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What so wrong with being “cartoony”?

What kid in the last fifty years doesn’t remember getting up on Saturday morning to watch cartoons over a large bowl of cereal?  Of course, some of those cartoons were super hero cartoons like Spiderman and His Amazing Friends or the Super Friends.  These cartoons were always simple and shallow.  No one questioned the motives of the villains.  They were just villains and always up to no good.  And that was good enough for us.

Back when I started my first real stint collecting comics in the early 1990’s, every comic book generally looked the same.  The books were littered with huge muscled men with shoulder pads larger than what football players wore and females who looked like they stepped right out of a science fiction porno.  And it was accepted and loved.  But it was all the same (and a little ridiculous.  I remember a one-shot parody put out by Grant Morrison mocking the style of these comic books.)

Luckily enough, comic books have diversified since then.  Not all comic book art is the same.  Not all comic book writing is the same.  Rather, comic books have diversified, and this has had a positive effect on the industry.  There is a place for all types of comic books, and by extension, all types of comic book readers. 

image However, old habits are to break.  Since I have started back collecting, I have began reading online comic book reviews, mostly to determine whether certain series which I am interested in are worth reading or not.  One critique that have seem more often or not is that the artwork of a particular book is “cartoony.”  For example, I read a recent review of Darkstar and the Winter Guard in which the reviewer referred to the artwork as being “cartoony,” wielding the term in a derogatory way to describe the art as immature.

The problem with using the term “cartoony” suggests that there is no room in comics for books with this style.  Such critiques suggest that the only artwork worth producing is art which is mature, realistic, and abstract.  I think this is a carry over from the success of books like the Arkham Asylum, the Dark Knight Returns, and the Watchmen.

But who says that all comic books should imitate this style?  I find it amazing that one of the biggest complaints the comic book readers have is that there is not enough new readers. Yet, these same readers eschew comic books which do not fit a certain style. 

There is merit in comic books which are not necessarily dark or require imagecomplex story lines.  Comic books are not just for males between the ages of 18 through 25.  And publishers have discovered this.  I have noticed over the last year that I have been collecting comic books, Marvel has released a number of books which have been geared toward female readers.  One such book called, Marvel Divas, wonderfully recounts the trials of four female super heroines, from cancer to relationship problems, from financial problems to independence from a male centered world. 

There is a place in comic books for the cartoony.  My thought is that cartoony comic books bridge the gap between the youngest of comic book readers, those tots who might read say Tiny Titans, and, adolescents who delve into the gritty, dark, complex books like Batman and Robin.

It is alright for a book like Darkstar and the Winter Guard to be cartoony if such a style properly adds to the over story.  There is nothing complex about this book.  Nothing dark or earth shattering.  It is a simple, straight forward story encapsulating the battle between heroes and villains which requires simple straight forward art with a lot of action and drama.  And that is alright and appropriate for the readers for whom the book was published.

It is with this thought that I propose that comic book critics retire the word “cartoony” and find more descriptive terms that judge the artwork not on its maturity, but, rather on whether the art in fact contributes to the work’s purpose.

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