A New Modernism in Comics
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insufficiencies of the printing process regularly eroded the merits of the drawing.
As the production was mainly printed on the cheap and not endurable paper of
dailies and weeklies, this was always a crucial issue for the artists\ Mutatis
mutandis, the expansion of the TV-cartoon market, which in Europe pushed many
publishers to concentrate heavily on the filmic recycling of great traditional series,
is a good contemporary example of the repeated destruction of the graphic qualities
in the continental comics.
A second reason concerning the defects of the script and, more generally,
the lack of interest for the narrative dimension of the genre, was the decline in
story writers. Many artists aspired to be ‘‘complete authors”, i.e. authors responsible
both for the storytelling and the drawing. Yet, the disappearance of the story writer
generally had a bad influence on the quality of the stories'*. Only a small number of
them managed, as Merge did, to combine good drawings with good storytelling.
A third problem was the systematic repetition of excessively well-known
models, which is particularly the case in the serialisation of every successful album.
Some of the best authors lost a great deal of their talent as they adopted the model
of series and serials: for instance, the wonderful achievement of Le rendez-vous de
Sevenoaks, by Riviere and Floc’h (1978) was never been equalled by their later
collaborations. And what to say of Andreas, who alternates masterpieces such as
Cyrrits (1978) or Le triangle rouge (1996) with ambitious but endless and endlessly
disappointing series which only aim at giving him and his family a modest lifestyle?
Finally, the deleterious tendency to cultivate the cultural otherness, or,
strangeness, of the comic strip universe, with for instance a spectacular development
of the collector’s items and gadgets market, condemned the genre to a new ghetto.
This quartet of difficulties forced the artistically conscious and ambitious authors
to renounce professionalism and return to total, but economically problematic,
independence — the only way, it seemed, to guarantee a better control over all
aspects of the creative work. Others radically changed their medium and began
painting, filming, and writing. But not all authors were obliged to give up the
economic advantages of the professional publishing companies. However, even
when they continued working without paying heed to the frustrating division of
labour of the traditional studio system, authors such as Schuiten and Peeters (the
successful duo behind the long running series The Dark Cities) had to make many
concessions, and completely new multimedia formulas had to be created (that
Peeters and Schuiten could conserve their relative independence is a direct result
of their decision to break through the frontiers of the traditional comic genres and
to jump into new markets. They now consider themselves more multimedia artists
than comic authors").
Logically, the efforts to remedy the weaknesses of comic production were
affecting all the aspects aforementioned: graphic and printing excellency.