Daily Comics Digression #16: Good Art vs Memorable Art

Daily Comics Digression #16: Good Art vs Memorable Art

Comic books are a visual medium (in other news, water is wet); and as such, there are many opinions on what makes a good one. Clearly, there are established styles that are popular in certain genres like superheroes. In addition, artistic style also seems to follow historical trends like other mediums such as music and film. Look at an old Superman comic from the '60s and compare it to something from the '90s; you'll see how tastes change.

This became a million dollar franchise.

Either way you look at it, however, it's clear that there is a high degree of quality and professionalism going into these comics by industry leaders. So how do you explain the popularity of something like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic by Mirage, a company you've surely never heard of? Taking a closer look at the art from the early issues of TNMT, it's not remarkable, to say the least. It's in black and white, which doesn't do an otherwise colorful story any favors. The characters don't look particularly appealing either. What made this comic the seed for a successful franchise when so many other efforts failed and are forgotten to history?


More importantly, how do you explain the impact of of Comix, the underground, countercultural movement that gave us Crumb Comics? More to the point, how do you explain the longevity of this?

This is considered to be art.

The more I think about it, the more I think the answer to this question lies at polar extremes of the artistic spectrum. On the one hand, there seem to be some universally accepted aspects of good art that appeal to most audiences. Even if we don't like a particular piece of art, if it's of impeccable quality, we can recognize its merits. However, our minds are also highly tuned to the things we find memorable, and memorable things are not always good. In fact, sometimes we find a particularly odd or even ugly piece of art memorable just because of our reaction to it.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic may not have been of the highest quality, but it was visually memorable because of how unique its depictions were. Seeing an anthropomorphized turtle wielding nunchuks is a mental image that's going to stay with you. Other comics at the time may have had better art; but unless they rose to the heights of the industry leaders, they probably fell into some sort of lukewarm middle ground. And its the lukewarm middle ground that we tend to forget the most. Underground comics seem to know this, as they rarely try to compete with the quality of Marvel or DC, instead focusing on being as memorable as possible.