For Samson, modernity in comic books reflects a series of social changes: a state of stability gives way to flux and insecurity; there is a progressive politics; the self-expression of the individual reacts against the conformity of 'mainstream' comic books.
These could be seen as key features of the Enlightenment. Just saying.
My own enthusiasm for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby encourages me to test Samson's principles against their early 1960s output. There's no question that Lee regarded The Fantastic Four as self-expression within the mainstream format: the origin myth is that he was on the point of giving up on comic books, and his response to the publisher's desire to have a Marvel superhero team to compete with DC's Justice League was to develop the distinctive 'family dynamic' of the FF.
The notion of flux is contained within the very characters' powers: the human body becomes malleable (Mr Fantastic), combustible (The Human Torch) and even occluded (The Invisible Girl). With adventures ranging across the world - the African state of Wakanda, the European Latveria - and beyond - Galactus is a threat from the cosmos, the Negative Zone an alternative dimension - the stories reveal an expansive imagination.
And progressive politics: well, I've talked about the subversion of African savage tropes in The Black Panther before.
In these senses, Lee and Kirby are consummate modernists. Although their influence would lead to them becoming icons of the mainstream, the mash-up of characterisation and adventure was a clear step away from the anodyne mono-myth of earlier comics like Batman and Superman.
However, I've written a very long essay on how Lee and Kirby reflect Enlightenment values, using the same examples. While their historical contingency draws parallels with the 'hippy' revolution - which Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely make explicit in Flex Mentallo - the transition from Superman to Spider-Man echoes the eighteenth century's transition from neo-classicism to le drame. The pattern of modernity is not a singular event, but a reiteration across time and space.
Modernity is one of those overarching ideas that I don't understand. To talk about 'the modern age' is to reach back into history and assume that, at a certain date, the modern began. In history, there are the early and late modern periods, and my reading on the Enlightenment has suggested that modernity begins sometime around the 1650s, possibly after the Peace of Westphalia gave continental Europe a break from religious war.
However, the common usage of modern implies contemporary - and that's determined by the age of the observer. I can just about call the 1960s modern, but the shifts in technology that have driven such immense social change might mean that anything before the rise of popular internet use is, like, ancient. Modernity has been cool - hence the Mods and their sharp suits - and uncool (see the Green Party Manifesto for anxiety about modernity, or the Conservative's fear of change).
And that's not to mention post-modernism. Good luck with that.
Jacque Samson (Modern Strategies for Pictorial Enunciation in Comics) offers two ways of interpreting the modern. It's either diachronic (concerned with time and history) or synchronic (about the modes of production). His definitions - in brackets - don't quite match the ones that I found in the study of linguistics.
However, his diachronic definition locates 'modern comics' as beginning in the late 1960s, 'contemporaneous with the extraordinary movement towards diversification that transformed it'. Since he is talking abut bande-dessinee, I'll flip it back to the early 1960s, and claim the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby revolution as the first moments of modernity.
Moving to theatre, it also allows me to include the antics of the 1960s - Peter Brook, The Theatre of Cruelty at the RSC, that kind of stuff. And I immediately realise that Samson's markers for modernity happen at different rate for theatre. It might be nice to imagine that the 1960s were a pivotal moment, but the harbingers of modernity - Artaud, Beckett, Brecht - were working earlier.
