The other day in a bookshop I was looking at shelves and shelves of grownup comics – graphic novels if you will. I had a phase of enjoying comics – especially the wild, wild works of Alan Moore – but somehow the enthusiasm has waned. Looking at the latest acclaimed graphic novel, The Sculptor by Scott McCloud, I suddenly realised why they seem less worth an adult’s time.

The vast majority of graphic novels today are drawn with studied banality. There is a lack of ambition and verve to their visual artistry. Comic-book authors have settled into a slick style of drawing that stays within dull limits. Where are the real artists in graphic fiction?

A panel from The Sculptor by Scott McCloud. Photograph: Self-Made Hero

McCloud’s drawing, for example, is merely serviceable – which is all that seems to be expected of a graphic novelist. Scanning those bookshelves, which held everything from Persepolis to Black Hole, what I saw were variations on a reductive graphic style designed to communicate information and signify simple emotions, but never to take the risk of showing a genuinely new, genuinely personal and daring perception of reality.



American cartoonist Chris Ware is considered a brave, modern artist. But how, exactly? With his puppet-like people, isolated in minimalist Edward Hopper-style scenes, his comics are easy to decode once you ‘get’ his style. The studied melancholia of his drawings is unconvincing as visual art, because it all looks so contrived and rigid. His art is basically a set of tics and mannerisms. Yet Ware is the best graphic novelist of the moment – so if he is a cut-price Paul Klee, we should be concerned about the genre.

The work of many graphic novelists looks as if they took the same college drawing course; all have learned that good graphic art communicates information. In a comic, this advances the story, but such a functional approach undermines true art. A real comic artist is someone who uses drawing as self-expression instead of as a narrative machine. Only the artist who puts meaning and feeling into each line can elevate the art of comics into something beautiful or deep.



Joe Sacco’s book The Great War depicts the first day of fighting at the Battle of the Somme

Joe Sacco’s drawings are sensitive and considered, rather than briskly stylish. His comics stand out for their passion and purpose. But the standard of true art in comics is surely Robert Crumb.

I suppose you can say Crumb has a style, but it’s one that comes from hard looking and intense labour. He can draw very well, and his art lives in a way that today’s hip comics just don’t. Crumb is not only a storyteller, he is also an artist with magnificent courage – one who draws the world as he sees it. And he proves that great art is not incompatible with storytelling. Today’s comic artists need to look to the layered, ironic satirical comic strips of William Hogarth. This 18th-century artist showed how visual storytelling can be a nest of hidden meanings, instead of a one-dimensional storyboard.

Graphic fiction can be great art. Unfortunately, it is becoming both pretentious and simplistic. Time to go back to the sketchpad.