Sanders, Joe (ed). The Sandman Papers. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphic Books. 2006.
Murphy, B. Keith. “The Origins of The Sandman.” 3-24.
Hanes, Stacie and Joe Sanders. “Reinventing the Spiel: Old Stories, New Approaches.” 147-170.
McMullen, Lyra. “Omnia Mutantor: the Use of Asian Dress in the Appearance of Dream in The Sandman.”
What a bit of blind luck to find this book at my local comic shop! If I were more self-centered, I’d say that the guys at my ’shop know that I’m an academic geek, but either way, it’s a whole book of essays on The Sandman. I bought it on the spot, of course. The papers do not form any kind of cohesive whole so far, accept that the first half of them is on specific issues and themes, and the second is on “Larger Contexts” (how a theme isn’t a larger context, I don’t know). I’ve read three papers so far, and I’ve had a few thoughts.
Murphy’s “Origins” is, ironically, the highly informed gushing of a fan-boy who, along the way, derides American superhero comics and the fan-boy culture it exists within. The paper is a history of the exchange of horror and comic-book styles between the US and the UK (the ‘Anglo-American comic-book tradition,’ as I’ve seen it called in other places), and makes a reasonable but, taken in all, problematic argument about the history of comics, and British writers’ place in that history. “[B]y the early 18th century, British readers had tired of Gothic horror, turning instead to novels in which more fully developed characters such as Jane Eyre encountered situations the were outré but not quite macabre. Meanwhile, the Gothic had traveled to America […] where action and tight plotting were more important than subtle characterization or polished prose” (4-5). As the paper continues, Murphy separates American and British popular fiction, consistently implying, as this quotation demonstrates, that the latter is inherently superior to the former.
The historical argument continues, though, that by the late 19th century (the Victorian period), the penny dreadfuls overtook British popular fiction, and then combined with the medium of the imported American comic books that were streaming into Britain around the same time. Until the 50s, American and British comics were basically the same, mostly horror titles but with superheroes as well. In the 50s, however, the genre was all but eradicated by censorship in both countries. The US had Wertham and the Comics Code Authority, but the UK had the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publication) Act, which, though Murphy doesn’t say so directly, seems to combine a ‘save the children!’ crusade with a protectionist economic measure, “isolat[ing] the British comic industry and its audience from the overwhelming majority of American comics and their influence” (8).
At this point, American and British comics diverged. The American path lead to superheroes, according to Murphy. The British returned to humour books, but retooled them into covertly subversive tales that “championed the common man as an anti-authoritarian force” (9). Robert Darnton’s The Great Cat Massacre identifies a traditionally British character, the ‘dunderhead hero.’ That character came back in British comics. Even the few superheroes who survived in Britain, according to Murphy, “retained a certain disdain for authority figures” (9), but his example are Judge Dredd, an authority figure by virtue of his job, and Marvelman, who was an agent of the R.A.F. in his original incarnation, so I find his statement difficult to take a face value.
Also, superheroes were hit hard by the CCA’s restrictions; it’s a very violente genre. American comics largely switched to humour and romance. We tend to backwardly assume superheroes took the fore because they’re presently associated with comics in America, but that’s despite the dearth of non-superhero comics, not because of a lack of them (where the ‘superheroes = comics’ association actually comes from is a matter of
some debate).
By the 70s, Murphy claims that American superherocomics, by virtue of being created by American artists who read exclusively American superhero comics, had become “little more than a parody” of themselves (4). Therefore, when Moore, “just about the first British writer brought into American comics” (Daniels qtd. in Murphy 10), wrote Swamp Thing, he brought with him the anti-authoritarianism of British comics, but also retained the literate horror styles of the Gothic writers, and “found the ‘mold’ of American comics easier to break than had those raised on them because, as with Gaiman, British writers’ exposure to the books and their generic expectations/restrictions was limited” (10), as opposed to the American writers, who were locked into the superhero genre, which has a strong set of “expectations/restrictions” (10).
Here’s where the problematic aspect presents itself. Murphy switches to talking about Gaiman at this point in the paper, and claims that “The work of the authors, and the narrative expectations of the British comics Gaiman read shaped his work into a form that was more literate, more intelligent, and distinctly British” (14), but his argument strongly implies that Murphy defines “distinctly British” as “more literate, more intelligent.” By contrast, “American comics tend to feature on-dimensional characters in shallow plots where violence trumps intelligence [and] images trump words” (14). The associations are clear: words are intelligent and British, while pictures are violent and American. Furthermore, Murphy is, essentially, glorifying Gaiman and Moore by distancing them from the comic book tradition (labelled ‘American’), and associating them with the “literary tradition” (labelled ‘British’) in which “the characters are more fully developed and the plots are rife with symbolism” (14).
I have used this phrase before, but Murphy’s move is maddening, but not surprising. Claiming a connection between Gaiman/Moore and the rich literary history of British culture is simply easier than trying to argue that comics have their own history. Ironically, Murphy explicitly argues that they are part of British literature by connecting them to the Gothic tradition, but implicitly, he won’t have it. The defining trait of comics as an art form, the use of pictures, is an albatross around its neck, keeping it from fully embracing the inherent sophistication of literature, a text-based art form.
Murphy concludes that “by protecting young British minds form stereotyped American comics books, the [Harmful Publications] Act allowed the modern version of this genre to blossom” (21) By ‘genre,’ he actually means ‘medium’; he’s referring to comics. There are a couple of interesting conceptual slips, here. First, he implicitly associates ignorance with innocence, a common fallacy, imagining British children as ‘unsullied’ by American comics, as if knowing more about the medium and the uses to which it can be put would have destroyed their sense of it.
Second, his assertion that Gaiman inspired the ‘modern version’ of comics employs the false connotation that the contemporary is always better than the antiquated, another common fallacy. Finally, he uses the word ‘stereotyped’ to refer to American comics, not ‘stereotypical.’ The latter implies that American comics are unfairly judged; the former implies what he means, that they are shallow and depict unfounded assumptions about, for example, race, gender, and law. His editing mistake reflects his attitude, which is surely accidental, but highly amusing none the less.
Hanes and Sanders’ “Reinventing” is a lot more convincing. It compares Gaiman’s depiction of the tripartite Goddess figure, ‘virgin, maiden, and crone,’ with Terry Pratchett’s depiction. The comparison itself is quite interesting, falling onto familiar lines: social vs. individual, sociological vs. psychological. Pratchett, they argue, constructs the ‘weird sisters’ as servants of a community, and who find their identities through their work. Gaiman, on the other hand, shows us a the ‘Kindly Ones,’ who are incapable of change and individually interchangeable. They take revenge on Dream for spilling family blood and don’t care at all that it’s a mercy killing (his son, Orpheus, begs to die). When depicted, they randomly swap places as they surround their cauldron. The Kindly Ones are a negative example of stereotypical womanhood. They are a destructive, unrelenting force of nature.
However, many of the other female characters come to represent them, and those characters’ serve as examples of how people, specifically women, find individuality through the ability to change, to grow, to develop, which itself is the theme of the whole series: Dream arranges his own ‘death’ so that he can be reborn into a form that is not only different, but capable of changing over time. Lyta Hall and Thessaly end the story locked into the revenge typical of the Kindly Ones themselves, Lyta against Dream--who she believes killed her son, but who in fact became Dream--and Thessaly against the Kindly Ones--for killing Dream, her former lover. They, too, are negative examples, but when put up against Wanda, who makes the ultimate change from pre-op transsexual to woman, in Barbie’s dream), or Rose Walker, who is pregnant by the end of the series, they, all of them, collectively represent the many paths of femininity, the individuality that can be found by limiting oneself to one identity, rather than keeping all options open, remaining primal and iconic, but without individual judgment or will.
McMullen’s paper on Japanese costuming does not manage to tickle my personal fancy, but it makes one point that is emblematic of not only this series, but a lot of both Gaiman and Moore’s work. “Originality often happens when a fresh set of eyes, without the same baggage of shared cultural history, gaze on something they have never seen before” (181). Originality and creativity are located in the viewer, no the product of that viewer’s work. Seeing and perceiving is a creative act, an act of expression, if only internally, and the first step towards external expression.
Three down, nine to go.
Posted by orion at May 16, 2006 5:11 PM