Earlier this month,Ninth Art presented the first part of a round table discussion on the subject of genre, in which the editorial board discussed the genres that are beginning to make some headway in the comics industry. This month we present the second part, in which, several bottles of wine the worse for wear, the editorial board looks at those genres that have seemingly been overlooked.

To read part one, click here. To read part two, charge your glasses and read on.

ANDREW WHEELER: So, what genres do we miss? What's your favourite genre that comics just aren't doing?

ANTONY JOHNSTON: I wouldn't call it a favourite, but there's something I wish I could read more of. Contemporary slice-of-life fiction. And I don't mean in the Fantagraphics navel-gazing sense. I just mean - look at the novels we've had recently, like WHITE TEETH and WHITE CITY BLUE.

ANDREW: Not scratchy indie drawings of people sitting around saying, "I had a girlfriend once, I don't know where she went. It was a long time ago."

ALASDAIR WATSON: We're talking about stuff like BREAKFAST AFTER NOON, SLOW NEWS DAY...

ANDREW: Name another Andi Watson book! Go on!

ALASDAIR: Well, he's the only one doing it.

ANTONY: He is. Apart from BERLIN. Jason Lutes.

ANDREW: I was going to mention BERLIN as a separate genre. I think we've seen two great historic fiction books emerge recently.

ANTONY: You're going to say AGE OF BRONZE for the other one, aren't you?

ANDREW: Yes. And I hope there will be more of that. That would be the genre I'm missing. Historical fiction

ANTONY: Historical fiction is a huge genre in books.

ANDREW: And those two are from completely different periods. Ancient and modern history. There's so much more to do, but who else is there doing it? David Hitchcock?

ANTONY: Yeah. And they are all taking very different tacks.

ALASDAIR: You could lump FROM HELL in. There's a weird bent on it, but it's historical fiction,

ANDREW: Yeah. I'd put it there sooner than I'd put it in crime.

ALASDAIR: I'd put it in... Alan Moore fiction.

ANTONY: A genre unto himself. A beard unto himself.

ANDREW: His beard is a genre.

ALASDAIR: Beard fiction.

ANTONY: BERLIN is all about the people. AGE OF BRONZE is more about the events.

ANDREW: It's trying to pin people to the events. It's trying to make personalities out of historical figures.

ANTONY: Yeah. In BERLIN you'll get ten pages of a person being introspective, going about their daily life. You're not going to get that in AGE OF BRONZE.

ANDREW: They're both writing to represent their age. If you're going to write about Germany in the 1930s then you need to be introspective and maudlin. And maybe go to a cabaret and have a lesbian.

ANTONY: Joe Matt's PEEPSHOW may be interesting, but it's not particularly entertaining. The most entertaining social fiction is coming from the historical angle. I wonder why that is?

ANDREW: Because it allows you to do what science fiction allows you to do, but detached from a superheroic setting?

ANTONY: Possibly. And also it allows the reader to think, "ah weren't we all quaint back then".

'You can do anything with prose, yet people read a lot of real-life prose fiction.' ANDREW: I think people like historical fiction because they like to feel they're being informed, which is something you don't get with speculative fiction. You feel there's a reward in there beyond the story. Certainly I feel that with BERLIN. It's an education.

ANTONY: So why is no-one doing successful slice-of-life in a contemporary manner?

ANDREW: Do people come to comics for that? Don't people come to comics for something that takes you away?

ALASDAIR: I come to comics for a good story.

ANTONY: You could say the same thing about prose. Prose, in the same way as comics, has no budget - you can do anything in it - and yet people do read a lot of real-life fiction in prose.

ANDREW: Then is it a question of courage on the part of the writers? Because it is a hard thing to do, to say, "here is something I know, but you all know it too".

ANTONY: It's often aspirational too, isn't it? There are two sides to social fiction in prose. There's aspirational shopping-and-fucking stuff, where you read about someone who has a far more interesting and varied life than you do. And then there are your inner city urban stories. Like British soap operas, I suppose. Where is your comics equivalent of EASTENDERS?

ANDREW: X-MEN.

ALASDAIR: That's exactly it. The soap opera form has been co-opted in comics by superheroes.

ANTONY: So where are the dramas? Like TRULY MADLY DEEPLY?

ANDREW: Where are your romances? Love is one of the biggest themes in slice-of-life. It's there in comics, but there are no love stories.

ANTONY: You're not just talking Mills & Boons, are you? You're talking BRIDGET JONES, those kinds of love stories? Or do you mean potboilers.

ALASDAIR: They used to do dozens of comics in the Mills & Boon style.

ANTONY: You have to go back to the 50s for those.

ANDREW: But I would have thought there is room for that today. There's an online comic called KYLE'S BED & BREAKFAST, which is actually a soap opera comic, but it's gay-themed, and therefore has a niche audience. But I don't see why there can't be other comics like that.

ANTONY: LOVE AND ROCKETS. I know that's Fantagraphics, but it's a combination of soap opera and love story, because it does deal with family.

ALASDAIR: In conjunction with the soap opera, you get the teen drama. Allowing for a massively increased humour quotient, you're getting that from places like Oni, with things like BLUE MONDAY and HOPELESS SAVAGES.

ANTONY: Or without so much humour, you're getting it in THE WAITING PLACE. That's very much teen drama. There is definitely some kind of ingrained dismissal within the existing comics audience toward the mundane without historical trappings

ALASDAIR: But if I were trying to get a friend to read comics who doesn't already, I'd be giving them stuff like BLUE MONDAY.

ANTONY: This is the hope. That your average novel reader on the tube would read the same subject matter in comic form.

ALASDAIR: I'll tell you what I miss. Like I said in a recent column, the weird pulps. I'm not thinking necessarily of the supernatural. I'm thinking of stuff like Christopher Brookmyre's very energetic novels, set in the real world with a half-twist on the conspiracy metre.

ANDREW: Are you talking about magic realism? Set in the real world, but the real world is more eccentric than we know?

ALASDAIR: Set in the real world, but the world is more exciting. Funny stuff, like Ian Banks' THE WASP FACTORY or THE CROW ROAD. Where are these things?

ANDREW: Is this a genre?

ALASDAIR: Well, OK, where's my genre-free stuff? Where's the stuff that I can't pin down? Where's my 'general fiction'?

ANTONY: That's a valid point. Everything in comics does tend to belong to a genre. 'Where's the stuff that I can't pin down? Where's my 'general fiction'?'

ANDREW: Well, who would be writing that in comics? People like Milligan? And when I say 'people like Milligan', it occurs to me there are no people like Milligan.

ANTONY: A bit like Alan Moore. He is a genre unto himself. Although, actually, stuff like A SMALL KILLING, Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate, that has no genre".

ANDREW: FACE, by Milligan and Fegredo.

ALASDAIR: MR PUNCH, by Gaiman and McKean. I couldn't pin a genre onto it. It has no fantastical elements, other than being hallucinatory in places.

ANTONY: Same as A SMALL KILLING. There are visions, but it's not magical, it's psychological. So there are a few works, and traditionally they've sold for shit.

ANDREW: That's bad, right? Sold for shit?

ANTONY: Yes. Get down with your bad self. SIGNAL TO NOISE, that's another good example. Maybe people are gun-shy because it's sold really badly.

ANDREW: Well, if you can't categorise it, in comics it remains a hard sell. Because the audience is small. It's difficult enough to diversify, but to actually move outside of the box... lord, man!

ANTONY: I want my moon on a stick! OK, horror. There's plenty of horror.

ANDREW: I'm not sure there's much horror.

ALASDAIR: I think once there was, but not anymore.

ANDREW: There's HELLBLAZER...

ALASDAIR: And when's the last time HELLBLAZER frightened you?

ANDREW: Horror rarely does frighten me. I'm hard.

ANTONY: Not even psychological horror?

ANDREW: No, the type of horror that scares me is people jumping out of shadows. And that's just shock, and you can't get that in comics. You don't get taken by surprise very often by people jumping out at you. Unless they're actually hiding inside your comic. That would be really scary. What a gimmick!

ALASDAIR: Turn the page and Alan Moore leaps out at you!

ANTONY: That would scare me in the street in broad daylight. OK, so there's HELLBLAZER...

ANDREW: There's definitely HELLBLAZER...

'It's difficult enough to diversify, let alone to move outside the box.' ANTONY: There's the whole of Avatar's line. Which is body horror. Splatterpunk with sex. Moonstone, the people producing the White Wolf-licensed graphic novels... OK, maybe there isn't as much horror as I initially thought.

ANDREW: Not if you can't name any.

ALASDAIR: LUCIFER is still going.

ANTONY: LUCIFER's not really horror. Vertigo is long passed being a horror publisher. OK, I'm stumped. I thought there was a horror glut, but that's just not true, is it? So, bring back horror, you bastards

ALASDAIR: I will pay good money to people who can frighten me.

ANDREW: What's left?

ALASDAIR: Comedy. What have we got in the way of comedy books that are doing well these days?

ANDREW: Outside of the daily strips?

ALASDAIR: PEDRO & ME.

ANDREW: PEDRO & ME?

ANTONY: Comedy?

ANDREW: A man dying of AIDS?

ANTONY: Oh, how we laughed.

ALASDAIR: I meant BARRY WEEN! Cut that bit out, you bastard.

ANDREW: Do I dare? OK, Judd Winick writes comedy. But he's pretty much alone.

ALASDAIR: There's a fairly strong comedy element to something like TRANSMETROPOLITAN

ANTONY: That's true. There are issues of TRANSMET that are entirely played for laughs.

ANTONY: That reminds me of Grant Morrison's STEED AND MRS PEEL, based on the British AVENGERS TV series. He did a three issue series through Acme Press, I think, with Ian Gibson, and that was hilarious. It poked fun, but it was very true to the series. Very surreal and a bit slapstick.

ALASDAIR: I think half the stuff Grant Morrison does is because it makes him laugh.

ANDREW: So the people who are writing comedy are Morrison, Moore, Ennis, Milligan, Ellis...

ANTONY: We're back to the same people again!

ALASDAIR: They're everywhere,

ANDREW: Bendis writes very good comedy.

ANTONY: Of course, yes! Some of the first few issues of POWERS were hilarious. "What's a clitoris?"

ANDREW: That's one of the all-time great lines in a comic.

ALASDAIR: But he's shied away from that humour in recent issues.

ANDREW: Disappointingly so. There's Kyle Baker, of course. Books like THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW and WHY I HATE SATURN are about the best comic-form comedies out there.

ANTONY: Yeah, I'd agree, Baker's books are hilarious, but even they don't sell very well. Outside of the strips, comedy doesn't appear to be a very viable genre.

ANDREW: It should be. Paul O'Brien wrote a very good column about it. Comedy sells. More so than any of the genres we've spoken of, comedy ought to be able to make it. Perhaps people regard comedy as something separate to comics as we think of them? Because they'd associate strips with cartoons before they'd associate them with comics.

ANTONY: Possibly, yes. I hate the notion that comics should stick to what it does best, but it's a very compelling argument, isn't it?

ALASDAIR: What do comics do well?

ANTONY: Adventure fiction.

ALASDAIR: I just think comics does a lot of adventure fiction.

ANDREW: But it is geared toward it. It's something it can do in a way many other media can't, and media do play to their strengths. That's not an argument against diversity, though.

ANTONY: I'm not saying comics should stick to their strengths, but there are people who do say that, and while I vehemently disagree with them, it's hard to come up with any solid evidence to argue against it.

ALASDAIR: Surely that's because no-one will take a chance? It would be nice to see more people making the effort to move outside of the industry's proven strengths. How are they going to find out if the industry has other strengths unless they take a chance?

Wheeler, Johnston and Watson are the Ninth Art editorial board.

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