What Is That Funny S-Shape?

In the history of comics, one of the great success stories has to be Thomas Nast, whose political cartoons were key in removing the corrupt New York politician William “Boss” Tweed from office and crippling his established power base. One of the reasons Nast’s cartoons worked where other avenues met with less results was that they could be understood by the illiterate; one only needed to see the fat man with a sack of money for a head to connect 2 and 2 together.

Nast is certainly not the first instance of using images to circumvent illiteracy, but as literacy rates have improved drastically in the 130 years or so since Tweed, you don’t really see comics having to deal with a population of specifically illiterate adults. Yes, there are works for children that do so, but because they are aimed at the young you don’t really get the same effect. And yes, you still have political cartoons that are easily understood on the visual level (name your favorite politician and put a Hitler mustache and/or devil horns on their head), but they’re again created in an environment where literacy is assumed.


When I look at that drawing of Boss Tweed, or pictorial depictions of Biblical stories from the Middle Ages, I don’t see that as specifically Tweed and that it’s a statement of corruption or that this painting is indeed the story of Job. I feel as if I do not have the right context, too far-removed from those times, and that in addition to that limitation I am also in a way restricted by my ability to read. I cannot capture that circumstance; while I could easily pick up a current comic or cartoon meant for adults in a language I do not understand and would most assuredly succeed in not reading it, I would still have a work that was created and meant for an environment where the average adult can read, no matter how minimal the text might be, and I might not have the proper cultural context.
I of course am not encouraging or promoting illiteracy, but as the world has moved away from it, I have to wonder if we’ll lose that method of creating comics for an adult audience, a style that arose out of a particularly great limitation. I also am curious about Japan, where literacy rates have been remarkably high for a number of decade and where comics culture has also developed greatly during that period.