Landscapes of the page: modernity

But comics did not spring up from nothing. Any impression of a continuing progression from naïve to sophisticated, from untutored to worldly-wise, is to deny an essential conservatism in comic aesthetics. Comics might be produced faster and with richer colours on a computer, but there is just too much evidence of graphic and narrative richness from the past, even before the newspaper comic arrived, to credit the computer with any more "revolutionary" role than, say, "Liquid Paper".

"Pre"-historic comic forms were graphically sophisticated and readable in much the same way as Internet-resident comics.

So, on to the pictures!
Well, at least to some pictures of pictures . . .

		Ephemeral landscapes: of the page, past and future . . . Bracketing modernity

`back to the beginning of Landscape OF the page` `Fencing manuals` `William Hogarth` `Rodolphe Töpffer` `Coconino World` `Understanding (and Reinventing) Comics`		Modernity embraces the ideas of progress, of improvement, of transformation. Of the idea of things becoming better than they were in the past. Comics as a popular art-form should be especially modern. Mainstream comics are at once artistic and industrial products: they can present any kind of world that a creator can conceive and an audience can accept. But comics did not spring up from nothing. Any impression of a continuing progression from naïve to sophisticated, from untutored to worldly-wise, is to deny an essential conservatism in comic aesthetics. Comics might be produced faster and with richer colours on a computer, but there is just too much evidence of graphic and narrative richness from the past, even before the newspaper comic arrived, to credit the computer with any more "revolutionary" role than, say, "Liquid Paper". "Pre"-historic comic forms were graphically sophisticated and readable in much the same way as Internet-resident comics. So, on to the pictures! Well, at least to some pictures of pictures . . .

Bracketing modernity