From: mss2@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: History and Comics (was Re: Egyptian Gods and Comics)
Date: 14 Dec 92 01:59:27 GMT
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <Bz82z4.6LI@cs.dal.ca> castle@cs.dal.ca (JULIAN GUTHRIE CASTLE) writes:
>In article <1992Dec13.054033.25214@midway.uchicago.edu>, mss2@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer) writes:

>|> 	_The Cartoon History of the Universe_ (by Larry Gonick) Volume 3
>|> Actually, the series as a
>|> whole is a pretty good survey of ancient history for a comic, though
>|> to be honest comics aren't really the best medium for history IMHO.

>What? ATTTACK!

>The Collected "Cartoon History of the Universe" is being
>used by a few schools as a supplement for history texts.

>Wayne Vasant did some history with "BattleGroup Peiper" and
>a comic-docudrama of Pearl Harbour in "Days of Darkness"

	Well, I certainly wasn't dismissing the medium out of hand.  I
like comics a great deal.  But while I think they're fine for a basic
introduction to a subject, they just can't have the level of depth
that a good book on the same subject can.  The cost of Volume 1 of the
Cartoon History of the Universe is comparable, and in fact a bit
higher, than a paperback copy of William H. McNeill's _The Rise of the
West_, and the latter book is far superior as a survey of human
history, both in the depth which it gives to the period both books
cover in the greater breadth (since it carries the story up to the
20th century).

	Conversely, it will take most people significantly longer to
read, and doubtless a decent number of people have gotten a smattering
of world history they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.  I'm not
knocking Larry Gonick's book-- it's entertaining and generally
accurate (though it occasionally presents speculations as if they were
settled matters).  Comics have many of the same strengths and
weaknesses that documentaries have, and like documentaries they make a
good starting point, or a good way to become casually familiar with a
subject that otherwise doesn't interest one greatly, but if one wants
to learn about a historical subject in any depth at all they're no
substitute for good secondary sources and primary sources.

>Various 'history' comics have encapsulated information, dates
>and all the rest  miles better than all my history teachers.
>(then again...maybe I just had cruddy teachers)

	Quite possibly.  The ability of teachers to turn what I find
one of the most fascinating subjects around (though I'm biased, having
done my B.A. in history) will never cease to amaze me.  It wasn't
classes which inspired me to love history, but my own outside reading
(beginning with Isaac Asimov's series of histories, which I heartily
recommend to anyone looking for an enjoyable introduction to ancient
and medieval history).  The adeptness with which tales of heroes and
rogues, politicians and warriors, and the whole pageant of human
behavior and human fortune can be transmuted into memorizing lists of
dates or rote repetition of factors leading to some event or other is
astonishing.

	To wrest this rant violently back to comics, one of the things
I love about Neil Gaiman is the way he brings the past to life when
his character's flash back to it.  It's easy enough to talk about 17th
century England containing such-and-such historical factors, or
thus-and-so things going on with the Royal Society-- but Gaiman brings
the era to life.

	Which is the proper role for historical fiction, but it's also
what a good history can do.  Steven Runciman, writing about the last
days of Constantinople before its fall to the Turks in 1453, can make
the reader see in his mind the growing desperation as the siege is
completed, the waning hope for aid from the west, and the final
preparations, material and spiritual, made by the people of the last
outpost of the Roman Empire before falling to an enemy they had
resisted for centuries.  A good history of the Hundred Years War can
take the reader to a fleeing French court virtually certain of defeat,
and then show the transformation to victory coming under the banner of
an adolescent girl claiming to hear the voice of God.  Tales of love
and sex, victory and defeat, treachery and honor, inspiration and
invention... making _that_ boring is truly an achievement, and no less
so for being so exasperatingly easy to find.

	Books like _The Cartoon History of the Universe_ serve an
important purpose, in proving to skeptical people that history _can_
be entertaining.  But, IMHO, they can only serve as a beginning.  You
can't do justice to the history of the Roman Empire or the life of
Harald Hardrada or World War I within the limited scope of a comic
book history.  Conversely, though, if everyone were familiar with as
much history as Larry Gonick has made available in his series, I'd
breathe a bit easier about the state of historical knowledge among the
general population.

Mike
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mschiffer@aal.itd.umich.edu	    Virginia (1784)
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