Camera Obscura: Under The Influence

The best comics can take you further than what's shown on the page, believes Alasdair Watson, while only the worst live in cultural isolation. Ideas are nothing to be afraid of.
31 May 2002

I don't have to write the UK convention report this year, thank Christ. I'm not really very good at it anyway. And the reason I don't have to write it is that as you read this, Comics 2002, the UK's annual comics festival is only just starting. In fact, if you're reading this in a really timely manner, my fellow editor Andrew and I are probably in a car driving to Bristol, bickering over the music on the stereo.

I wrote reports from both Bristol and San Diego last year, and in all honestly, I didn't really enjoy either con as much as I might have. At Bristol last year, I knew I'd have to write a column in about two hours on the Sunday afternoon, and that awareness prevented me from relaxing properly. At San Diego, I was simply exhausted - the New Orleans heat the week before had left me defeated and drained. So I trudged around both conventions not really enjoying myself, but knowing I had to do and see enough to fill a hurriedly written column.

So this year, I am resolved to enjoy Bristol. How do I intend to accomplish this?

Simple: I plan to largely ignore the convention. Oh, I'm going to the Hypotheticals Panel, and All The Rage Live. My friends are running these, and they're going to be funny. And I'll take a wander around the floor, see what's going on, chat to folk, all the rest of it, and I'll be in bar in the evening. But Bristol has a cathedral. And other old and interesting places. And one of my favourite record shops.

Comics are taking me somewhere interesting and different for the weekend. I'm going to make the most of it.

Of course, comics take me somewhere interesting and different all the time. FROM HELL took me to Nicholas Hawksmoor, who lead me to Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair. THE INVISIBLES took me to Phil Hine. TRANSMETROPOLITAN introduced me to Menken. I've heard it said that in SANDMAN, Gaiman was showing off the books he'd read. A complaint that to my mind, rather misses the point.

Whenever Hollywood does something that looks a bit like it might have been done in comics first, there's mutterings about how the Evil Suits In Hollywood are "ripping off" the Noble Comic Creator. Look at the whole argument about THE MATRIX and THE INVISIBLES, for example.

This is crap, clearly. Yeah, they're drawing on the same sources, the same ideas. One may even have been an influence on the other. But it's not "ripping off", any more than the comics I mentioned are ripping off the writers they lead me to.

But this is what I love about good comics. Good comics, to my mind, reach outside the comics medium for their influences. (One might note in passing that very few superhero comics reach to anything but other superhero comics for their influences.) They bring in ideas from prose, film, television and theatre at the most obvious, or even from things like flyer design, or pop music. A good comic can be a roadmap to half a dozen interesting new things.

Which is why I find it odd when people complain about the literary references in SANDMAN, or the fact that THE INVISIBLES is a lot easier to understand when you're familiar with the countercultural and occult thinking it rests on.

It strikes me that these things are virtues on several levels. Firstly, as I've said, they provide the reader with the chance to go and find something new after they're done with the comic, but secondly, they provide a context for the work, incorporate it more into mainstream literature. It's no coincidence that SANDMAN sold in the numbers it did, or that THE INVISIBLES gets good write ups in the mainstream media as something hip and trendy that all the cool kids should be reading. It's not a coincidence that these works have books written about them. Proper ones, with actual words in, and not very many pictures.

They're some of the only comics out there that can be placed on the cultural map with enough accuracy to allow that sort of depth of critical analysis. There are others, of course - half of Alan Moore's output springs immediately to mind.

The question then becomes: why do people complain about these references, this depth? If it's the hallmark of a Good Thing, then why complain that someone is "showing off"? They most obvious answer is because it's challenging. It forces the reader to do a bit of work over and above reading the comic. (For example, I have a friend who has made a list of every author referenced in SANDMAN and has resolved to read at least one book by each of them. I think that's a fab idea.)

But people don't expect to have to work when reading comics. It's a light and easy medium, apart from freak aberrations in the form of works like FROM HELL or BERLIN, or so popular perception would have it. Which is a little odd, I think. When dealing with other media, like prose of film, everyone is prepared to accept that the level of complexity can and will vary massively. You don't find anyone insisting that just because THE ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY is harder going that HARRY POTTER, it's a pretentious work, or a story unsuited to prose. It's quite acceptable that both should exist, and it's nice to have the choice.

Nor will you find people outside of comics complaining about the influence of other people (or being an influence on other media). It's viewed as something healthy, something vital and creative.

But many comics, it seems, are happy in their own little incestuous corner, shagging their sisters and producing ever weaker and more inbred spawn. Which is a crying shame.

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

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