Less a barrier to entry, more a threshold

In praise of comics, part two

Part of an open-ended and ongoing series, a full-throated paean to the best medium in existence. Find the first installment here.

We all love stories told visually. While I remain a voracious reader of prose – and obstinately advocate for its singular power vis-à-vis the clear and explicit communication of complex ideas and facts – visual mediums possess a distinct power of their own.

Even when placed alongside film and television, however, comics retains a uniquely potent strength: Absolutely anyone can do this stuff.

The strength of visual mediums is largely tied up in additional opportunities for artistic expression. While the novelist must resign themselves to expressing all of their ideas and themes – no matter how murky or ambiguous – through language alone, visual mediums also impress form and color into service.

In doing so, visual mediums gain access to an additional arsenal that can be used to assail the senses of their audience. Not only do visual depictions offer new opportunities for ambiguity and interpretation, the lifeblood of any truly artful narrative, but they foster a visceral immediacy that goes unmatched by even the most lively prose.

However, despite the readily apparent strengths of mediums like film and television – both of which are even more visceral and immediate than comics – they also possess a distinct Achilles heel: Film and television require an astounding amount of people, time and money.

While there are, to be sure, outliers (e.g., DIY shoestring productions and one-man-bands), generally speaking, even the cheapest films and television shows boast gasp-inducing budgets and a small army of contributors. As a result, most film and television productions are fundamentally conservative in approach, as the folks holding the pursestrings demand that risk be minimized.

Contrast this, then, with comics, which are monumentally cheaper to produce. Additionally, making a comic requires exceptionally few people; even a work-for-hire book typically only has a maximum of six people involved in its production: Writer, penciler, inker, colorist, letterer, and editor.

If you’re so inclined though, all a person really needs to make a comic is a pencil and a piece of paper. In addition to the medium’s inherent egalitarianism, this is exciting in that there’s relatively little risk involved in making comics, which means that the converse of the above is true: Comics can still benefit from a freedom of experimentation unmatched by any other visual medium.

Comics’ exceptionally low barrier to entry even extends to actual publishing houses and distribution. Relative to actual readers, there are an astounding number of opportunities for comics creators to get their work into the market, due to a number of peculiarities about the industry, the broader entertainment landscape and, in particular, the direct market.

This freedom and wealth of opportunities has a huge impact on the types of stories that can potentially be told in comics. Naturally, this is clearly seen in art comics, zines, webcomics, etc. but the trend even extends to the most corporate of comics releases. There’s a reason why you can get away with things in Marvel and DC comics that would never fly in a big-budget superhero flick.

But the freedom inherent to comics can and should extend further than just types of stories or characters; comics is an utterly unique medium, with a host of eccentricities and quirks that can be harnessed to ends well known, long forgotten and as yet undiscovered.

Even if you’re skeptical of the formal comics aspects I outlined in In praise of comics, part one, it’s inarguable that comics provides practical freedoms that simply do not exist in other mediums. It’s incumbent upon all of us, as creators, as aesthetes, as fans, to avail ourselves of this overwhelming freedom offered by the greatest medium in existence.

More next week,
Aubrey