Introducing the Dazzler project – Why study an “average” comic book?
So, Dazzler…
Dazzler is a minor character in the Marvel universe, originally conceived as a disco diva clad in a revealing silver suit. Though the character has been rediscoverd and investigated as one of the few character enabling and encouraging queer readings at the time of its original publication, it is fair to say that it is a marginal attraction in the Marvel’s library. The Dazzler comic book was a success initially, and it was the first Marvel comic sold only throught the direct market, but that allure quickly faded, and those comics now exist alongside back issues of The New Mutants or The West Coast Avengers as examples of distinctly average comics from the decade (as opposed, say, to Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli’s work on Daredevil).
And it is precisely because it is average that I will be writing a book about the character, with the indispensible help of Jean-Paul Gabilliet, hopefully for the University Press of Mississippi. What follows is a version of what will be the introduction to the book.
* * *
Why study an “average” comic book?
The first and obvious answer is that average cultural objects most closely correspond to the idea of popular, or mainstream, culture—as in culture produced for the greatest number and enjoyed accordingly. Popular culture is a notoriously amorphous category, but under most definitions, it is understood as being inoffensive (though not necessarily harmless) and standardized, though accommodating incremental variations. Even critics who argue that popular culture appeals to the lowest common denominator emphasize the shared tastes and modes of approval which govern it.
Though popular culture is notoriously reluctant to stable critical hierarchies, bad cultural objects fail even that easy test. They are shabbily produced and suffer from insufficient craftsmanship, or they are offensive to a non-marginal segment of the audience and become remarkable for their inability to reach basic – and historically contingent – standards of competency. As demonstrated by the critical fortune of Fletcher Hanks, for instance, some bad comics can be salvaged and appropriated under other historically contingent categories (outsider art, avant-garde), which deploy specific modes of appreciation that reframe the unusual characteristics of the work. Other bad comics become exemplars, constantly traded shorthands which help reaffirm and sharpen the unspoken norms of mainstream cultural production. For instance, in the realm of comics, Rob Liefeld’s infamous 1996 drawing of a barrel-chested Captain America (inspired by a photograph of Arnold Schwarzenegger), helps define the accepted distortions of the anatomy of the human body in superhero comics. However, most bad comics remain just that: puzzling cultural objects with serious flaws, which are unlikely to have provided pleasure or satisfaction to any reader and which predictably end up forgotten.
One may object that such judgement is highly subjective, and that one reader’s “bad” comic is a decent example of the form or even a cherished memory for another. At the level of individual appreciation, that it certainly true. The specifics of one’s encounter with an individual comic book or series shape our appreciation in a way that is unlikely to be modeled by any collective description. For instance, the French version of Fantastic Four Annual #14 (Perez, Wolfman, 1979), was for a long time the only superhero comic I owned, and my attachment to the story as well as my appreciation of its craftsmanship are probably far greater than most reader’s. In addition to specific experiences, idiosyncratic criteria, such as one’s unconditional affection for a specific character or a specific technique, may produce atypical valuations. Still, tastes also exist as shared norms, shaped through social interplays then roughly evidenced by sales number and review aggregators, that does not disregard individual valuations but averages them out.
At the other end of the spectrum, masterpieces and works of genius exert also escape averageness through singularity. They change or perfect the common rules and become new exemplars, reshaping the very norms of the architexts they belong to. They are, in other words, exceptional. As such, they are undoubtedly worthy of our attention, but they also already receive it disproportionately, by virtue of their eminence, and of the enthusiasm they generate among fans and scholars. As exemplars, these works bind together specific discursive communities, enabling informed discussions between their members, and they are understood to reward this interest because of their quality (though in Breaking the Frames, Mark Singer memorably decried the “cheerleading” effect of such consensus among comics scholars, leading to the overvaluation of certain consensually-acclaimed works). However, exceptions require a norm against which they can be identified, and masterpieces only exist if average or bad works offer points of comparison. The genius manifests itself through a system of resemblances and differences with mere craftsmen or craftswomen. The mythology of the genius artist or artwork suggest that they are sui generis, their own kind, but of course these works exist within distribution and valuation systems which immediately positions them in comparison and meaningful dialogue with similar productions, the better to celebrate their originality.
It should be clear at this point that I am using “average” and “bad” not as absolutes, nor as moral judgments, but as shorthands for collective valuation, anchored on socially-agreed and possibly testable markers of quality. This understanding is also distinct from the idea of the middlebrow, or what Pierre Bourdieu called the “average art” of photography, though overlaps exist. In the field of comics, the idea of middlebrow art is perhaps best expressed by literary critic Leslie Fiedler, in his 1956 Encounter essay, “The Middle Against Both Ends”. Writing in the wake of the backlash against comic books in the US, Fiedler asserts that they are a vital form precisely because they escape the stultifying respectability of middlebrow culture, and thus generate opprobrium. In that sense, comic books, somewhat like the avant-garde, can serve as vital, dynamic art forms, which do not reproduce established models and have the ability to challenge the cultural status quo. Somewhat similarly, Bourdieu identifies photography with the middle-class, and the endless replaying of social norms in the capture of daily life. For Fiedler – and the myriads of other writers thinking about taste structures in Cold War America – and for Bourdieu, the middle or the average is located in the medium itself, tied to social hierarchies, and correlated with specific social practices. By contrast, I am focusing here on distinctions that exist within the field, among consumers of these objects, distinctions that are themselves nested within other hierarchies though they might occasionally disrupt them (with the crossover success of Spiegelman’s Maus, for instance).
Averageness, as I define it, is strictly correlated with popularity, as expressed by sales figures or viewing numbers. While a work may become popular in large part through its own merit, circulation figures are always the result of complex array of factors, which prominently include distribution and promotion strategies. In the field of comics Moebius may have been collectively acclaimed as a genius, with a very high name recognition, but his books reliably sold only about 5,000 copies upon publication. By contrast, the latest incarnation of Gaston Lagaffe sold about half a million copies, though its author boasted of imitating Franquin’s style as slavishly as possible. Conversely, Watchmen demonstrates that acknowledged masterpieces can sell extremely well. This vexing decorrelation between taste and consumption was especially vexing to the American critics of mass culture, in the wake of Clement Greenberg’s “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939). In A Theory of Mass Culture (1953), Dwight Macdonald famously described the “spreading ooze” of mass culture—this relentless flow of popular yet empty culture, devised by the lords of kitsch, threatening to replace actual, valuable culture. While it is certainly tempting to think of Stan Lee as a lord of kitsch, it is also important to acknowledge that Macdonald’s theoretical position did not fully correspond to his own cultural consumption. A few years after writing his essay, he started working as a movie critic for The New Yorker, and predictably spent a long time reviewing average or mediocre works—without dismissing them as mere commodities. In his essay, and in the overdetermined context of the early 1950s, he also railed against comic books—and against Superman in particular. However, his correspondence reveals that he had no qualms about buying comic books for his son, and again declined to hold himself to his own theoretical standards. I don’t think this double standard should be understood as a form of hypocrisy. Rather, it demonstrates that cultural consumption does not neatly align with cultural positioning.
And part of the reason for this misalignment lies in the fact that these average works nevertheless provide undeniable pleasures. These pleasures may be imperfect, flawed, or at times problematic, but the popularity of Dazzler at the time of its release goes beyond a mere marketing stunt. Moreover, we cannot content ourselves with Umberto Eco’s description of the pleasure of the familiar and the ever-repeated patterns in serial storytelling (what he calls the “iterative pattern”):
The attraction of the book, the sense of repose, of psychological extension which it is capable of conferring lies in the fact that, plopped in an easy chair or in the seat of a train compartment, the reader continuously recovers, point by point, what he already knows, what he wants to know again; that is why he has purchased the book (The Role of the Reader,119).
There is, to be sure, a pleasure to be found in observing the predictable execution of generic tropes, a form of connivence between creators and consumers, bound by shared norms and the comfort of earnest execution. But this does not fully account either for the specific experience of a given average book, constantly tinged with the hope of the new, the glimpse of the unfamiliar, the moment of superior execution tucked into a by-the-number story, and the familiar disappointments when these do not occur.
Understanding the average work is a precondition for any serious understanding of a cultural field. In this book, I will also seek to investigate Dazzler as more than a symptom of broader trends or as background information for the reading of deeper, more rewarding works. I plan to treat it as an expression of general trends and underlying structures, but also a singular and often pleasurable read, which can occasionally resonate deeply with one’s individual experience
Bonus comic:
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Nicolas Labarre (6 juillet 2025). Introducing the Dazzler project – Why study an “average” comic book? . Picturing it! Consulté le 9 mars 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/14ae8

