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Classical Comic-Con

2012; Boston University; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/arn.2012.0032

2327-6436

Marianne McDonald,

Comics and Graphic Narratives

Classical Comic-Con MARIANNE MCDONALD In 1970, a convention was founded in San Diego by various writers to show how comics had achieved international stardom. One year, I was on a panel speaking on the classics and themes in Star Wars. Now George Kovacs and C. W. Marshall have edited a collection of articles dealing with various aspects of the classics as reflected in comics—a book long overdue since comics have long been a part of our world culture.* I grew up in Chicago on the empowering imagery of Wonder Woman. To do this, I cheated the church out of the donations my father had given me to put in the basket that was passed around at the service. (I would attend for both my father and mother, who were celebrating the Sabbath in their Irish way by sleeping off the effects of the night before.) I would occasionally confess to a priest that I had used funds intended for the church to buy comic books. (Hey . . . what is confession for?) The penance was large (several rosaries, not the first choice a twelve-year-old girl would make to spend her time), but the satisfaction outweighed the penalty. Wonder Woman, Princess Leia, and Padmé Amidala showed me a woman could kick ass, and they provided the imagery that much of society denied me, since I wanted to be president of the United States. Well, that dream didn’t come true (thank the Goddess), but it prepared me for the fights one had to wage to advance in the university system. I also believed a lot of what the comics said. Be good at what you *Classics and Comics, George Kovacs and C. W. Marshall, eds. (New York: Oxford Uninversity Press, 2011), xiii + 265 pages, $29.95, paper. arion 20.2 fall 2012 do. Help those who need help. Raised by nuns as my surrogate parents, I also saw women who regularly kicked ass, but helped students as they needed help. So between the comics and the nuns I found my true vocation, and have never looked back with regret for that choice. So, my first quibble with this book is that out of seventeen authors, only three are women. Did so few women read Wonder Woman or other comics? I notice that topic is handled mostly by male authors. I don’t mean to be sexist, but why wasn’t Rosie the Riveter here to launch some of the interpretive missiles? Three out of seventeen authors? Hmm . . . And what about more women producing comics? Many young scholars, rather than the older scholars who first shaped the reception field, are included here, which in part is justified because this is one of the earliest treatments of comics as a medium to be taken seriously. The claim has been made that the United States is known for two artistic “inventions”: jazz and comics. In my book on operas that dealt with the classics, I chose as my example of American opera The Gospel at Colonus, which drew on jazz and gospel traditions as developed by American blacks.1 So now with this volume on comics, once again we show how varied the American treatment of the classics can be. People with degrees other than in classics, or civilians without degrees, but who know their comics, have also been asked to write chapters for this volume. This also varies the treatments and brings in supplementary expertise that provides new and different insights. In the introductory chapters, the editors are correct in saying the comics have as much right to give new insights into the classics as “high-culture” appropriations, using “the past to make sense of the present.” They analyze well the serial nature of a comic book—one that aims to inspire the public to buy the next one (rather like Homeric cliff-hangers to wake up nodding guests at a banquet). These editors trace the ages of comics, from a Golden Age in the ’30s to the ’40s, with the first superheroes (Superman classical comic-con 132 and Wonder Woman), to a later Silver Age with rockets and missiles and other space-age concerns, including particular historical and social problems...