The rise of “fandom”—defined in Bradford W. Wright’s Comic Book Nation as a “subculture of postindustrial societies that ‘selects from the repertoire of mass-produced and mass-distributed entertainment certain performers, narratives, or genres’ and reworks them into ‘an…intensely satisfying popular culture that is both similar to, yet significantly different from the culture of more normal popular audiences’”7—in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, as well as the advent of direct marketing to fan-driven “comic book stores” in the mid-’70s, provided additional boosts to the success and distribution of graphic novels aimed at adult readers. One of the first to take advantage of direct marketing was Mike Friedrich’s comic book series Star Reach. Though not a graphic novel, the success of Star Reach allowed Friedrich to publish such books as Jim Starlin’s The Birth of Death and Howard Chaykin’s Cody Starbuck.8 Chaykin’s work on the comic books series American Flagg during the consumerist ‘80s represents an important contribution to the graphic novel that capitalizes upon the ability of science fiction to offer social commentary. Wright cites a reviewer for Atlantic who notes that American Flagg is a shallow appraisal of American culture but then goes on to legitimize this same perspective with the statement that the shallowness is part of the point.9 Set in 2031, Chaykin presents a technologically advanced but morally corrupt world in which the American government operates from a Mars base. The Plex Corporation rules what is left of the United States on Earth. The world of American Flagg has been collected into a series of graphic novels, all of which follow the adventures of Reuben Flagg in his fight to set right the tatters of the American dream.
Bryan Talbot’s 1978 The Adventures of Luther Arkwright furthers the trope of a parallel world to produce social critique in the ability of the title hero to move between worlds as he fights the Disruptors who have prolonged the English Civil War for several centuries.10 Graphic novels collected from the work of Alan Moore on such titles as 2000 AD, Watchmen and V for Vendetta, continue the trend of the parallel world though the 1980s. Each of these works present anti-heroes and a strong questioning of the motivations of government. In the early 1980s, 2000 AD introduced the grim but moral and politically-complex Judge Dredd who serves as judge, jury and executioner in Mega City One.11 V for Vendetta (collected as a graphic novel, 1990) tells the story of an alternate dystopian world in which Evy Hammond and the mysterious anarchist known as “V” bring down the fascist government of the United Kingdom in a plot to destroy the houses of Parliament.12 Concerning Watchmen (collected as a graphic novel, 1987), Danny Fingeroth argues that this title in particular “did more than any other publication before it to popularize the graphic novel format [within mainstream culture]. It has thus far been the only novel to win science fiction’s Hugo Award, and in 2005 was selected by Time magazine critics as one of the hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.”13 Dr. Manhattan is of particular interest as a reinvention of the superhumanly powerful but conflicted characters, such as the Hulk, developed for the Marvel stable by Stan Lee with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko in the 1960s. A physicist given godlike powers when he is trapped inside his Intrinsic Field Subtractor, Dr. Manhattan speaks to the corruption of an American government that uses him both as a tool to win the Vietnam War and as a Cold War nuclear deterrent. Developed simultaneously with Moore’s message concerning the corrupting influence of power is Dr. Manhattan’s own status as a bored deity who grows increasingly distanced from humanity and disinterested in using his power to intervene in human affairs.
Larry Young’s, Charles Adlard’s and Matt Smith’s Astronauts in Trouble: Live from the Moon (1999) continues the trend of social examination in the 1990s. Set in 2019, Astronauts is a story of intrigue that examines the role of the media who, in this case, are along for the ride during the first privately funded moon mission.14 Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid (2001) returns to the hardboiled underworld of It Rhymes with Rust—in much the same manner as Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner references film noir—in Pope’s presentation of “S” (Stooge) a “finder” hired by a wealthy client to secure a large quantity of heavy liquid. No one knows exactly what heavy liquid is, but all respect its power. In his pursuit of the substance, S loses his partner and must track down his former girlfriend through an urban American landscape that is full of great technological wonder and terrifying urban decay.15
Where titles such as American Flagg, Watchmen and Heavy Liquid direct our gaze outward at society, Raymond Briggs’s 1982 When the Wind Blows looks inward at the mental deterioration of ordinary couple Jim and Hilda Bloggs as they attempt to survive following a nuclear war.16 In a twist reminiscent of the best writing of The Twilight Zone, the isolation that Jim and Hilda embraced before the war becomes their greatest enemy.
Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga AKIRA (1987) conflates social critique with self examination and anxiety in the presentation of Tetsuo, a member of a motorcycle gang in futuristic neo-Tokyo whose emerging telekinesis invokes Akira, a mysterious power that previously decimated Tokyo and triggered World War III.17 Roger Sabin speaks to the popularity and commercial success of Akira in terms of the story’s remaking of “old-fashioned Japanese science fiction” and appeal to “the vogue for ‘cyberpunk’ among comics and science fiction fans, which had long made reference to an ‘Asiatized future’ and to Japan’s status as a technological superpower [as also seen in the neon-lit canyons of Los Angeles in Blade Runner].”18 Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell, originally published from 1989-1991 and collected in graphic novel format by Dark Horse Comics in 1995, follows a similar trajectory in making the psyche the scene of the most important action. Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg special agent, more machine than human, pursuing a cyber-criminal guilty of controlling the actions of selected individuals by “ghost hacking” their minds. Fingeroth assesses Ghost as Shirow’s exploration of “the philosophical and ethical implications of artificial intelligence and the merging of humanity and technology.”19 As manga, Akira and Ghost both owe a great debt to the work of Osamu Tezuka on Astro Boy, published over thirty years from 1951–1981.20 Though not a graphic novel, Astro Boy, which Sabin argues “started the robot craze in earnest,”21 quells the development of a potential “Frankenstein Complex”—to reference Isaac Asimov—by presenting a friendly robot boy who fights evil and pursues co-operation between robot and human. Graphic novels derived from manga also explore ecological issues in such works as Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicca of the Valley of the Wind.22
Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Astro Boy concern the intersection of humanity and artificiality. Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman concerns the intersection of humanity and art. Running from 1989–1996, The Sandman fantasy series was created for DC Comics and later became the flagship title of the company’s “Vertigo” line for “mature readers.” Following the last issue, DC collected The Sandman in a series of ten graphic novels. The original Sandman was Wesley Dodds, a 1940s crusader for The Justice Society of America who watched through the lenses of his gas mask as criminals succumbed to a blast from his sleeping gas gun. Gaiman recast the Sandman as the Lord of Dreams, “a pale-faced immortal who inhabits the realm of the unconscious.”23 The Sandman: Dream Country, published in 1991, stands out as a collection of graphic short stories based on the series. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” examines the intersection of art and artist on a metafictional level in its account of a story in which the year is 1593 and the king and queen of the fairies, Auberon and Titania, commission a performance from a troupe of actors lead by Shakespeare. “Midsummer” won the 1991 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. Shortly after, the rules were changed to ensure that a story in a comics media would no longer qualify for consideration.24
Despite this change in regulations, the quantity and quality of current critical publications attest that graphic novels are winning the battle for legitimacy. Danny Fingeroth’s sturdy and informative The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels (Rough Guides Ltd., 2008) includes an entire chapter devoted to resources
for further exploration of graphic novels. Among the sources cited by Fingeroth is a must-read for literature courses: Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (HarperCollins Publishers, 1993). Other print resources cited by Fingeroth include Roger Sabin’s lavishly illustrated and well-researched Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art (Phaidon, 1996), and Rocco Versaci’s analysis of key graphic novel creators including Gaiman, Spielgman, and Moore—This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature (Continuum, 2007).25
As mentioned, Versaci’s text treats several key graphic novel creators. Fingeroth offers the following books focused on particular creators mentioned in this introduction: Will Eisner’s Will Eisner’s Talk Shop (Dark Horse, 2001), Joe McCabe’s Hanging Out with the Dream King: Interviews with Neil Gaiman and His Collaborators (Fantagraphics, 2005), George Khoury’s The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore: The Indispensible Edition (TwoMorrows, 2007), and Timothy Callahan’s Grant Morrison: The Early Years (Sequart.com Books, 2007).26
Dr. Gene Kannenberg, Jr.’s comicsresearch.org represents an excellent, researched, and solid online source for researching the creators, content, and context of graphic novels.
* * * *
Notes
1Danny Fingeroth, The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels (NY: Rough Guides Ltd., 2008), p. 4.
2ibid.
3Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979), pp. 110–11.
4Rough Guide, p. 3.
5Rough Guide, p. 122.
6Rough Guide, pp. 16–17.
7Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2001), p. 252.
8Rough Guide, p. 18.
9Comic Book Nation, p. 269.
10Rough Guide, p. 23.
11Roger Sabin, Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art (London: Phaidon, 1996), pp. 137–38.
12Rough Guide, p. 270.
13Rough Guide, p. 219.
14Rough Guide, p. 76.
15Rough Guide, pp. 120–21.
16Rough Guide, p. 187.
17Rough Guide, p. 64.
18Comics, p. 231.
19Rough Guide, p. 64.
20Rough Guide, p. 240.
21Comics, p. 227.
22Comics, p. 232.
23Comics, p. 168.
24Rough Guide, p. 167.
25Rough Guide, pp. 281–83.
26Rough Guide, p. 284.
* * * *
Peter J. Ingrao is Clinical Assistant Professor of Humanities and American Literature at The University of Texas at Dallas where he teaches courses concerning the intersection of the humanities and sciences in such genres as science fiction, graphic novels, and utopia and dystopia. He has been nominated as a finalist for the President’s Teaching Excellence Award, and has presented material at such conferences as the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, The Southern Writers, Southern Writing Conference, SCMLA, ALA, and most recently SAMLA.
JOAN SLONCZEWSKI
(1956– )
While SF writers nowadays are more likely to have a literary background than a scientific one, Joan Slonczewski is very much a working scientist. With a BA in biology from Bryn Mawr and a PhD in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale, Slonczewski is a professor at Kenyon College in Ohio, where her recent research has examined how bacteria respond to environmental stress.
While still in grad school, Slonczewski published Still Forms on Foxfield (1980), a book about Quakers colonizing an inhabited alien planet. (Slonczewski is a Quaker.) Her second book, A Door into Ocean (1987) won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; Slonczewski was the first woman to win the award.
She is married to Michael Barich, who teaches classics at Kenyon. They have two children.
Although she’s now published by Tor Books, I first came across Slonczewski’s work when I worked at Avon Books, which published A Door into Ocean, The Wall Around Eden (1989), and Daughter of Elysium (1993). We never met face to face, but when I started work on this book, she was one of the first people I contacted, to talk about biology in science fiction. Her response came in the form of this piece of hard SF problem-solving.
MICROBE, by Joan Slonczewski
First published in Analog, August 1995
“The rat didn’t die.” Andra walked around the holostage. Before her, projected down from the geodesic dome, shone the planet’s image: Iota Pavonis Three, the first new world approved for settlement in over four centuries. As Andra walked around, the swirl of a mysterious continent peered out through a swathe of cloud. She stopped, leaning forward on her elbows to watch. What name of its own would the Free Fold Federation ultimately bestow on IP3, Andra wondered; such a lovely, terrifying world.
“Not the last time, the rat didn’t.” The eyespeaker was perched on her shoulder. It belonged to Skyhook, the sentient shuttle craft that would soon carry Andra from the study station down to land on the new world. A reasonable arrangement: The shuttle craft would carry the human xenobiologist through space for her field work, then she would carry his eye on the planet surface, as she did inside the station. “The rat only died down there the first eight times.”
“Until we got its `skin’ right.” The “skin” was a suit of nanoplast, containing billions of microscopic computers, designed to filter out all the local toxins—arsenic, lanthanides, bizarre pseudoalkaloids. All were found in local flora and fauna; inhaling them would kill a human within hours. In the old days, planets had been terraformed for human life, like Andra’s own home world Valedon. Today they would call that ecocide. Instead, millions of humans would be lifeshaped to live here on planet IP3, farming and building—the thought of it made her blood race.
“We got the skin right for the rat,” Skyhook’s eyespeaker pointed out. “But you’re notexactly a rat.”
From across the holostage, an amorphous blob of nanoplast raised a pseudopod. “Not exactly a rat,” came a voice from the nanoplast. It was the voice of Pelt, the skinsuit that would protect Andra on the alien planet surface. “Not exactly a rat—just about nine-tenths, I’d say. Your cell physiology is practically the same as a rat; why, you could even take organ grafts. Only a few developmental genes make the difference.”
Andra smiled. “Thank the Spirit for a few genes. Life would be so much less interesting.”
Pelt’s pseudopod wiggled. “The rat lived, and so will you. But our nanoservos completely jammed.” The microscopic nanoservos had swarmed into sample life forms from IP3 to test their chemical structure. But for some reason they could barely begin to send back data before they broke down. “Nobody cares about them.”
“Of course we care,” Andra said quickly. Pelt never let anyone value human life above that of sentient machines. “That’s why we cut short the analysis, until we can bring samples back to the station. That’s why we’re sending me.”
“Us,” he corrected.
“All right, enough already,” said Skyhook. “Why don’t we review our data one last time?”
“Very well.” A third sentient voice boomed out of the hexagonal panel in the dome directly overhead. It was the explorer station herself, Quantum. Quantum was considered female, the others male; Andra could never tell why, although sentients would laugh at any human who could not tell the difference. “Here are some microbial cells extracted from the soil by the last probe,” said Quantum.
The planet’s image dissolved. In its place appeared the highly magnified shapes of the microbes. The cells were round and somewhat flattened, rather like red blood cells. But if one looked closer, one could see that each flattened cell was actually pinched in straight through like a bagel.
“The toroid cell shape has never been observed on other planets,” said Quantum. “Otherwise, the cell’s structure is simple. No nuclear membranes surround the chromosomes; so, these cells are like bacteria, prokaryotes.”
Skyhook said, “The chromosome might be
circular, too, as in bacteria.”
“Who knows?” said Pelt. “On Urulan, all the chromosomes are branched. It took us decades to do genetics there.”
“We just don’t know yet,” said Quantum. “All we know is, the cells contain DNA.”
“The usual double helix?” asked Skyhook. The double helix is a ladder of DNA nucleotide pairs, always adenine with thymine or guanine with cytosine, for the four different “letters” of the DNA code. When a cell divides to make two cells, the entire helix unzips, then fills in a complementary strand for each daughter cell.
“The nanoservos failed before they could tell for sure. But it does have all four nucleotides.”
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Page 474