Politically Committed Comics - World War 3 Illustrated

[eheitner]

Forum member dominocorp posted this excerpt earlier today on twitter:

So, I am hesitant to post this question because I feel like it comes off as whiny, but I can't resist the urge:

Why is there so little discussion of the ongoing publication World War 3 Illustrated, which has been a home for an extremely diverse spectrum of "radical" "politically committed" comics for more than 40 years, and which I have been involved with for the past 15 off and on? The cartoonists who contribute to WW3I are not just diverse demographically and geographically, but in all the ways they approach comix making and the specific questions of how to make politically committed art, with as many answers as there are contributors, and maybe more as the same artist will try different approaches in different issues.

I know many of the older WW3I crew have somewhat of a chip on their shoulder from what they feel is decades of being ignored and snubbed by the "mainstream" comix scene-- like, they think of themselves as contemporaries of Raw and Weirdo, so why aren't they discussed alongside them?

Other posters on this board have discussed James Romberger's work in 7 Miles a Second and his various short stories--- a lot of that work was published originally in WW3I! Its the only comix mag I know of that is still regularly publishing new work by Sue Coe. And WW3I continues to invite new and emerging cartoonists into the fold, including myself (hah, no longer young but I was in 2008 when I was invited to join) and many others. We've featured cartoonists from all over the world, including Ukrainian and Russian artists against the war in Ukraine, Palestinian, Egyptian, and Lebanese cartoonists reacting to events in the region, etc. etc.

One reason may be that that WW3I was and has been traditionally distributed outside even the alt comix circles: in the 80s and 90s the major distributor was Mordam Records, a punk music label, and currently the major distributor is AK Press, an anarchist book publisher. I've observed that when the magazine tables, we do better at venues like the NYC Anarchist Book Fair than at SPX. The WW3I core crew are largely not on any social media and are pretty unable/unwilling to engage in the typical comix marketing.

But....is there something else? Is the work not seen as good? Is there an allergy to the perceived political comittments of WW3I?

Would really love to hear from folk about this!

[arecomicsevengood]

This is a legit question to ask!

My answers are probably going to be unsatisfying because I simply have not engaged with World War 3 Illustrated so I am essentially going to be articulating reasons for a lazy dismissiveness that I don't think necessarily hold up to scrutiny and my thoughts might be all over the place.

I was thinking just the other week about how James Romberger, Peter Kuper, and Scott Cunningham all started off at World War 3 Illustrated but were making work for DC/Vertigo in the late nineties/early aughts and was thinking that was because they were based in New York City and were around. Maybe this dalliance with the mainstream is viewed suspiciously? Or if you mostly know Peter Kuper for Spy Vs Spy you might not take him seriously, even though the approach seen in The System is so labor-intensive it's insane.

I will say there is a big anthology of World War 3 Illustrated I've looked through and thought looked, on the whole, really strong. I do think there is a skepticism I feel towards political work - that it's probably not good, that it's didactic - which then is likely not helped by the AK Press distribution and not having the "stamp of approval" of a standard alt-comics publisher. The posters and decor for sale in anarchist bookstores is usually pretty bad, embarrassing in the simplicity of its politics and unappealing in its aesthetics.

I do think it's hard to make political work that's compelling - I actually think for work to be "subversive" or persuasive it needs to not betray its intentions from the jump but have it seem like its conclusions are being arrived at organically. I'm pretty left-leaning politically but also feel pretty bad about human nature in a lot of ways and anything that doesn't acknowledge the failures of people feels naive, or preachy. And I guess Marxism wants to talk about systems in a way that doesn't leave space for characters. When you watch a Costa-Gavras film or something it's mindblowing both because you don't see those politics in a film ever and because of the high level of craft. Not sure there's a comics equivalent!

I guess the main things I associate with "political comics" (not counting editorial cartooning) are like, the lineage for woodcut novels from Frans Masereel to Eric Drooker which is a style I don't like AT ALL (and that Peter Kuper I see as being related to) and then there's like text-heavy infographics that are barely comics (the Darryl Cunningham approach, who to the best of my knowledge isn't in WW3I.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, most of fan culture has worse politics than myself and I think a lot of people (other working artists) are hesitant to offer their approval to something that might be "alienating" in that specific way.

[arecomicsevengood]

I also forgot about how readers, in general, do not like anthologies, for assorted reasons - while the work being available only within the context of the collective is a political act it works against the individual customer's sense of taste/curation. It also works against any individual work or artist shining too brightly or making more of an impression.

[dominocorp]

I think Seth tobocman is one of the most underrated artists (the true Seth in comics of consequence) of his generation and if I'd been doing my job better, I'd have brought him up in that question I posed to Lale/Aidan. But I think the point still stands in that WW3 politics are relegated to that scene, almost the exception that proves the rule.

I think the comparison of how WW3 does at anarchist book fair vs spx is very telling...spx is highly politicized, of course, but not in the way we are talking about here. To me, there's a clear criticism to be made of the way the current Image unionization conversation is going, which people steeped in WW3 type politics would clearly see, whereas the world around SPX would probably be adverse to that critique being made....

here's an under discussed radical comics project...SPX should give this group free table space every year:

www.abocomix.com

[teemcgee]

I think my fundamental prejudice against political comics - the kind of thing that has kept me from seeking out something like WW3 - isn't that they are didactic, it's that for the large majority of political comics I've read, the analysis is shallow (whether I agree with that analysis or not). If I want to challenge my perspective I'm looking for something that doesn't feel like a gloss on a one minute explainer in a broadsheet newspaper.

[jporcellino]

I've tried selling WW3I at my distro, and it gets zero traction. Maybe because my customers are more "comics" readers than "zine" readers. I'm attending my first show in three years this weekend -- the Madison Print and Resist Festival -- it's super open and accommodating, and at heart it's a radical zine fest. There's an understanding in the zine world that comics are a big part of things, but the reverse is not really true. WW3I, I think, reads like a zine to most (?) comics fans. Even though it's comics, it's alien. The above-mentioned distribution facts also contribute. It's very 'other," and for all the talk of acceptance in the comics community, it (the CC) can be very fad and hype driven. WW3I is like the opposite of that, and consequently I think some/many comics readers don't know what to make of it (if they are even aware of its existence, which I'm sure is doubtful for most).

I guess what I'm saying is-- WW3I is legendary in the zine scene, but the zine scene and the comix scene, while they overlap in places, are very different things.

[eheitner]

Thanks for engaging honestly on this question!

To those who haven't checked out WW3I, I'd urge you to flip through a copy-- despite what may be our rep, there's a lot of stuff beyond the didactic or explainers--- different editors have different tastes, but I for one have always shunned the Darryl Cunningham-type stuff, tbh. Seth Tobocman told me once that what he regarded as the key criteria for contributors be that its from people who have some skin in the game, people who are participating in the events they are describing-- which means there is a lot of autobio, reportage, but also much more experimental stuff, fiction, comics-as-poetry, essays, surrealism, in addition to some healthy agitprop. I mean, I think doing GOOD agitprop is a skill and a craft equal to any other genre 😎 Seth's own recent work in the mag has actually been to me super interesting in that it is much more autobiographical and about reflecting on a life lived of political commitments, the forces that shaped him, etc., still done with his incredible skill (I mean, speaking of agitprop, I think Seth is the best there is at it).

Some of the best work in the magazine, in my opinion, is very much about people wrestling with big political questions and not finding answers-- like the comix of Sandy Jimenez. Even Seth's most famous (and I think rightly highly regarded) work, "War in the Neighborhood," while not shy about his political commitments, is very much about the complexity of living with those commitments and is not a shallow examination of them at all.

The last issue I edited I was very honored and pleased to present a big spotlight on A.B.O. Comix, including an interview with one of the founders, and contributions and interviews from currently incarcerated members-- if I may plug for a moment:
www.akpress.org/worldwearefightingfor.html

[eheitner]

I will say also, as a brief note, that when we do get reviewed by comics critics, it tends to be a lot about the content of the stories, which is great, but very little engagement with the work as comics-- and I think while many of the WW3I contributors are coming from outside comix, many others are very dedicated cartoonists who want to have their work engaged as artists!

[arecomicsevengood]

Apr 20, 2023 13:23:46 GMT eheitner said:

The last issue I edited I was very honored and pleased to present a big spotlight on A.B.O. Comix, including an interview with one of the founders, and contributions and interviews from currently incarcerated members-- if I may plug for a moment:
www.akpress.org/worldwearefightingfor.html

Damn I had no idea Jose Muñoz was in there! Although he definitely fits the bill of a cartoonist with skin in the game.

[eheitner]

Just to be 100% transparent, it's not comics from Muñoz-- he sent us the beautiful watercolor that we used for the cover ("Red Dawn Over the Pampas") and some sketches and drawings and paintings that we assembled into a little gallery. It's a great example of what I was talking about, though-- it was beautiful and seemed to fit our vision for the issue even tho it's not explicitly what many would call "political." Seth is actually working on an article where he discusses the impact that Alack Sinner and Sampayo and Munoz had on them in the 80s, talking about politically committed comics, and Frank Miller as a pale imitation copying the surface signifiers and ignoring the weight of the content.

[jporcellino]

Speaking of WW3I, I tabled at the Madison Print and Resist Festival yesterday. Also tabling was Susan Simensky Bietila. She had a beautiful cardboard heron with her! art-as-activism.blogspot.com/