Comics versus Art by Bart Beaty, and: Comic Books and American Cultural History: An Anthology ed. by Matthew Pustz (review)

Over time, academics have gone through several shifts in their thinking about comics and graphic novels. First there was the movement to bring comics and graphic novels into the classroom; they tended to wind up in literature classrooms during that phase. Now there is a movement to use comics and graphic novels in non-literature-based classes; such is the case with the two volumes reviewed here. In dealing explicitly with the discourse about comics in the art world and exploring the ways in which comics may be used in the history classroom, respectively, these two books are doing extremely interesting work.

Bart Beaty, a professor at the University of Calgary, is a prolific author whose works include articles such as his most recent essay, "Selective Mutual Reinforcement in the Comics of Chester Brown, Joe Matt, and Seth" (2011), and many books: for example, Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture (2005), and Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books (2010). In this latest book, Beaty uses a culture studies approach to explore how the medium of comics has been excluded from consideration in the world of "the gallery crowd's" definition of art, "interrogat[ing] the specific historical and social processes that have led to the devaluation of comics as a cultural form" (7). He specifically states, though, that he is not setting out to define "what comics should be" (7). Comics versus Art is not a value judgment, but an exploration of the historical discourses that have created and maintained this separation. In the same paragraph, Beaty emphasizes that he is not setting out to say that comics are finally a legitimate art form, nor to "bemoan the shoddy treatment" of comics artists by the art world. Instead, "[t]his book uses the case of comics, in the North American or English-speaking context, to demonstrate how, in the increasingly postmodern world in which the distinction between high and low culture is often assumed to have eroded, outmoded biases continue to persist in the shaping of how we understand culture broadly" (7).

The book sets out along the course of its nine chapters to explore the cases of texts and objects that exist on the borders between art and comics. Roy Lichtenstein's art is one of the early case studies, and it is here that Beaty lays out one of his primary critiques: that comics art can only be considered "legitimate" by the gallery crowd, it seems, if it is appropriated (read that "plagiarized") by a "real artist." Beaty argues that comics play a "feminized role" as the "passive muse that inspires genuine art" (191). He does examine the role of R. Crumb and Chris Ware, both of whom have managed to somehow become thought of as more than "merely" comics artists by the gallery set. This is not to say that they are embraced as "true" artists, but rather that they are seen as worthy of gallery attention.

Comics versus Art's level of detailed theoretical and historical study is quite good—just not of very much use to scholars of children's or adolescent literature, even those critically examining graphic novels. The exception is the brief mention Beaty makes on pages 39 and 40 of the interesting space of the boundaries between comics and picture books, as part of his larger exploration of definitions of comics and of art. This is not a flaw; rather, one should simply be aware that Beaty's intended audience is not children's literature scholars.

Similarly, the sixteen essays in Comic Books and American Cultural History: An Anthology are intended more for history instructors and historians than for literature instructors and literary scholars. The essays cover such diverse topics as pedagogical uses for comics in a history classroom, examining comics for the cultural discourses surrounding Asian American identity...