Evaluating Comics

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on what makes a comic good or bad, and whether there are any general principles that can be adopted that yield good judgments of comparative value for comics. While some degree of relativism in the evaluation of comics is inevitable, not every evaluation of comics is of equal quality. Following David Hume, the standard of taste for comics is fixed by expert critics who are particularly attuned to the four types of properties that make comics valuable: narrative, pictorial, historical, and referential. A subjectivist account of the value of particular comics is advanced, on which these properties have in common the capacity to afford valuable experiences. Finally, an explanation is offered for how the comics world came to select these properties as evaluatively relevant rather than others, tying the answer to medium specificity.