Kristy Valenti has a lot to say about comics.  Valenti is currently assistant editor at The Comics Journal, a magazine owned and operated by the major alternative comics publisher Fantagraphics Books.  Founded in 1976, the monthly magazine is one of the most respected publications in the industry, dedicated to covering developments within the comics world, interviewing artists, and reviewing comics from what it terms an “arts-first perspective.”  Valenti also has a weekly column of her own, “Uncharted Territory,” published each Tuesday on the industry website comiXology, in which she profiles creators, reviews works, and explores other issues and ideas of relevance to the medium.

I got a chance to talk to Valenti about the idea of comics as art, the cultural and academic significance of the medium, and current developments that are shaping the industry in new and exciting ways.

Are comics art? Are comics and graphic novels literature?

There are two schools of thoughts on this. The first school is yes and yes (well, some are, anyway). The second school is that it’s something entirely different that requires a different sort of literacy, greater than the sum of its parts. There’s a tendency, especially in academic and book publishing circles, to give the text primacy over the pictures. For example, Mariko Tamaki, the writer, was nominated for an award for the Skim graphic novel, but the artist, Jillian Tamaki, was not.

Here is a write-up on a panel regarding the second school of thought:

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=124318

And, if comics are art, or if they are literature, how do you judge or critique their artistic or literary worth? I believe you satirized the act of academically critiquing a comic in your article “The Seven Stages of the Comic Critic”…

You can use academic and critical tools to critique comics, such as close readings, theory, and thorough research. I think, though, that there’s a lot of what I dub “bad academia” going on: people who don’t bother to learn the material and technological history behind how comics were produced (fortunately, there are now excellent sources such as Men of Tomorrow and The Ten Cent Plague for that), so they don’t put comics in the proper context—theory for theory’s sake, divorced from the actual comic; bad comparisons based on lack of breadth of knowledge (Johnny Ryan is like Chris Ware, because they’re both alternative); people who feel guilty or ashamed for liking comics, and so use their academic credentials and training to justify it, or people who have a pet area of study and use comics to justify it (Blackest Night is like Paradise Lost); etc.

Of course, in “Seven Stages,” I’m making fun of myself too. I try to take my work seriously without necessarily taking myself seriously. And, here’s that elitist TCJ snob here, I don’t think that everyone with a blog or an opinion is a critic.

Can you critique a comic? Or is the value of any particular comic purely subjective, purely dependent on the reader?

Yes, you can critique a comic, although I’m not a relativist—not everyone’s critique holds the same weight. I privilege the opinions of people who can write well and have written a lot about comics in particular; have thought about comics deeply over a period of time (remember, I help to edit a magazine of critics who have been writing about comics longer than I have been alive); and have done extensive research and are very knowledgeable about the subject. And people can simply be wrong if they have no evidence to support their claims. You can’t just claim Ghost World is about Chinese opera, or something.

The best criticism provokes fruitful discussion and further thought. A good critic, I think, takes his or her emotions and works from there: why do I feel this way? What techniques are used in this comic (the way it’s drawn—are the lines thick and heavy, or are they light and airy? How is the space on the page being used? What does my eye fall on first on the page? How is my eye led on the page? Whose point of view is this story from? How do I feel about this person and why, what did the creator/creators do to make me feel that way?)

The best critics I think have a voice, but we don’t really know who they are as a person, if that makes sense. (Any tenet of good writing holds for writing about comics.) I teach my interns that nobody cares about them and their feelings and their dog when they were 8; while their experience and perspective is valuable, it’s just a jumping off point to get at bigger things. There are a lot of pitfalls people fall into when they begin writing about comics: completely ignoring the art, etc. I wrote up a little guide to these pitfalls for my interns, but Tucker Stone did a much funnier version at his website.

If you read a lot of criticism, you’ll notice that people will identify exactly the same things about a comic, but depending on the person, he or she could love or hate that. So there are things about comics that are not subjective, to be sure.

Do comics belong in academic libraries?

Yes. I think a library without at least the most important works of comics is a very poor one. I say this as a passionate library groupie.

Is more attention from the academic world a good thing for comics? Or could that in some way harm the medium? In what ways do you think increased attention from academia would change the comics industry?

I went to a college that taught a Simpsons class, a Beatles class, and a John Carpenter class, and none of those things seem negatively impacted from the attention. I do not have much use for the bad writing habits that one can sometimes acquire in college, like passive sentence construction, redefining terms to mean the opposite of what they mean (for example, I edited a friend’s paper and in her field, “fixed” meant “fluid” and “fluid” meant “fixed), etc., or lazy scholarship in general. (Of course, comics writing has its pitfalls too, such as lazy attribution of sources.)

Seriously, though, if more academic attention leads to more books like The Ten Cent Plague or the Ohio State University comic collection, I’m all for it.

Are comics useful academically? Are they useful as historical, social, or cultural tools?

Yes. For example, Gene Yang is a teacher, and he uses comics to teach math. And I can’t see how works like Maus and Barefoot Gen can do anything but enrich students’ understanding.

How does that visual and literary blend make reading a comic different from experiencing any other medium? Is there an art to reading a comic?

As many critics have pointed out (see, there’s that lazy attribution), comics are a relatively cheap medium in which a creator with only a pen and some paper can cartoon his or her own world.  Reading a comic does require a certain kind of literacy—for example, people learned how to “read” art in a different direction when manga became popular.

You mentioned in one of your articles that you’ve noticed Cocteau’s influence on various cartoonists these days.  In what ways have other art forms influenced comics? And, likewise, how have comics influenced other media, like literature or film?

That is a huge question. Cartoonists can be influenced by anything, really—art, literature, music, current events, history, pop culture, etc. Again, a huge question—directors like Resnais have been influenced by comics, etc.

Some people are calling the explosion in comic and graphic novel output these days a “New Golden Age” of comic books.  Would you agree? What do you think of artists who use the medium for genres like journalism, memoir, history, etc.?

Yes, it’s a new golden age, because it’s possible to get your hands on comics that only four or five years ago you would only have been able to read about in books like Frederik Schodt’s Manga! Manga!, etc.  The medium of comics still has a lot of untapped potential, especially in the U.S. and in the realm of non-fiction.

And what has been the influence of early American comics (I’m thinking Winsor McCay, Frank King…) on illustrators today?

They’ve been a big influence on cartoonists like Chris Ware and Kim Deitch, yes. I’m not as familiar with the world of illustration.

How is the internet changing the medium? There’s been an explosion in
comics published online—what does that mean for the form?

The Internet presents the same problems for comics as it does for all print media. However, it has made getting your work out there and noticed much easier for people who are just starting out, and it’s been great for people who aren’t necessarily steeped in a certain kind of fan culture to experiment or revive old forms (the daily strip). I do think it is strongly mediating people’s personal interactions and subjectivity as well, so that’s a factor.  Still, while some of its potential has been realized, there are still so many places to go.  It’s very exciting.

Kristy Valenti’s Column, “Uncharted Territory,” is published every Tuesday at http://www.comixology.com/columns/uncharted_territory/