If you think that cartooning is a silly little subset of life that has nothing to do with you, the new Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont has some news.
“Anybody who uses a cell phone, a digital device, a computer, is far more literate in the combination of words and pictures than any prior generation. We do it every day,” said Stephen Bissette, who is about to start a three-year stint as the only cartoonist laureate in the country. “We don’t think of it as a form of sequential art, a form of comics, but it is!”
I was dubious when Bissette told me this but then realized that, before we talked, I had sent an email with an emoji intermingled with words, just like a cartoon, and had been chuckling at a couple of online memes, which are an evolution of one-panel comics like “Far Side.” So, maybe he’s got something there.
This isn’t news to most geeks who have long embraced this story-telling format. There’s a dorky side to the genre, overplayed by the comic book store in “Big Bang Theory,” but it has always had a deeper side as well, dating back to superhero comic books and fueled by the infusion of Japanese manga. The expansion of the graphic-novel section in any bookstore is a testimony to its breadth, which runs from young adult to erotica to retold literary classics to original works as somber as “Maus” and “Persepolis.”
Stereotypical English professors will bemoan this trend, and since I am creating words rather than pictures for a living, I am sympathetic. But communication is communication. Whether it’s drawings, text, songs, interpretive dance or marionettes, whatever works for you is legit, even if it might not work for me.
Bissette, who like me remembers when the comics in the paper were known as the “funny pages,” says this discomfort with the idea of comingling art and words is reflected in all the awkward terminology for the format, which dances around calling them cartoons.
“‘Graphic novel’ is such a clumsy term. It was an attempt to make it clear it was a comic for an older readership, it wasn’t just for kids,” he said.
Bissette, 71, is a Vermont native well known by aficionados of horror comics, starting with his work with the legendary Alan Moore on “Saga of Swamp Thing,” including helping create the John Constantine character. He has proceeded from there; among his standouts is “Tyrant,” a realistic telling of the life of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Bissette is an example of how cartooning is serious business in Vermont. He says he was able to raise a family for more than a decade through freelancing on comics and other visual story-telling, which is a feat in itself. He also spent several years teaching at the Center for Cartoon Studies, the unique diploma-granting school just across the Connecticut River from Lebanon.
The Green Mountain State is something of a mecca for people who create comics, graphic novels, cartoons and similar story-telling devices. This was recognized in 2011 when the state created the cartoonist laureate position, which sounds ridiculous until you realize that cartoonists are much more popular than poets, who get to be laureates all the time.
When talking to Bissette I made a joke about how New Hampshire would never follow suit, but he wasn’t so sure.
“If any state had a [cartoonist laureate] it should have been New Hampshire,” he said.
Not only are we home to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he pointed out, we were also home to cartoonist Bob Montana, creator of the Archie character. “Anybody can go to Meredith and sit next to Archie” in statue form, he noted.
And then there’s the fabled, maybe mythical, connection between “Li’l Abner” and the town of Seabrook.
The title of laureate carries few assigned tasks. Bissette’s big plan, he says, is to create a history of Vermont cartooning — in cartoon form, of course. “It’s a long history, there have been a lot of cartoonists in this state,” he said. Otherwise he’ll he doing his bit to raise the profile of graphic storytelling.
The new laureate will be celebrated at a public event on April 11 at Springfield Cinemas 3 in Springfield, Vermont, including a screening of “Constantine,” a 2005 film about the most famous character he helped create. And I’m sure he’ll be telling us all to embrace our inner cartoonist.
“Cartoons have always been part of our national culture. It’s just that since early 1950s it has been looked on as somehow childish, embarrassing,” he said.
If Vermont has any say in the matter, you need be embarrassed no longer.