The idea of the potential irrelevance of the Internet, sitting as we are at the cusp of a new millenium, must seem inconceivable to us. I mean, the internet is more than a buzzword, more than a veil of promises. Instead, it's a ubiquitous and important part of everyday life for millions and millions of people. The internet shapes global events, trends, and information. The rate of growth of the Internet surpasses every other form of technology in history. More importantly, it puts everyone who uses it on the same footing. Everyone can talk to everyone else, and unlike HAM radio, no one has to wait for the other person to finish talking. It's hard to believe that this idea was a popular one in the early nineties, and not just among the neo-luddite set, but among the average citizen who had been exposed to hundreds of "life changing inventions" in their lifetime. To them, the Internet was just another media-spin from the fat-cat advertising agencies in Manhattan, and they were convinced it would never make an impact on their life. Only now, 10 years after the fact do we see just how wrong that idea was. But that ideology, that sort of minimalism and cynicism that greets ideas with great scope and range, it didn't die. I've personally seen a lot of it, particularly in regards to Scott McCloud's REINVENTING COMICS.

McCloud, who wowed the entire industry with his first book-length examination of the comic form, UNDERSTANDING COMICS, hit anticipatory readers squarely between the eyes this year with REINVENTING COMICS, and it's been an interesting few months since then. RENVENTING arrived right in the middle of a series of revolutions in comics, particularly among the online community. Warren Ellis's Old Bastard Manifesto, the NEW RAGE, the NEW VANGUARD, the NEW RADICALS (oh, wait, that's a band...), all of these ideas were advocating very sweeping changes to the comic industry. When REINVENTING COMICS hit the shelves, to the people online participating in these discussions and talking about all these new ideas, it felt a little bit... irrelevant. Yeah, it's sort of obvious that we should be looking at alternate methods of distribution, and yeah we SHOULD be striving at greater diversity and minority representation, and the Internet truly is a well and glorious place. I personally saw the phrase "preaching to the choir" in response to REINVENTING COMICS no less than five times. So does that make it irrelevant?

Of course not. Because for every Ellis Forum, there's a WIZARDWORLD ONLINE. For every NEW VANGUARD, there's a crusty-old-vanguard-that-aspires-to-be-John-Byrne. There are people out there that really, really need to be exposed to the ideas in REINVENTING COMICS, and you personally being aware of the problems it discusses does not make it irrelevant. That is not a valid criticism.

So with that out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks here. The individual actions that McCloud advises the comic industry and medium (and it's important to note that the industry and the medium are two different things) take to improve themselves. His 12 revolutions. The book is divided into two parts, and numerous chapters that examine the 12 revolutions McCloud advocates, as well as providing a plethora of background material on the comics medium, the development of the current industry, home computing, and the internet, making for a very thorough examination of his ideas. Thorough, though he doesn't really repeat himself. The concepts of UNDERSTANDING COMICS are referenced quite frequently, and it's generally assumed that readers of REINVENTING COMICS have read UNDERSTANDING COMICS as well. Although I don't think it's asking too much for readers to be familiar with his work, many new readers to McCloud may find themselves a little lost at some of the leaps he makes between points that students of UNDERSTANDING COMICS will automatically... well, understand.

So, after a short recap of UNDERSTANDING COMICS, McCloud introduces the 12 revolutions that comics need to undergo to turn into a thriving, important, respected medium. Right away there's a difference in tone to REINVENTING COMICS, as McCloud is making statements about quality, "right" and "wrong", whereas UNDERSTANDING COMICS was so non-offensive that it ended up validating Rob Liefeld alongside Will Eisner in it's attempts to identify and promote the medium. The first page of the introduction expresses doubt at comics' future, the second page casts aspersions on publishers who lust for Hollywood's approval, license merchandise based on their work, cater to the speculator mentality, or "pin [all their] hopes on any one genre". This change in tone may be unsettling and off putting, particularly to the members of the creative community who engage in these practices. But again, I think it's something that needs to be said, and I'm glad he's saying it. After briefly introducing the first nine revolutions, he undertakes a brief history of the last 10 years in comics, showing the gains and losses made in each area, before moving onto the meat of the book, the revolutions themselves, and how we they should be implimented.

First up, McCloud examines Comics as Literature and Comics as Art. Or rather, as serious works of both. McCloud examines the humble beginnings of both, and ties the public sentiment at their inception into the public sentiment of today very effectively. Basically, at the inception of what we know as the comics industry today, comic artists were honing their craft on the comic strip pages of major newspapers. The newspapers, the reading public, and the even the artists themselves didn't take their medium very seriously. Some of the most notable creators in the medium laughed off any suggestion that comics were "art" (which puts a recent set of ridiculously stupid comments by Jeph Loeb about how (paraphrasing) "no comic should take longer to read than a trip to the john" in a whole new light). I found it interesting that McCloud didn't go deeper into the origins of the form in other countries around the world, particularly in Europe and Japan, to show how their inception and subsequent treatment by the public differed from America. Fredrick Schodt covered similar themes in MANGA! MANGA!, and it would have made an excellent counterpoint to the American Industry. But anyhow.

McCloud ventures into some larger territory too, about the role artists and writers play in society, and though his observations are insightful, he's on dangerous grounds in trying to define what is -- and isn't art, but thankfully at least he's aware of it. He disowns a significant part of UNDERSTANDING COMICS that deals with the same subject, so it'll be interesting to see where McCloud stands on this chapter later in his career... All in all, the history lessons and observations he's made paint a somewhat grim picture of our medium, and unless we start looking to larger inspirations and ideas about art and comics, we might just be in trouble. A very well made point.

McCloud moves on to the ideas of Creators Rights and Industry Innovation, which are perhaps the two most important chapters in the book to me, and should be to many of the people working in the industry today. McCloud's Creator's Bill Of Rights comes up, as does the sorry state of the comic industry at present. This chapter, and the subsequent discussions it inspires about the future of publishing and distribution, is probably most responsible for Publisher DC Comics' disclaimer at the front of the book. But anyhow, his two points can be summed up rather succinctly; Creators deserve the right to fully own their creations, and to profit from those creations, and; The Business of Comics must reinvent itself to allow for more relevant, innovative, and important works to succeed. What's bound to be a major point of contention is that McCloud describes any step in between an artist selling original artwork to an interested buyer (like, printing, distributing, or retailing) as a compromise. Now, it's obvious to me that the word isn't intended with a pejorative tone, but it can very easily be read that way, and at the least is a very stern word that's not likely to win him any popularity contests. Work for a major company? You're compromising. Give in to any editorial suggestion? You're compromising. Have your comic printed? Compromise. Yikes.

Having read the book in it's entirety, it's easy to see where McCloud is going with his talk of compromise. He's a big Internet booster, and a fan of the one-to-many business plan. Disagreement will definitely come with his suggestions for business models, and that discussion is welcome. But the larger points that this chapter makes about creators rights and publishing innovation shouldn't be ignored based on that disagreement. Creators do deserve to profit from their creations. Shuster and Siegel's heirs shouldn't have to be fighting in court to get the rights back to Superman. I know they created him, you know they created him, the Canadian Government acknowledges that they created him in Television commercials. Why doesn't DC Comics? Further, the comic industry really is a stagnant and unwelcoming place. It exists to service previously existing trademarks, and not to inspire creativity and ingenuity, and aspiring creators (and judging by reaction to a recent high-profile firing on the X-Men books, long-time creators) need to be made aware of that. These are valid points, and valid suggestions.

Public Perception plays into the next chapter, along with Institutional Scrutiny. Basically, how we're perceived by the world around us. If you've seen "The Comic Guy" (his real name, incidentally) on THE SIMPSONS, you know that public perception isn't the greatest. This is the chapter that I feel falls the flattest. Because while it's steeped in the history, information, and opinion of the previous chapters, it doesn't really make any suggestions on where we should be going. It identifies a problem without suggesting a solution, and for a book that is itself written as a manifesto, this is an almost inexcusable error. I would have much preferred McCloud to say "This is what we should be doing to get the important work noticed, this is how we should be combating the misconceptions of our industry," and instead we just get him telling us that we are unnoticed and misunderstood (poor us). Perhaps more telling though, this is the chapter that no one can find real fault with. You can't argue with history and personal experience.

Now, perhaps McCloud meant for the next chapter, which looks at making comics relevant to more than "Straight Middle-Class White Men" to explain how to improve our image. Gender Balance, Minority Representation, and Diversity of Genre are the 3 revolutions that McCloud feels we need to tackle in order to bring a wider audience of readers into our industry, and a wider variety of creators into our medium. At first, his simplistic "if we make it, they will come" attitude to diversity is sort of annoying. But in trademark style McCloud weaves personal experience, comics history, and present-day activism into a compelling argument on all fronts. We do need more female creators and stories, we need more minority creators and stories featuring minorities, and even more importantly the stories need to be more than just gay black women dressed in revealing costumes and capes beating the tar out of each other.

Diversity is probably the most important revolution that comics has to undergo in order for it to become an thriving (or even viable) industry (in my opinion). McCloud believes that people en masse will not buy into adolescent male power fantasies no matter how efficiently they're delivered, but your gay friend WILL brave a dingy, ugly comic shop to get a copy of STUCK RUBBER BABY if you tell him to. Or better yet, he'll purchase it online from the comfort of his chair. But it's something that's difficult to accomplish in today's retail climate. McCloud makes a very astute point that the comic industries in Europe and particularly Japan embrace a wide variety of story-types, and that theoretically it should be just as easy for the North American market to do the same. Even more telling is the point that he doesn't make throughout the chapter, that in the mainstream industry's attempt to turn out more "dynamic" page flow and panel composition they're actually making comics that are harder to read and understand, ensuring that only the people with the very specific set of visual skills that come from years of reading North American comics will be able to easily digest North American comics.

And it's at this point that McCloud moves into the very radical territory with Part 2 of REINVENTING COMICS, the digital revolutions. Digital Production, Digital Delivery, and Digital Comics. In short, creating comics using digital media, promoting and distributing conventional comics online and creating and distributing entirely digital comics online, and finally how comics will evolve in an entirely digital environment. These chapters have generated the most comment and controversy, as they not only suggest but advocate doing away with traditional media, traditional format, and traditional publishing in favour of a hard-line self-publishing effort via the internet. A lot of people are highly skeptical of McCloud's theories on digital delivery, and for the most part I'm right there with them. I mean, I use the internet. I actually connect to the Internet on a 28.8 modem. No one is more aware of load time, connection speeds, and the limits of technology as I. I honestly don't know whether or not McCloud's ideas on the future of the medium in a digital environment are even feasible, let alone likely.

But then I think back to my friend from 1992, and his thoughts on HAM radio.

I'm still not convinced, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

McCloud very accurately and level-headedly takes time to explore the origins of the Internet and the World Wide Web making this as much a history lesson as a manifesto. He develops very reasoned explanations on how he reaches his conclusions too, particularly when it comes to the business and distribution side of digital comics. Most appreciatively though, he doesn't offer up any wholesale criticism without being willing to try and offer solutions to those problems. He takes the time to explain why certain revolutions in each of the three internet-related areas are important, and builds on the previous chapters of the book. Although a little long-winded, with the history lessons gaining more and more prominence towards the end of the book, it is a fascinating road map for the future of comics.

Unfortunately, the strongest criticisms so far seem to be that it's an implausible map that McCloud has given us. Given the set of variables and situations McCloud has stated as necessary for his prophesizing to come to fruition, it's an entirely plausible solution to what road comics will take. Yes, situations could change drastically in the next year, or 6 months, or tomorrow that would make his ideas untenable. But considering that Moore's Law, which McCloud bases the majority of his technological innovation and progress on has been functioning better-than-expected for nearly 20 years now, it's not altogether implausible that his ideas on technology are spot-on.

In the end though, even if he is correct, and the future of comics lies in distributing them through the Internet and creating them in a digital environment, that is a conscious choice that a lot of artists are going to have to make. And it's not necessarily a choice that all artists should make. A lot of artists will prefer to stay in traditional media, in traditional distribution formats. Though McCloud has quite successfully argued against that choice in the first half of REINVENTING COMICS, it's still a valid choice for a great many systems. Particularly mainstream comics publishers, which, if they follow McCloud's line of advice will essentially put themselves out of business. And so, while REINVENTING COMICS is an important manifesto, and McCloud states his case very accurately, thoroughly, and effectively, it's not the path that everyone is going to take.