The comic strip today is very diverse. Comics do not only vary in style and content, but also in means of production and consumption. A lot of these differences are local. One can see some important differences between the Japanese manga, the European production and American comics. But even within each territory, comics do not form a homogeneous group. Think for example of the differences in the USA between comic strips, comic books, non-mainstream comics and small press comics. All these comics can be further classified in different genres and sub-genres. Readers usually confine themselves to one or just a few genres.

1. The importance of the publication format

What causes this heterogeneous comics production? To understand this huge variety of comics, one must not only take the authors' creativity into account, but also the way these comics are published. The publication format may seem to be independent of its method of creation, but nothing could be further from the truth. Wheter an artist gets only one row of panels in a newspaper, must confine his story into a comic book of 30 pages, or gets more than one hundred pages in a graphic novel, format will always be decisive. Even the dimensions of the publication are very important (see illustration 1).

Even the most idiosyncratic authors such as the Frenchman Edmond Baudoin take into consideration the format in which they will be published. The first ten years of his career he worked for the standard black and white European album of 48 pages (of which 44 or 46 are used for the comic itself). When Baudoin later reworked the idea of one of his European albums, Le premier voyage (see illustration 2) for a mangamagazine (see illustration 3) for the Japanese publisher Kodansha, he not only exceeded the usual 46-page limit, but he also changed his way of telling stories. The smaller format changed his lay-out. Because he could use more pages to tell his story, his style became far more visual, with lesser text than his European comics. It was the first time he made a story of more than 46 pages. Le voyage had five times more pages (221 plates) than Le premier voyage. Baudoin told me that he also adopted another drawing technique. Namely, he drew much faster than usual. When Baudoin drew Made in U.S. or Nam (see illustration 4) for the extremely small format (7,5 * 10,5 cm) of 'Patte de Mouche' of L'Association, he put his pencil aside and drew with a pen. The thinner lines are clearly better suited for such a small format. Obviously format has a big influence on Baudoin, but at the same time, all these comics are still typically Baudoin. It is not because an artist adopts himself to a format that he loses his identity.

Since the eighties, some of the most successful comics were later republished in the pocket format. In most cases, it was impossible to reduce a complete page, because a lot of details would be lost and the drawings would become too small for the reader. Therefore, the comics were adapted. The original page lay-out was given up and replaced by another division in rows. To do this the initial panel dimensions had to be adapted and sometimes even the composition of the drawings had to be changed. A significant example is a tennis gag of the Idées Noires series by Franquin (see illustration 5). The original plate is cleverly composed so that one player is always standing on the left end of a tier, facing the right and his opponent, standing at the other side of the tier. They hit the ball to each other. The reader gets the impression that the ball flies across the space of the plate itself from left to right and back. This effect is lost in the pocket version, where the players no longer physically face each other on the same row. The dimensions of the panels are also adapted to fit the new lay out. Although the author himself was responsible for this adaption, the pocket version is less compact and less refined than the initial publication.

An author who works for French language publishers such as Dupuis, Dargaud or Le Lombard is expected to develop a series around some central characters. He knows that his stories will have to be exactly 46 pages long, which is, as several artists and critics have already complained, too short to develop a novel-like complexity.

It is exceptional that an author gets the opportunity to make a one-shot story and to exceed the page limit. For this purpose, publishers created special series comprised of several non-related albums.

So, the format will eventually influence the total concept of the comic, not only the style, but also the content. The material aspects of the format will determine the page lay-out, the choice between monochrome or colour, the kind of story, the way in which it will be told, etc. The format's advantages and disadvantages are known by the readers. When someone buys or reads a certain comic, he can detect from the format - even without knowing the characters or the author - what he can expect from that particular comic. Different formats even stimulate different manners of consuming: a manga magazine is quickly read and thrown away after reading, while a European album will be kept and read several times.

A format is not only defined by its materiality (the size, the paper quality, etc.) but also by its temporal aspects (does it have a temporal regularity or is it published only once at a precise time?) and editorial choices (how long can a chapter or a story be, what are the taboos?).

It is therefore necessary to take the format into account when one judges a work. As obvious as it may sound, this fundamental aspect is often neglected in comics criticism. Of course the format will not and cannot explain every aspect or detail of the comic concerned, but at a fundamental level it is responsible for major characteristics. Stop comics are especially made for newspapers, in which they can be enjoyable. This is not always the case for reprints in book form. Reading one hundred gags of the same series one after another can become a repetitive and dull activity. Although American newspaper comic strips are printed daily in hundreds or even thousands of newspapers, they rarely succeed on the international market in book form. The reverse can also be true: comics that are made for albums are seldom enjoyable as a comic strip in a newspaper. Reading even a page a day of a Cosey or Baudoin comic would be futile, because the pages should be read in their context. A newspaper reader would get the impression that nothing happens when reading only one page.

Both material limitations and editorial choices have their impact. Each sort of publication has its potential and limitations, and therefore incites artists to use the resources offered. But an artist will not necessarily use every potential the format offers. Sometimes artists need time to understand the potential of a medium. For example, the earliest comic book authors ignored the potentials of the medium. They imitated the page composition in regular tiers of the comic strip (uniform grids of equal-sized panels). Comics critic and artist, Robert C. Harvey deplores the fact that they ignored the spacious page format which would have allowed them to vary the size - both height and width - panels for emphasis. Once Kirby and Eisner started using the space in a more baroque way, their approach became fashionable among comic book artists.

Culture, tradition, ideology, personal qualities, etc., will all influence the choice of resources artists will make. Nevertheless, each analysis of comics has to start with a study of the form it is being published in. That is the reason why this paper is called: The Importance of Being 'Published', rephrasing a book title by Oscar Wilde, without any further connotations.

This is a first attempt towards a comparative study of the comic format and its influence, hoping that others will refine and correct my observations, since it is impossible to be an expert in every possible format. The worldwide comics production is far too vast for one person to have a much less complete knowledge of it.

2. Some important formats

For the time being, some main groups of formats will be compared:

- The comic strip in the newspaper

- The comic book series

- The manga magazine

- The European album series

- The one shot

- Small Press

In the following table, a description is given of these current basic formats. Of course, there are exceptions to each variable and some times the lines between formats can become blured. Yet while formats can share the same characteristics, they never share all of them.

Table 1. Characteristics of some important formats

Now that we have attempted to describe the different formats, we must have to consider the possible consequences. It is risky to indicate and attempt to prove causal relations, but we do not have to believe in a causal relationship to see that these very different formats have some very different characteristics, both in style and content. As noted earlier, these observations are simply generalizations and not all these characteristics are present or strongly visible in each concrete work.

Table 2: Comics today

3. The potential of a comic strip in a newspaper

Although it may seem as if publication of comics in newspapers is characterized by a battery of restrictions, this format has unique possibilities, the most obvious of which is daily frequency. A daily cartoonist can play with events in the news. The wagering on real horses by comics character Mutt, is an early example. Another example is Winsor Mc Cay, whose Little Nemo is dreaming about Christmas or St. Valentine's Day. Later, cartoonists had to submit their work weeks in advance. The syndicates needed more time to prepare the comics for distribution to newspapers all around the country and nowadays, all around the world.

In Belgium, the Flemish newspapers started publishing more comics by local artists after the Second World War. These artists worked for only one (group of) newspaper(s). So until some years ago, the deadline was very short. Some cartoonists such as Marc Sleen worked in the newspaper's offices for years. Marc Sleen was credited by the Guinness Book of Records in 1989 for the making the longest running comic strip by only one author, without the help of assistants. In Flemish, the comic strip is called Nero, in which the main character was named after the crazy Roman emperor.

The adventures of Nero are a unique mix of foolish humour, adventure, wild imagination and criticism of hot topics. For years the stories of Nero started running in the newspaper before the script was finished. Sometimes Sleen worked only a few days in advance of the publication. During the publication in the dailies, Sleen drew out his story and let himself be inspired by the events of the day. Sleen's writing adapted itself to the calendar. The external time (the dates of the publication in the newspaper) influenced the internal time of the story. Special holidays and other important dates in Belgium such as the sixth of December (Sinterklaas), New Year's Day, Christmas, Easter, All 'Fools' Day, Labour Day and the reopening of the schools (beginning of September) could be incorporated in the comic. Those allusions to the external time could even bring a pause in the story (characters stop their action to wish the reader a happy new year) or change the course of the story: in one story (De Wortelschieters), the necessary antidote can be found in the Easter eggs falling from the sky, in another, the mule of 'Sinterklaas' saves the heroes (De juwelen van Gaga-Pan ).

But Sleen went further than just alluding to important dates. He also referred to and even criticized the events of the day, both in Belgium and abroad. He took a stand in great Belgian conflicts such as the Royal Affair (which brought Belgium to the brink of civil war), or in international problems (such as the Cold War). The elasticity of his storyline and his working-method consistently made it possible to incorporate, even during the publication of the comic in the newspaper, new events and to change the course of the story. For example, in De IJzeren Kolonel (The Iron Colonel) from 1956, an English colonel asks Nero's help in regaining the Suez-canal, maintaining that his great-grandfather bought the canal. This theme is clearly inspired by the nationalization of the Suez-canal by Egyptian president Nasser. When the publication in the newspaper started, war was imminent but it would take until the end of October before British and French airplanes would begin bombing Egypt. Even before the outbreak of the war, Nero and the Iron colonel disembarked on the Egypt shore, where they are taken for foreign invaders. The Suez-crisis is not the only hot issue that Sleen incorporated in this story. When by the end of October Russian troops crushed the Hungarian protest, Sleen let two other characters pass through that country. This was not planned in advance, because some days before the Russian tanks attacked, the two characters were already speaking about their trip to Egypt. On the 18th of October, they said that they would travel via Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel. At that point, they did not even mention Hungary, since the crisis only began a few days later. When Soviet tanks began to crush the Hungarian rebellion on the 27th of October, the author quickly changed the script and inserted a scene where the two youngsters are cruising through Hungary. On Thursday the 8th of November, they confront a Russian tank (see illustration 6). But when one of the young friends of Nero, Petoetje talks about two Belgian ministers (Van Acker and Spaak) who visited the Soviet Union some days earlier and mentions their cultural agreement, the Russian soldiers run to them with open arms. However, the two Flemish kids knock them out and drive off with the Russian tank. They continue their voyage to Egypt, where the Suez-crisis is reaching its peak...

The Flemish comic strip can reflect on hot new items as fast as the (editorial) cartoon.

The incorporation of the dates of external time also has other consequences. Most comics try to form a consistent world of their own, with a logical internal timeline. In Nero, the proper internal time is often neglected by the characters themselves: they sometimes speak in terms of external time, which does not always parallel the internal time.

When Nero's wife says that her husband was absent for 5 or 7 months, she does not mean the time he was away in the story (internal time), but the period of the publication in the newspaper (external 'real' time). Sleen more than once played with those tensions between the external and internal time. From this viewpoint, it is a pity that this Flemish author no longer continues with such 'time play'. This linking of internal time and external time loses its importance in the later book publication. Moreover, it can even become confusing. Comics of this sort have to be read in their context in the original format, if all of the allusions and references are to be understood.

4. Concluding remarks

An entire book could be devoted to how different formats influence comics, without exhausting the topic. For the time being, I just wanted to identify the issue with the hope that others may feel inspired to work on this hypothesis as well. Interesting problems should be studied, eg., why do some formats come into being and not others?

Although my observations may sound a little crude and unrefined, the point was made clear that when we want to study a comic, we should always consider thoroughly the format the comic was made for. Hopefully, this clarifies the importance of being published.

© Pascal Lefèvre

¶ 5:19 PM