In Komiks: Comic Art in Russia, José Alaniz provides an in-depth account of the development and diversity of Russian comic art, or komiks, from sixteenth-century illustrated miniatures or icons, to book illustrations and the lubok wood block print. Through reference to comics studies, Alaniz argues that komiks is part of an ancient world tradition of sequential narrative defined by the juxtaposition of image and text. Komiks’ focus, though, is on illustrating how komiks creators, or komiksisty, have reinvented the form despite a lack of popular audience or mainstream industry in Russia.
In Part I, Alaniz begins by focusing on komiks’ historical context, beginning with an analysis of religious icons as protocomics that manifested a strong visual inclination in Russian culture while transforming audience worldview. The lubok, a medium originally distributed by wandering peddlers, then transformed the vernacular, visual culture of the icon into a mass medium and “icon of modernity” concerned with the nation. As Russia’s first comics language, the lubok combined text with image in a dramatic and playful way to create an interactive reading experience until the early-twentieth century.
Alaniz then details comics’ development in the Soviet era, from their association with either folk culture or foreign influence, to the importance of the lubki-influenced poster, Soviet plakat, and satirical caricature in the war of ideas. Most importantly, ROSTA windows linked folk art to the developing avant-garde movement through their crude but accessible narratives that mobilized production. Although the satirical press became less popular during komiks’ golden age in the 1930s, caricature would rise again by the 1960s, albeit alongside children’s entertainment and the understanding of komiks as imperialist and naïve.
With the 1980s came the era of Perestroika and komiks’ “first wave.” As the book became a mass medium with less censorship, Western influences became more potent and the first komiks collectives formed. Soon, studios, too, arose in a struggle to define komiks as an author-based form rather than children’s entertainment. As komiksisty worked to demonstrate the adult content, serious power, and variety of komiks culture, often in reference to the lubok and folk art, the form became more collaborative, while supporting satirical content and artistic innovation.
At the end of Part I, Alaniz describes komiks’ “second wave” from 1991 to the present as a period of higher production costs, movement across media, and attempted revitalization. With little infrastructure, komiksisty strove to overcome komiks’ naïve reputation by building a community committed to the form as a uniquely Russian art. However, Alaniz argues that creating stories primarily for one another via desktop publishing led to the “ghettoization” of komiks as elite, despite increased visibility from festivals and publicity. Alaniz concludes that komiks’ history reveals a marginalized form supported by and stifled within an indigenous comics niche resulting from globalization.
The author then points to case studies in Part II in order to suggest komiks’ future, beginning, in chapter 5, with the disdain for comics that continues into contemporary Art Komiks. He describes how opportunities for exhibition and foreign influence in the 1990s led to the mainstreaming of the komiks language and the deconstruction of komiks iconography in fine art. Alaniz describes various examples of artists incorporating the comics language into other arts practices and everyday experience to bring comics to the people, demonstrating its power, narrative or political, in the process.
Chapter 6 demonstrates that komiks’ reputation for humor and vulgarity hides the intertextuality and heteroglossic potential of the comic art form. Alaniz uses Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and the Novy Komiks series as examples of how komiks place visual and verbal elements in dialogue, while also drawing upon the lubok, Russian jokelore, Western popular culture, and lived experience. In the following chapter, Alaniz turns to internationally acclaimed but locally ostracized author Nikolai Maslov and his autobiography, Siberia, to explore how komiks culture has evolved since the collapse of communism. He argues that Siberia’s rejection, as a work whose creator drew upon a rich tradition of reflexive, Russian visual narratives, illustrates that komiksisty are more concerned with developing an industry than with the narrative power of the form.
Alaniz uses his final close reading to highlight komiks’ subversive potential, particularly in terms of the divide between masculine language and feminine image in Russian culture, since the verbal and visual in comics exist in tension but never separately. He shows how Russian female komiksisty attempt to fashion a post-Soviet female identity, from questioning beauty standards to re-inscribing women’s space and suggesting multiple identities. Although these creators show women as actively searching for identities outside of Russian capitalism, Alaniz argues that creators’ enduring ties to a consumer mentality, where new identities are purchased, lead to few politically active comics narratives.
In the conclusion, Alaniz focuses on a tendency in Russian comics to settle for political apathy or even censorship; he thus calls for creators to stop underestimating the comic art form, with its powerfully subversive potential, and to work to live up to this distinctly Russian tradition. Although Alaniz seems biased toward political comics, especially given earlier discussions of the complex of creators’ motives, Komiks as a whole shows that komiksisty have thrived most often with such narratives. At the least, Alaniz’s call to action raises interesting questions about how creators balance the narratives they create with the industry and audience they need to survive, both in Russia and worldwide.
This account of komiks’ context and vivacity demonstrates not only the current situation of Russian comic art and its creators, but also the uniquely Russian quality of this form. Alaniz uses theory well, providing a strong grounding for his analyses of specific works and historical patterns, but not so much as to overwhelm the accounts of komiksisty or the komiks themselves. His consideration of imagined communities and folk culture among komiksisty, in particular, demonstrates the importance of socially oriented accounts of comic art. Overall, Komiks represents a comprehensive and compelling account of the development and diversity of Russian comic art.
--------
[Review length: 989 words • Review posted on June 23, 2011]