This Post

• Is about comics
• Is about all comics, but mostly deals with comic strips
• Is also about the media 
• Deals with satire as well
• May contain references I am embarrassed to make, because they acknowledge my love for bad newspaper comics
• Was inspired by my love of good newspaper comics
• Treats comics as both a singular and a plural. The former describes the medium, the latter the media. 

We are not paying enough attention to comics. They're everywhere. If we define any sequential art as comics (apologies to Scott McCloud), then there are comics in airplanes, on the bus, at the hospital, in the grocery store and in the newspaper--but not just the funny pages. Comics tell us how to build our furniture and where pharaohs are buried. The medium of comics is more prevalent than any other but text. Comics can be found in more places than televisions, and there are TVs everywhere. Heck, comics are on TV. 

Comics give us information. The USA Today may not print Garfield or the like, but multi-panel infographics are comics (and the whole damn thing is basically one big cartoon anyway). 

But enough of this "stereo instructions with pictures are actually comics" nonsense. I'm saying we don't pay enough attention to regular comics. To capital-C Comics. To newspaper comics.

On the CBC show Q this month, host Jian Ghomeshi described the strip Doonsebury as "a satire of day-to-day life, delivered in real time." In real time. That is the advantage of comics over every other media, except the most modern medium (the internet), and two television shows (Daily Show and Colbert Report). But before those, what other form had the potential for such fresh critiques? Who else but cartoonists had the opportunity to create meaningful art that would be wrapped up and thrown at millions of people every day? 

Newspaper writers (and journalists--like me!--in general). 

It's impossible to divorce newspaper comics from the paper. Journalists can do great things, but they're limited to words and the occasional photograph (which they often don't take). There's room for subversion on the editorial page. There's even more in the comics section. A well-written story or column can plant an idea and water the seed, but it may take 500 words to do so. A comic strip can do the same in four panels. What's more, the comic can do it without you noticing. 

Too bad it rarely does. Some political cartoons are downright bad, and the worst of them show the burden the editorial cartoon format puts on an artist. It's all metaphor, but everything has to be labeled. The cartoon must be a single square. It's a tough gig. Cartoonists who are fortunate enough to get into the comics section have more room and more tries, though they usually don't take advantage of either. 

Books have always been blocked or banned in America, but they've never been taken to the mat en masse the way their funny-book cousins have. Congressional panels were established to review and censor violent comic books shortly after the hearings on Communism and before anyone raised a fuss about rock and roll music. In 1954, the nation was outraged over violent comic books. Hand wringers saw poison for youth in True Crime comics. It was a medium perverted, they said. It was media that--through new printing techniques and mass-market appeal--could create real danger to the USA. But at the same time, other comics were being rolled up and dropped on countless doorsteps across the county. Those who tied comic books to juvenile delinquency based much of their argument on form, rather than content (though content was still the main concern), as if sequential art was a highway directly to readers' subconscious. There were comics that promoted morality and harmless newspaper comics, but if you follow the logic of many of the detractors, all comics had an above-average power to mold impressionable minds. 

The power of this dual personality hasn't gone unnoticed. Doonesbury and Bloom County won Pulitzers for their real-time satire of daily life. (Doonesbury is in my spell check, even.) Calvin and Hobbes is lamented as the last true art to have graced the funny pages. And, now more than ever, Peanuts is praised for bringing sophisticated, psychological (and truly depressing, at times) humor to the masses. 

But these are isolated examples. And while we, the people, may deserve a light chiding for ignoring the potential of a powerful medium these last six decades, the creators, too, deserve some harsh words for not living up to that potential. Beetle Bailey never took the risks MASH did, even though Mort Walker had thousands more chances. Mallard Fillmore is quick to echo the latest Limbaugh-approved talking points, but the horrible art and inelegant presentation (it's embarrassingly clumsy much of the time) makes the strip seem like little more than doodles in the margins of a manifesto. 

Comics creators may first say that lead times have destroyed the strips' freshness. Each strip is drawn weeks in advance. How can the artists (perhaps since artists also write their strips, we should call them auteurs) be expected to stay on top of the issues? I understand this point, but Trudeau's Doonesbury and others have overcome this gap. 

The auteurs may also say they can't get away with most things. This is a valid point, but it is also one that powerful creators could overcome. Watterson  had a tough time getting papers and syndicates to accept his frame-breaking art, but he was popular, talented and dedicated enough to conquer them. Yes, it is hard to get your comic published, and it's harder to make it popular, but it's also hard to get your movie, TV show or book made. It's hard to break into any business, and it's unfortunate that so few comics artists take full advantage of their skill, success and power. They often opt for merchandise money instead of artistic or social instigation. 

Maybe they only want to entertain. This is respectable. Not everyone wants to change the world. But considering how attached readers are to comics (literally thousands of letters are sent when a single paper changes the funny pages) and considering the medium's power, it's surprising there aren't more revolutionaries in the newspaper comics business. Sure, readers may not see comics as more than reliable quasi-entertainment, but publishers and artists aren't doing much to make them think differently.