news to you. However, for those of you who are new to the medium, returning to the medium, or just interested in the continuing debate on the role of gender in pop culture, I hope what follows will be useful and help flesh out the conversation.

First off, a funny tidbit: Dr. Lepore and I have met, though she probably doesn’t remember, as I was a scrappy teenager with a fauxhawk at the time. Way back when I was an undergraduate, she gave a guest lecture on the French and Indian Wars in an American History colloquium I was taking at Boston University. She struck me as very intelligent and thoughtful, a passionate historian.

So I was a bit surprised that someone who obviously values rigorous scholarship would analyze the first issue of a crossover event without any apparent knowledge of what a crossover event is, or what the heavily tongue-in-cheek “feminist paradise,” Arcadia, represents in the context of the Secret Wars and the wider Marvel Universe. (Does she know about the zombies? Somebody please tell her about the zombies.) Thus decontextualized, what Dr. Lepore is left with is a cover depicting a bunch of characters about whom she admits to knowing nothing, and one fifth of a story, which is perhaps why her analysis reads as so perplexingly shallow, even snarky.

Hip-hop started out in the Bronx as a way for young black and brown kids to escape a life of gang violence, to have fun, to demonstrate their skills, to show their creativity, to build a community. Innovation followed in the wake of creation, as the originators figured out ways to make the parties even more jumping, the bass deeper, the songs more complex, and the rhymes even more evocative. As rap music spread across the globe, it absorbed everything it came into contact with, from traditional pop music to jazz to experimental German rock. Rather than overcoming or taking away from these genres, rap music added to them and was added to in the process, providing new angles on established concepts and refreshing old classics by making them ever-present instead of just existing “then”.

A few short decades later, hip-hop enjoys a position of global prominence, bordering on dominance. Young Silicon Valley start-up CEOs listen to Waka Flocka Flame’s “Hard In Da Paint” to get into the right state of mind for business negotiation. “Fresh Off The Boat,” a new and clever primetime sitcom, features a theme song by the debauched-and-amazing Detroit emcee Danny Brown, and was the highest-rated comedy premiere this season. Las Vegas casinos and hotels advertise their wares with b-sides from the work of Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def. Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, a longtime industry figure, co-founded the music-streaming service Beats Music, which later sold to Apple for three billion dollars. ESPN has taken to delivering subliminal messages via music cue, as when they played Notorious BIG’s “Unbelievable,” itself anchored by a sample twenty years its senior, over a replay of the Memphis Grizzlies battling the Golden State Warriors and winning. Hip-hop, as a culture and art form and genre, is inescapable, a constant fixture from New York to Los Angeles to Paris to Johannesburg to Tokyo to the Gaza Strip.

Rap became such a global phenomenon in part because it absorbed and incorporated so many disparate influences into its whole, without ever losing sight of its heart. No matter who you are, no matter where you’re from, there’s a song for you. There’s a lyric, a beat, an approach, an expression that will hit you in your heart. Hip-hop music is so relatable because it’s so diverse. If you don’t like what’s on the radio, there are thousands of artists spread across Youtube and Bandcamp and Soundcloud who are right up your alley. When faced with the future, the Other, rap looked at it and discovered that we are stronger together than we are when we stand alone.

The same is true of comics. The history of American comics is punctuated with creators bringing in new ideas and concepts and forever altering the landscape of comics. Marvel Comics as we know it doesn’t exist without the contributions of Jack Kirby, a man who did an incredible amount of work and defined the language of cape comics. Without Kirby, there’s no Marvel Cinematic Universe, a series of films with a combined gross in the billions. Spider-Man was not just a teen hero, but a sad and petty teen, at that, opening the gates for the legions of young heroes who followed in his wake.

We don’t get the Frank Miller of Dark Knight Returns and Daredevil: Man Without Fear and Sin City without Lone Wolf & Cub, a Japanese comic created by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima. Miller got hold of those comics and incorporated what he saw into his own work, merging it with his own personal worldview. What followed was an explosion of creativity and possibly the best winning streak any creator has enjoyed, as Miller and his collaborators—legends all, from Lynn Varley to Klaus Janson—crafted Ronin, Dark Knight Returns, Elektra Assassin, Batman: Year One, and more in quick succession. Something in Koike and Kojima’s work lit a fire under Miller, and his art was both never the same and exciting to an audience who hadn’t seen something quite like it before. The New was what people wanted.

This didn’t just happen to one artist once. It happens every day. Creators to this day speak on outside influences making their own comic creating better. Brian Michael Bendis looked to David Mamet. Nick Dragotta has spoken fondly of discovering the artist Tsutomu Nihei and realizing just how far he could push his idea of “comics.” Raina Telgemeier is one of the best-selling creators in comics, having dominated the New York Times bestseller list singlehandedly for years, and she was influenced by people like Lynn Johnston, creator of the comic strip For Better Or For Worse. You can find dozens of successful and aspiring artists who were influenced by Akira Toriyama, Moebius, Kehinde Wiley, Rumiko Takahashi, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Naoko Takeuchi, Guido Crepax, and more.

Comics is better for these influences. This is unquestionable. This is true. Kirby pushed comics forward, but if we all stopped with Kirby, comics would still be stuck in the 1970s. Every generation learns from the previous and incorporates new influences of their own into the shambling, uncoordinated monster we call “comics,” turning comics as a whole into a glorious exquisite corpse of two-way influence and innovation.

Comics needs new blood. New blood is what keeps the engines running and the people interested. Comics can provide things to our shared culture that they can’t get from music, novels, movies, and video games, but if we focus strictly on one type of story, or one type of voice, or even one specific genre, we’re piloting our plane straight into the ground.

Genius San Franciscans are defacing these Ismaphobic bus ads with images of Ms. Marvel

Activists in San Francisco have taken on Islamophobia in their communities, defacing racist bus ads with messages inspired by a Muslim superhero. Now, the SFMTA ads proclaiming “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Quran” look a little different.