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Introduction

Comics are not considered as serious. When one hears about comics, one thinks about superheroes and fantasy fiction. But in the past few decades, comics have found a higher calling: journalism. Once comics turned mainstream in the 1980s with several graphic novels winning distinguished awards, comics became the voice for the voiceless. Comic journalism began and grew, a slow process that avalanched to include a huge body of work on the Internet.

History of Comics and History of Graphic Novels

Definition of the term Graphic Novel

According to Webster’s’ Dictionary Graphic Novel is a “fictional story that is presented in comic strip format and published as a book”. Simply put, Graphic Novels consist of comic strips.

According to Webster’s definition, the content presented in a Graphic novel is “fictional”. This need not be the case and furthermore, Webster has taken the privilege of equating Graphic Novels with simple stories written for children. But as you will see in the next paragraphs this is not the case.

Graphic novels use comics as a medium for exchanging ideas. The illustrations used are called cartoons which are simple in style and employ exaggeration for effect. Tom & Jerry is a show that comes to one’s mind when one thinks about cartoons. Kid stuff.

From ancient times to the Middle Ages

The history of cartoons started from cave paintings and tapestries that decorated castles in the Middle Ages. These drawings exulted the triumph of man against beasts and other men. These cartoons were recording history.

As you can see, there was nothing humorous in the origins of the humble “cartoon”. In the period of the Renaissance, influential painters like Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo made rough, preliminary sketches of their masterpieces on strong, heavy paper. This paper was called Cartone in Italian.

The advent of the Printing Press

Cartoons entered journalism in the 19th century. Cartoons began to employ satire and irony as mature forms of humour as they evolved to embrace their new turf: politics. The British satirical magazine Punch used the word “cartoon” to describe their drawings which were intended as a satire of Victorian society.

The Punch magazine mostly employed single-panel cartoons which were also called gag cartoons. A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons that employ speech bubbles and typography. Comic strips soon grew to be a staple feature of many newspapers.

One such comic strip called The Yellow Kid would soon come to influence American Journalism for eternity. The Yellow Kid started life in a small magazine, drawn by Richard F. Outcault. The titular character was a head-shaved boy wearing oversized yellow clothes who commented on the grime and squalor of the urban slums among which he roamed.

The Yellow Kid was soon at the center of a struggle between the two principal gentlemen in the field of Journalism at that time: Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Joseph Pulitzer employed Outcault to continue to create his comic strip for New York World. William Randolph Hearst (from whom Orson Welles's masterpiece Citizen Kane drew much inspiration) snatched Outcault at a higher salary to draw for his New York Journal American. The Yellow Kid grew vulgar and increasingly violent in the hands of Hearst, who was prone to sensationalizing news for profit. Thus, the term “yellow journalism” surfaced, in “honor” of The Yellow Kid.

The Yellow Kid was a comic strip. Sequential drawing had its roots in tapestries in castles where huge panels adorned the walls, detailing blow-by-blow accounts of wars won by the noblemen. In the 18th century there lived an English artist called William Hogarth who was a pioneer in the field of sequential drawings. Hogarth employed a realistic style to illustrate his satire. His works had such a distinctive flair that his illustrations were titled “Hogarthian”. One of Hogarth’s famous works is the story of a common prostitute called Moll Hackabout. Told in a sequence of richly detailed sketches, this story of a commoner could be said to be equated closely with the works of Victorian novelist Charles Dickens.

Franco-Belgian Comic Movement

In France, comics began to appear in the newspaper from the 19th century. The Adventures of Tintin, created by artist Herge, started life as propaganda during World War 2. The adventurous reporter hero Tintin was sent to the Soviet Union in an effort to provide anti-socialist reading material for gullible children. Although later criticized for elements of racism and fascism according to Goddin (2008, vol 1), The Adventures of Tintin was a pioneer in the Franco-Belgian comic movement which gave birth to other seminal works like Asterix.

The Adventures of Tintin was serialized in newspapers. Later the strips were collected and presented in book format. Thus presented as novels, comic strips matured and evolved to such an extent that the French began referring to the comic strip as the “Ninth Art” (The first art was architecture, the second art was sculpture, the third art was painting, and so on according to http://www.eupedia.com).

Japanese Manga

The Japanese had a long tradition with comics, dating back to the 12th century. Picture books in the 17th century were made using woodblock prints and consisted of sequential storytelling. Japanese comics are referred to as manga. Comic strips made their way into newspapers and by the second half of the 20th century, Japan had a thriving manga industry that belted out comic books hundreds of pages long, dealing in a variety of topics from magic to adult fantasies.

Post World War 2 and the Rise of Superheroes

By the end of World War 2, superhero comics took off. The two giants of the comic publishing industry DC and Marvel have been locking horns ever since. They started releasing comic periodicals featuring their respected characters. These “novellas” continued a story over several issues and led to the birth of shared universes where superheroes from multiple storylines resided within a single universe where they interacted with each other.

By the 1960s comics were gaining mainstream publicity. Comics were evolving to such an extent that author John Updike said in 1969, “I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic novel masterpiece.”

The Underground Comix Movement

By this time mainstream comics came to be equated with superheroes. It was difficult for different stories and genres to breathe. Marvel and DC ruled the industry, telling stories of “spandex-clad heroes saving the world from improbable destruction by impossibly attired villains” (Fletcher-Spear, Jason-Benjamin, Copeland, 2005).

On top of that, strict censorship was imposed in the comic book industry over depictions of sexuality, drug use, and violence. This led to the formation of an underground movement called Comix. The Comix movement flourished at the height of the hippie movement. It provided a breather for small-time publishers of diverse content to find a niche audience and nurtured future bright talents.

In the 1970s American comic book artist Will Eisner is credited to have popularized the term “graphic novel” with his publication called A Contract with God, a set of stories on the lives of ordinary people. Many comic books began to be published around this time which called themselves “graphic novels”.

Graphic Novels grew mature and became mainstream

By the 1980s comic legends like Frank Miller and Alan Moore were unleashing their geniuses. Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns featured a much-layered Batman dealing with his past in his old age. Alan Moore’s Watchmen deconstructed the concept of superheroes through a group of vigilantes who rose in the Cold War era. Watchmen was the only graphic novel listed in Time’s “List of the 100 Best Novels.

In 1986, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, an anthropomorphic tale set in a Nazi concentration camp, won the Pulitzer Prize. From having been at the center of a struggle between two newspaper magnates - Hearst and Pulitzer - seeking to establish themselves in the American consciousness, to having won the Prize constituted in the name of the newspaper magnate; the story of comics has come full circle.

History of Comic Journalism

As Comics gained greater respectability more people entered the field, with the intention of experimentation and pushing the medium to see what it can achieve. According to Dan Archer of archcomix, a website that publishes comics: “Art Spiegelman's Maus ………opened the door to long-form graphic explorations”.

The Underground Comix movement of the 1970s helped demolish some of the barriers associated with the industry and resulted in the emergence of “direct market” comic shops which led to the formation of small presses that catered to niche audiences. Newcomers in the field were fascinated by the novelty of the medium and so too were the readers. Creators were able to experiment a lot with artistic styles and narrative strategies.

Comics began to function as a source of alternative narrative in the age of the Cold War and the War against Terrorism. Already in the 1960s comics had been used for journalistic purposes with Joe Kubert’s comic strip on Vietnam War reporting called The Tales of the Green Beret. According to Noam Chomsky in his 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Politics of Mass Media the priorities of the mainstream media were towards appeasing the power class and satisfying the capitalistic greed of privately owned journalistic enterprises. Nobody was interested in providing quality news to the public if their abovementioned priorities were disrupted.

The situation was ripe for disruption and resistance. And this is where comics stepped in. Just as during the Underground Movement when alternative lifestyles associated with psychedelic substances emerged as an organic response to capitalism and convention dictated by powerful classes, comics emerged as a medium for the silent voices to be heard. Voices from the LGBT community and voices from countries of extreme censorship embraced this medium to tell their stories.

According to Priego (November 2009, http://niemanstoryboard.org), the 1990s were the age of the autobiographical comic story. These comics were “told in a careless graphic style using a defeatist point of view, staying away from superhero power fantasies” (Priego, November 2009). The world was shrinking due to globalization. Conventional traditions were shaken in many parts of the world due to capitalistic forces, leading to desperate, violent acts for survival and relevance.

D.B Dowd defined these 1990s comics as “an illustrated literature of loserdom”. The light-heartedness and optimism of the comics of the previous era were replaced by gritty realism. According to Priego (November 2009, http://niemanstoryboard.org), “bigger topics than middle-class suburbs were taken into consideration.” Slowly comics were growing to encompass more than just memoirs.

In 1993 Maltese-American cartoonist Joe Sacco began publishing the issues of his comic book Palestine, based on his experiences of living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from December 1991 to January 1992. Palestine was a game changer and is considered one of the first major works in comic journalism. Sacco was lauded for being able to humanize the troubles brewing in the Middle East.

The advent of the Internet meant a cheaper platform for comic journalists to publish content accelerate accessibility and initiate dialogue and debate. Many websites came about, publishing graphic journalism. Websites like Graphic Culture, The Nib, and Cartoon Movement have been publishing content for a global audience from a wide array of journalists. The Cartoon Movement publishes 60 to 100 cartoons a day from 80 countries and has covered major news events like the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2011 Occupy movement.

What is Comic Journalism?

Definitions and Understanding

Wikipedia defines comic journalism as a form of journalism that uses comics to tell stories. For example, the speech bubbles in the comic strip may be used to include direct quotes from sources.

To understand comic journalism in greater detail let’s try to understand what literary journalism is. According to Priego (November 2009, http://niemanstoryboard.org) “Its [literary journalism] purpose is not only the transmission of information but the telling of a story with an awareness that the ‘how’ is as important as the ‘what’." Literary Journalism deals with narratives behind facts. It looks at the emotions and the actions that led to the formation of a solid fact. Literary Journalism is interested in the process by which the story came into being and restores color and personality to an otherwise desensitized story.

Desensitized stories are usually considered the staple form by the journalism community. After all, it is mass media communication. This idea of mass-producing stories on a large scale to cater to people from all around the world, makes it necessary for unaccountable and unnecessary details to be omitted out in favor of plain reporting.

However according to comic journalism, this loss of flavor can be a real loss to the story’s impact. Comic journalism is a dynamic movement, flexible and fluctuating. But, at the end of the day, it serves the purpose of journalism. Polgreen(March 2011, http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com), said, “They work in ink, watercolors, and Wacom, telling stories that might not make the front page, but offer a level of nuance and meditative depth often reserved for the best investigative reporting.”

Priego (November 2009, http://niemanstoryboard.org) said that comic journalism “combines the structural conventions of the traditional comic book with those of literary journalism."

The strength of comic journalism was its novelty factor. It offered a new way to look at things, “a powerful opportunity for news organizations to reach out to new readers and experiment with new ways of storytelling without compromising on journalistic integrity” (Polgreen, March 2011, http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com). Comic journalism was able to overcome the problem of desensitization. There is a huge amount of content on the Internet that people no longer feel moved by stories. But when people look at a comic strip, they pause to take notice because obviously a lot of time has been spent in understanding the topic and creating the content (Brehe, February 2016, http://www.gradstudies.journalism.missouri.edu).

A Mass Communication Master student and comic journalist Blake Nelson said, “When I look at a drawing of a refugee camp, particularly a well-drawn one, realizing that someone had to sit down and hand-draw every line of that image makes me want to spend [more time looking at] the image.”

The novelty factor could also pose a problem. People may pause only to ponder over the aesthetic sensibilities of the piece. But that is still considered a win because that is the double-edged sword of mass media. Art is a product of subjectivity and interpreted differently, but comic journalism still can call itself journalism because it is all about the presentation of facts. More on subjectivity later on.

People have this problem regarding the name comic journalism. It does not evoke a serious nature and thereby an impression is formed that the kind of journalism done is not ‘serious’ journalism but more like a hobby for amateurs. But this is not so. Comic Journalism has been used to report on sensitive issues like abuse. Audrie & Daisy is a documentary on sexual assault and its aftermath. The filmmakers used animated images of two of the offenders. According to co-director Boni Cohen, this was done to hide the identity of the attackers, and to “keep them as human as possible”. Animation allowed the viewers to see that the crime had been committed by real people, not a blurred-out individual or a black screen (H.G., October 2016, www.economist.com).

According to Dan Archer (http://www.archcomix.com), comic journalism can be divided into three categories based on authorship.

Those who report, write, and do the artwork themselves. E.g. Joe Sacco

Collaborations between journalists and comic artists. E.g. Brought to Light: Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, and Covert Action by writers Alan Moore, and Joyce Brabner, and artists Bill Sienkiewicz, Tom Yeates, and Paul Mavrides.

Non-fiction comics treat historical, literary, and scientific topics. For example Addicted to War: Why the US Can’t Kick Militarism which tells the history of the foreign wars waged by the American government.

According to Polgreen (March 2011, http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com) there are two important forms of Comic Journalism – the Travelogue form and the Portrait form. This is not to say there aren’t any other topics discussed in the realm of comics, but considering that all the pioneering works that catapulted comic journalism into respectability, were done in these two forms, let’s take a look.

Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang is an example of a Travelogue form. In this form of comic journalism, the author traveled to a place that was culturally different from his own. He duly records his interactions with his sources there to paint a picture. Sometimes he is present as a character in the story to provide a sense of direction for the reader. E.g. in his graphic novel Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, Delisle integrates himself as a character in the story (Cooke, May 2012, www.theguardian.com).

As an outsider, his experiences enabled the reader to travel alongside him. The author expresses the emotions that he felt upon witnessing certain events. He may write about the similarities with the new culture that he can relate to, thereby bridging the gap and humanizing the story. The key is viewer identification. The experience of travel creates a distance between the author and the reader. The author is entering a place the reader is not able to access. The voice of the narrator is strong and the reader trusts that voice because it resonates with him.

In the Portrait form of Journalism, the creator steps back and lets the facts and individuals speak for themselves. For example, photojournalist Marc Ellison’s project, funded by the European Journalism Centre, details the lives of four women in Uganda, as they re-join society after spending years at the mercy of a militant group, the Lord's Resistance Army (Reid, August 2015, www.journalism.co.uk).

Joe Sacco’s works are also an example of this form. Speech bubbles are used for the quotes of the source. There is a focus on facial expressions. “Palestine’s visual style descends directly from R. Crumb-style 1960s and ’70s ‘comix’. Black and white drawings make deliberate use of cartooning techniques, such as the amplification of body parts (noses, ears), adding up to punk-inspired visual noise.” (Priego, November 2009, www.niemanstoryboard.org). According to Polgreen (March 2011, www.hoodedutilitarian.com) portrait form of journalism is the “over the shoulder view of the cartoonist and the reader is able to engage with the subject in such an interesting manner.”

Another example is Didier Lefevre’s The Photographer, published first in 2003. It documents Lefevre’s journey into war-torn Afghanistan during the Cold War. The stories in this book paint pictures; we get to know the people Lefevre interacted with. The book is compelling because the details can become relatable in our ordinary lives. Because of capitalism and globalization the world is a smaller place and that makes humans all around the world relatable. Kristin Butler sums it up: “The Photographer tells one tale of what is, of course, an ongoing narrative in a part of the world we usually hear about in abstract headlines” (Butler, October 2009, www.brainpickings.org).

Concerns in Comic Journalism

As a relatively new field, comic journalism is on a collision course with the old guard, regarding some of its methods and journalistic ethics.

Let’s look at some of the concerns in comic journalism.

On Subjectivity

Detractors of comic journalism say that comic journalism is subjective because it is drawn. The mindset of the reporter must not color the piece that he is working on. Biased reporting is unethical.

According to Joe Sacco, no journalist is completely objective. He said “An American journalist arriving on the tarmac in Afghanistan does not immediately drop her American views to become a blank slate on which her new, sharp-eyed observations can now be impressed. Does she suddenly stop thinking of the American soldiers she is following as basically decent, well-meaning countrymen who share many of her values to assess them as instruments of a nation-state operating in its interest as—objectively speaking—they are?” (Sacco, April, 2011).

Subjectivity within the limit of comic journalism is a constant need that is fulfilled, it is an ambition. Joe Sacco finds it liberating that he is part of the story that he is writing and not as an external element. Sacco believes that much can be learned from these people from their interactions and the reader can also benefit from these interactions.

Sacco does concede that drawings are subjective. “There is nothing literal about a drawing. A cartoonist assembles elements deliberately and places them with intent on a page. There is none of the photographer's luck at snapping a picture at precisely the right moment. A cartoonist "snaps" his drawing at any moment he or she chooses. It is this choosing that makes cartooning an inherently subjective medium.” (Sacco, April, 2011).

Comic journalism is a flexible medium that has no stylebook/rulebook. “The cartoonist draws with the essential truth in mind, not the literal truth, and that allows for a wide variety of interpretations to accommodate a wide variety of drawing styles.” (Sacco, April 2011).

Sacco describes the squalor and the bad conditions of the people living in the region torn with strife and unrest. The descriptions of the story behind the creation of the facts make the characters of Joe Sacco more enduring. One could say that the strength of comic journalism is in its ability to take a stand and repurpose artistic license. Comic journalism is necessary in our world to provide a counterpoint to plain reporting. As Edward Said said in his preface Palestine, “As we also live in a media-saturated world in which a huge preponderance of the world’s news images are controlled and diffused by a handful of men sitting in places like London and New York, a stream of comic book images and words, assertively etched, at times grotesquely emphatic and distended to match the extreme situations they depict, provide a remarkable antidote”. (Said, 2003, Palestine).

Dan Archer writes that conventional reporting is not better off and the importance of comic journalism is in striking a balance "In the age of Photoshop, photo evidence is often editorialized. If anything, comics expose the fallacy of one single ‘objective truth’ often by including the reporter (and his point of view) in the story” (Archer, www.archcomix.com)

Art Spiegelman argues, “The phony objectivity that comes with a camera is a convention and a lie in the same way as writing in the third person rather than the first person. To write a comics journalism report you're already making an acknowledgment of biases and an urgency that communicates another level of information.” (Williams, www.cjr.org).

In many instances of comic journalism, the author plants himself as a character in his own work and uses his point of view as a point of identification for the reader. For example in his graphic novel Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, Guy Delisle integrates himself as a deadpan, unflustered character into the story. “I do have quite an English sense of humour. I'm stoic. My emotions are way back." (Cooke, May, 2012. He guides the reader, tells him where to look and listen, and becomes a part of the story and it is impossible to dissociate him from the story. The level of engagement that the authors share with their stories tells the reader about how much they want to convince us and inspire us to take action. E.g. In her book How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, Sarah Glidden included a drawing of herself crying after witnessing too many emotionally charged scenes (Pollmann, July 2013).

Therefore Artists are Activists as well. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his book Qu’est-ce que la literature? says that passivity is equivalent to activity and that a socially responsible writer must address the major events of the era. It is the need of the hour that journalists interfere and influence the narrative because their humanity will bring out the emotional depth of the story and incite the world to take action. Sacco commented that “Journalism is a process with seams and imperfections practiced by a human being—it is not a cold science carried out behind Plexiglas by a robot.” (Sacco, April 2011).

Critics also point to another disadvantage of comic journalism: it is slow and time-consuming. But this could be an advantage. Comic journalists have a lot to deal with. The content must be converted into readable material with multiple elements within a certain rule-bound limitation. The artist is forced to rethink what he had witnessed, add clarity to his thoughts, refine his judgments, and prioritize his visuals. “Graphic journalism is slow journalism” (Pollman, July, 2013).

On Balance

Edward R. Murrow said, "Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices—just recognize them." (Sacco, April 2011).

Comic Journalists immerse themselves into the lives of their subjects and thus as a result their perspective is limited. Formation of conclusions is a matter of difficulty because the ground reality cannot be balanced by providing multiple viewpoints. Sacco does not deny the reality and he does not apologize for his contradictions. He aims to provide the reader with the journey that leads to the formation of these facts in the first place. Sacco does not believe in giving both sides equal weightage to solve the issue. The balance is maintained in what the journalist thinks of the issue by exploring for himself the multiple viewpoints presented. Sacco himself quotes journalist Robert Fisk to prove his point: "I always say that reporters should be neutral and unbiased on the side of those who suffer." (Sacco, April 2011).

Symbolism and Metaphors

The use of symbolism makes editors wary of comic journalism because editors want facts and art is incorrigible and uses rhetoric. Comic journalists make use of symbolism as an extension of their subjectivity to add greater emotional depth to their stories. E.g. Nathan Huang created a piece for the Italian magazine Internazionale in which he described the unbearable traffic in Los Angeles. He was forced to move to New York as a result. Huang conveyed his preference for the subway to the snarling traffic jams by drawing cars as iron cages freeing himself from one of his cages and then stepping happily into an underground train (Pollmann, 2013). The symbolism could also be extended to the lettering used in comics. Sacco used different kinds of typography to differentiate different atmospheres.

The use of symbolism and metaphors is what makes comics enduring to their audience. Edward Said said, “Comics provided one with a directness of approach (the attractively and overstated combination of pictures and words) that seemed unassailably true on the one hand, and marvelously close, impinging, familiar on the other.” (Sacco, 2003, Palestine).

Conclusion

Comic journalism is an evolving medium. It has its ups and downs but at the end of the day, it makes for a powerful medium to tell compelling stories. The use of artistic freedom renders an air of freshness to the medium. Although comic journalism faces the problem of subjectivity, as it has been pointed out, subjectivity is an ambition. Comic journalism is able to tell stories of emotional depth because the artist exists in the story as an anchor for the reader. The novelty of the medium will ensure that in this Information Era, the subjectivity of the artist/activist will endure.

Bibliography

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