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Article Excerpt
Historically, there has been little space in the discipline of folkloristics for the study of the American comic book. This was the case in 1980 when Alex Scobie wrote that folklorists "have not evinced the same degree of interest as has been shown by their colleagues in the social sciences" (70). And it is no less true today when, despite an expansion of folkloristics into the realm of popular culture, discussion of sequential art in print remains conspicuously sparse. Aside from Scobie's "Comics and Folkliterature," which appeared in Fabula in 1980, the only significant writing on the topic from a folkloristic perspective is Ronald Baker's 1975 article in the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, "Folklore Motifs in the Comic Books of Superheroes". (1) Here, Baker comments on the replacement of marchen in the popular imagination with an array of mass-mediated entertainments, and then goes on to point out a set of confluences between folktale motifs and tropes from Golden Age superhero books. (2) The waxing of the latter, he suggests, makes up in part for the waning of the former. His article, and Scobie's as well, provides little more than a few introductory remarks intended to lead us toward a more well developed interest in the topic. Unfortunately, however, folklorists have been reluctant to follow.
There are a number of significant reasons, as Scobie points out, why this should be the case (70-72). Given the kinds of constraints in the past placed on folklorists engaging in the study of folklore in literature, as well as the broader perception of comic books as marginal and even ultimately harmful, comics could hardly seem like an appealing subject to pursue. Richard M. Dorson's proclamation in his 1957 article, "The Identification of Folklore in American Literature," that authors engaging in the study of folklore and literature must be able to prove the orality and traditionality of folklore items and motifs in a given text, severely limits the horizons of scholarly inquiry into comic books. Comics, after all, tend to integrate and reinterpret folklore, or explicitly refer to literary renderings, especially of myths and folktales, leaving the role of oral influences either irrelevant or impossible to determine. And while criticism of Dorson's methodology---explicitly from Daniel Hoffman, Alan Dundes, and Mary Ellen Brown in the 1960s and 1970s, and implicitly from literary scholars like Stephen Benson more recently--has been voluminous and persuasive, Dorson's words do still loom large (Hoffman; Dundes, "Study of Folklore"; Lewis; Benson).
Further, prevailing attitudes toward comic books and their value, or lack thereof, in American culture seem to limit the possibilities for any kind of serious scholarly discussion of the subject at all. Between 1948 and 1954, psychologist Fredrick Wertham pressed and popularized his claim that comic books "are an important factor in causing juvenile delinquency"--that they are, in part at least, to blame for rising crime and declining morality among young people (Thrasher 195). Comics, he suggested, encourage racism, fascist leanings, and what he termed sexual deviancy, portraying crime, vigilante justice, and thinly veiled homoeroticism in their pages (Wertham). His arguments were (and still are) dismissed on a number of fronts, including by the comic book industry itself. But despite this, his views managed to gain such popularity that in a move similar to the 1930s introduction of the Hays Code for film, comic book producers were forced to institute their own set of governing guidelines--the Comics Code--in 1954. (3) Though comic books have made gains in their social acceptability since the 1980s, and especially since the turn of the millennium, the Wertham stigma has never fully abated. The result is that comic books tend to be perceived as a second-rate, second-tier genre of literature, hardly fitting for any academic study, much less study by a discipline already in some measure of distress.
This leads to a situation that is, on the whole, unfortunate. Because while folklorists have been paying little attention to comic books, comic book creators have been talking a great deal about folklore. In 2002 a comic book appeared to enormous critical acclaim starring characters out of the pages of classic literary fairy-tale collections. The book, Bill Willingham's Fables, is among the current flagship titles of DC Comics' Vertigo imprint--a line intended for mature readers that in the past has included well-known comics like Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Grant Morrison's Invisibles. The premise of Fables is that various characters from the fairy-tale and children's literature canon have been forced out of their homelands by a villain who is, at least through the first forty issues, unidentified; and they have been living secretly as refugees in New York for the past three hundred years. The stories themselves revolve around the day-to-day governing of the refugee community known as Fabletown. They star Snow White, who begins the series as the deputy mayor of the community; her assistant Boy Blue; Bigby, the Big Bad Wolf in a human guise, who starts out as the sheriff of Fabletown; and the erstwhile lover of many a female Fable, Prince Charming. Also in residence are Snow White's sister--the perennial party girl Rose Red; her sometime boyfriend Jack o' the Tales; the wealthy but lonely Bluebeard (deceased by the fourth story arc); Cinderella, who owns the Glass Slipper shoe store and moonlights as a spy; and several powerful old witches. Those individuals who for whatever reason cannot pass as Mundies (the Fables' word for humans) live in Upstate New York on a farm that is magically warded against curious outsiders.
Fables is hardly the first comic book to utilize folklore in this fashion. Gaiman's Sandman, which ran from 1988 until 1996, drew from an array of different mythological traditions, forming a metaphysical landscape of thought and emotion peopled by pantheons from around the world. Five years earlier, Walter Simonson drew on mythology as well, using his extensive knowledge of Norse myth and legend to reshape and reinvigorate the Marvel Comics title Thor. And more recently (1999-2005),...
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