On comics as a machine for empathy

You’re collaborating on a nonfiction comics project, <i>Democratic Socialists of America: A Graphic History</i>, that explores American history via the Democratic Socialist Group. Why choose a comic to tell the history of this group? Why do you feel that’s the best format?

Noah Van Sciver: Comics are more easily accessible. They’re visual, so they grab people’s attention right away. It’s sort of like a sugary way to get somebody to eat their medicine, to take their pills.

Ryamond Tyler: One of my favorite things about comics is that they really lend themselves to social history. In 1912, there was this piece Eugene V. Debs wrote titled “The Cartoonist and the Social Revolution,” in which he lays out the importance of cartooning and the socialist movement. Funny enough, that was a contributing factor to why in the DSA comic Eugene V. Debs is the narrator. It was a contributing factor because he had such a favorable view of cartoonists.

The thing about radical cartooning is that it’s always been central to the Socialist movement. There were some great IWW cartoons that came out in various forms. You could look at those IWW cartoons and could get a general political sense even more so than maybe sitting down and reading Capital, Volume One.

One thing I’ll say is that, generally speaking, the ruling class gets upset about comics and cartoons throughout history. All the way back in the 18th century, there was this gentleman named William Hogarth who created a series of etchings called “A Rake’s Progress,” and it was ridiculed and widely hated by the ruling class and loved by the peasantry and workers in general. And then you can go all the way to Fredric Wertham writing Seduction of the Innocent, and it kind of speaks the same sort of denigration of the cartoon of being a medium that appeals to everyday people.

I feel like that history can be very inaccessible at times, and then the comic book can make it very accessible.

We’re at a point where comics and cartoons are as popular as they’ve ever been because of the movies and the proliferation of manga. That said, people don’t really seem to have a sense of how historical and prevalent comics have always been and how political they’ve always been, so getting that historical perspective is great. Raymond, you’ve written a number of other comics about historical social justice movements, too. What patterns do you see between all those stories?

Raymond Tyler: One of the things I often say is that there’s a hidden history in the United States, and it’s a history of people being very capable of organizing their own lives.

What you’re going to see if you read any of my other comics is people who are immensely capable of doing a great deal of organization without bureaucratic or hierarchical institutions, at least in the sense that they exist today. To put it simply, as far as a theme in history, people don’t need kings or tyrants to manage their lives… People are perfectly capable of managing their lives, their workplaces, and even the economy. This is the theme of all of my comics.

Noah, what changes to your usual comics process did you make for this project, if any? I know you’ve done some work in this space, you’ve done some autobiographical work as well, so would love to hear more about how you approached this collaboration.

Noah Van Sciver: I tried my best to use my limited skills to be as realistic as possible and not to cartoon and go for humor, which is something that I naturally, automatically have to catch myself doing. I tried to take it more seriously because my big concern doing this was that I knew if I messed up, if I slipped, one of my drawings could be used as a right wing meme. So if I’m drawing AOC, I better make sure that it’s as accurate and serious as I can make it, because I don’t want to see it wind up on X as a meme or something.

Were there any other comics that you referred to as an anchor point of what you wanted this book to feel like or be like?

Noah Van Sciver: Not that I recall. Did you have anything in mind, Ray?

Raymond Tyler: No. I mean, I will say that I actually looked at you and Paul Buhle’s Eugene V. Debs comic, and I love the way that you draw Eugene V. Debs. Some of the panels and some of the writings here were designed for you to bring out that amazing work that you did on the Eugene V. Debs comic. But besides that, I don’t think so.

Noah Van Sciver: It was great to be able to get back in touch with Debs for this comic after doing it for that book and being like, “Oh, yeah, that was a great time.” I had such a great time doing that book, and I can see it when I look at the artwork I did for it that I was having a blast. I was lost in it. And so that was a really delightful surprise when I’m like, “I get to go be with this character again.”

We interviewed Paul for the Between the Lines campaign for Partisans, which Raymond, I know you were an editor on. He has this really interesting wealth of knowledge. He’s been in the space for such a long time. Were there any lessons you learned from him either about the process of making a book or about history in general that you’d like to pass on?

Raymond Tyler: I’ve learned a great deal from Paul Buhle, to say the least, I didn’t even know how to do history comics really before I reached out to Paul Buhle. What’s wonderful about Paul is just how accessible he was. I was working on the comic about the West Virginia Mine Wars, and it was just a dream at this point of me wanting to write a comic book about one of my favorite historical events. I reached out to Paul because of all the work that he’d done before, and he made himself so available, and he ended up editing that book.

There’s such an incredible amount he’s taught me. But one of the things that I love about Paul is he’s a remarkable wealth of knowledge in a very non-pretentious way. You can just talk to him and ask him about anything, and we both share the belief that history is for everybody.

I think that would be the primary things that I learned from Paul… Also, just the people that he’s put me in contact with like Noah. I was in contact with Noah because of Paul Buhle.

Noah, how about you? Any takeaways in working for Paul? It sounds like you’ve had multiple instances.

Noah Van Sciver: Yeah, I became friends with him in probably 2014 or something. We started working together and, same thing…. I mean, he kind of educated me on the secret politics of things or things that are happening behind the scenes in the arts or in literature that I hadn’t thought about or I hadn’t known about. He still does that. If I post a comic about Little Orphan Annie on Facebook or something, he’s there to talk about Harold Gray’s odious politics or something, or especially if somebody happens to be from Wisconsin or something, he’s going to tell you all about that. He’s been a great political teacher.

What was it like working together? What was the working relationship like of building the framework of this history and story together?

Noah Van Sciver: It was great for me. It was super easy. Luckily, Ray already knew my work, so he knew sort of what it was going to turn out to look like, and as I recall, he just kind of let me do my thing, and you didn’t have too many edits or changes or anything.

Raymond Tyler: I love the comics medium, but one of the reasons I love it so much is that I get to work with folks that I just hand the script over to, and I trust them to do their best work. I was so excited to work with Noah. I told him before he hopped on, he did one of my all-time favorite books, which is Joseph Smith and the Mormons. And so when Paul was like, “I’m going to message Noah,” I was so excited. I was like, “I didn’t know that that was ever an option.”

Then, I just got to add really quick, it was such a pleasure working with the DSA Fund and the DSA NPEC.

One of the other beautiful things about comics is finding those collaborators where you’re able say, “Hey, I’ve done my piece. I’m going to hand it to you.” And it is that group effort. Nobody’s struggling or choking a project for control or a high amount of visibility.

Raymon Tyler: That’s something I talk to other writers about a lot of times because there are some writers who can be really militant about what an artist draws and where they put it, and one of the recommendations I would always make to writers, especially new writers, is work with artists that you trust and know that they know a lot more than you do about art. They’ve worked on this craft for a long time, and you can have preferences, I think, but you never want to work with an artist, and then the artist feels like they’re just drawing a panel over and over again the exact way that you want it. It just kind of ruins the whole process. So that’s always a big recommendation that I have for anyone. Hand it over and trust them to do some great work.

Noah, you alluded to this earlier—there’s a level of letting people have fun with the process, too. I work with a lot of artists on role-playing games that I make, and I’m just like, “Put whatever you want in there,” but if there’s references or specific things, depending on the gist of the game, it is nice to see what people come back with, from a writer’s perspective in terms of little Easter eggs, because art is 50% of the product.

Noah Van Sciver: Earlier you asked about why we decided to use comics tell this kind of story, and I just want to say that I really believe that comics are a machine for empathy in that it’s a very private medium. Somebody has to sit alone and read this thing. It’s a one-on-one communication, and you’re telling a story as a cartoonist or as a writer, you’re having to live in somebody else’s skin and communicate what that living is like, and then the reader is taking that in and they’re becoming the person whose story you’re telling, and it begs you to have empathy.

I think that using comics to tell these kinds of stories, stories about having empathy for others and living in other people’s skin, it’s a powerful natural tool. It’s the best way to do it, I think even better than film, because film is passive and comics are active. You have to take part in being a part of that story. So I think comics are the best way to get people to live in other people’s shoes and see what their lives are like and have empathy for them.