But just as Ben Watson created an instant career as a Zappa expert after his masterful Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, Evanier might find his phone ringing from college lecture tour offers and mainstream magazine article proposals once the magnum opus is finished and in print. I never said that Grand Funk Railroad was less than ideal. To people who like Grand Funk Railroad, they are ideal. A Snickers bar is certainly tasty, but no one would confuse it with a fine meal. A few weeks ago on the TCJ Message Board someone invoked Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word.
Comics has no such standard bearer.
No one who has stepped up to the plate has smacked one out of the park, and frankly I'd settle for a sliding double. Wolfe's Painted Word may be a bad example in that it is typically venomous in its depiction of the class stratification of the world of fine art. There is little question that we operate below the radar of the fine arts. The only question worth asking is why. Most major movements in art gain widespread acceptance as a result of that movement's personification in several, or more often one, artist.