There is no name better associated with the phrases "Internet comics," "future of the medium" and "potentials of the form" than Scott McCloud. There is also no one more deserving of the title "comics' resident futurist." After all, McCloud can't sit still. He has spent much of the past seven years advocating the digital rebirth of comic art, and since Reinventing Comics (his ambitious follow-up to 1993's significant Understanding Comics) appeared last summer, he has balanced a busy schedule of public speaking with periodic experiments in online comics.

While his website www.scottmccloud.com (launched in mid-1998) has been called the best one-stop introduction to digital comics, McCloud has concentrated since mid-2000 on sponsored projects for other sites: Zot! Online, a digital revival of his well-loved superhero-cum-science-fiction series at www.comicbookresources.com and I Can't Stop Thinking!, an ongoing addendum to Reinventing Comics, hosted by www.thecomicreader.com. In the five installments published thus far, I Can't Stop Thinking! covers questions of form, technique, and economics with McCloud's usual fearlessness, with links to Zot! Online to illustrate its points.

Journal writer Charles Hatfield interviewed McCloud recently about the theory and practice of McCloud's online comics and prospects for the future potential of true digital comics.

Here's a passage that was trimmed from the print version of Charles Hatfield's interview with Scott McCloud.

HATFIELD: Let me ask you about this, from pages 50 and 51 of Reinventing: "The boundaries that result [between Art and non-Art] are irrational and arbitrary, but they are human, and although comics has rarely been a beneficiary of these distinctions, creators can certainly try to work within them, at that same time they work to overcome them." And then you talk about the value of institutions like MoMA, for example, to symbolize the importance of Art. It seems to me that that whole discussion is very cagey; it's kind of uncertain [mutual laughter] about whether one ought to play ball with that whole critical perspective in the first place.

McCLOUD: Well, it's obviously a pyrrhic victory if you have to compromise the integrity of your work in order to gain the mantle of integrity [laughs]. The notion of comics as fine Art is ultimately symbolic; and Art itself is such a quagmire of competing definitions and understandings...

But comics' place in society is worth fighting for. It's a matter of dignity! We should aspire to a higher place in popular culture, for the very practical reasons I give in that chapter, not because it's going to convey some sacred aura on the medium. It's because the kid who is inspired to make comics as a profession is more likely to be supported by whatever academic institution he or she winds up in the clutch of [laughs], and is more likely to be supported by his or her parents. It allows us some sort of substantial defense in the case of negative institutional scrutiny, like what happened in the fifties. These are all very practical reasons. This is a book written by a working cartoonist! [laughs].

HATFIELD: By the way, I really enjoyed being lumped in with the Pinellas County authorities and Dr. Wertham in the "institutional scrutiny" chapter [laughs].

McCLOUD: Oh yeah, right [laughter]. There's quite a spectrum. From Lucy Caswell to Frederic Wertham - that's going a long distance.

HATFIELD: It seems like there's a lot of pressure in the "art and literature" chapter, on the one hand, to encourage people not to hide their visions under masks of "false modesty"...

McCLOUD: Comics has a rich history of self-loathing. For many generations, there was that sense of, "Don't call yourself an artist, don't put on airs. C'mon, you're just one of us. This is just entertainment! Don't get too uppity." And I've seen this in action. I've seen Will Eisner, for instance, talking to people of his generation, or slightly younger people, like Stan Lee [laughs], and I've seen how vastly different Will's attitude was from theirs.

And it doesn't just come from the old, war-era veterans; it also comes from some of comics' best artists, who are just modest people, and it also comes from many of our more iconoclastic artists - people from the underground era, or from the more iconoclastic alternative wing, who distrust the pretentiousness of gallery shows and Guggenheim grants and whatnot. The sort of stuff that people like Spiegelman have worked for, they see that as empty pretense. Some just like the gritty, sort of disreputable nature of comics, because they feel it conveys a certain freedom and authenticity to the medium. So they're very suspicious of any attempts to elevate comics' status.

HATFIELD: I think that's really self-defeating. I find it odd that people should crave a kind of ratification, a different kind of positive attention, and at the same time have an almost allergic aversion to the very means of getting that attention - the institutions, the things like galleries, museums, and whatnot. It's as if people are dancing on coals; they can't make up their minds about what they want.

McCLOUD: I understand many working cartoonists' aversions to institutions like museums. I understand their disinterest in the image-building initiatives that people like Spiegelman have engaged in over the years. What I don't understand is why they feel the need to tear down a figure like Spiegelman, as often happens. I understand them not wanting to participate themselves; I don't understand the hostility towards it.

HATFIELD: There's an awful lot of pressure on that chapter I was referring to. You've got to talk about getting beyond this disabling false modesty, and at the same time there's this statement, "the trappings of high art and literature may be a sham, but..." [laughs].

McCLOUD: I know. I'm hedging my bets in that. We're talking about a passage that may reflect my own conflicting notions. Because I think both sides have a point. If somebody like R. Crumb can produce very potent work while completely turning his back on that sort of thing [i.e., "image-building"], well, that's some interesting data that needs to be processed.

HATFIELD: Certainly some cartoonists, Crumb among them, are harder to reclaim, or recuperate, in institutions like classrooms and museums, partly because of the fear of reaction.

McCLOUD: Crumb's a special case.

HATFIELD: Because he's an especially important case. I do know someone who has taught Crumb material, who felt forced, not simply because of their own instincts, but also because of university policy, to issue a disclaimer early in the term saying, "Look over our reading list now. If you don't like it, now's the time to leave, because there's stuff here that may mash your buttons."

McCLOUD: Yeah, the [sort of thing] they reserve for hate literature and whatnot... I'm still kind of proud that I managed to get that kind of disclaimer just by talking about creators' rights in the comic-book industry [laughter]. I'm not denying the Holocaust or anything.

To read the rest of this interview, please see Comics Journal #232, on sale now!

All site contents are © 2002