Prompt III Response.

This is a cross-listed course: one can count its credit towards either the ambiguous new English major, or the Art History major. While I understand now that the teachings we’ve received during this semester cannot be fit into any single one category, I’ll admit I took this course based off my interest in the latter discipline. Coming at the comics we’ve read this semester from a primarily-Art Historical perspective, I can’t help but reference earlier lessons while viewing these works, and thus, I also cannot help but approach this prompt in a similar fashion. Looking back at artists throughout the ages, it’s plain to see that most of the greatest names in art history stand out alone. The sole-authored/artistic process is a time-honored tradition.

While I respect collaborative processes in the comic genre –indeed, results show that they can make for extremely important, memorable projects—, and there have certainly been similarly successful partnerships in the world of “higher art” (I use quotations just to distinguish a collaborative comic from, say Rauschenberg + J. Johns (there’s a whole debate in there too, I know)), I think sole-authored comics are truest to form. By this I mean: comics artists who create successful, impactful work by themselves (Tezuka, Ormes, Tatsumsi) could be put in the same category as those famous lonewolf “high” artists we revere throughout history; their singularly-created works receive the same amount of passion, forethought, attention, and effort as those of individual “high” artists. As Kirchner was a starving young artist, so too was Tezuka. Both worked hard on their own and became leaders of their respective artistic movements. Without the interjections of outside influences, they were able to create art forms and spread messages about what they thought was important in the world, just as so many competent individuals did before them, and will continue to do so as the field transforms in its progression throughout time. Could they have collaborated with others to create “Potzdammer Platz,” or Astro Boy? Sure. But would the products they turned out be as wildly influential? Who’s to say? The inverse of that question can obviously be asked of the makers of Watchmen, so in all honesty both approaches can either fail or succeed if fate wills it. It just strikes me that the artist has occupied history in his/her exercise of individual expression; and it will continue to be that way for some time to come.