I'm beginning to understand how the Meme-thing works, and to tell you the truth, I'm a little disappointed.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. A definition is in order.
A meme is a theoretical unit of cultural information. Memes are the building blocks of cultural diffusion, propagating from one mind to another, analogously to the way a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information. Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins coined the term in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene. He illustrated some examples of "classic" memes: jingles, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches.
Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection similarly to Darwinian biological evolution. Via variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, some ideas propagate less successfully and become extinct, while others will survive, spread, and, for better or for worse, mutate.
If you Google 'meme,' you'll discover countless websites and blogs dedicated to Dawkin's concept. The internet's realm of meme discussion, specifically its prevalence as a subject of blogging in the blogosphere, has lead to the identification of a blogging sub-strata known as the 'memeosphere'. Memes, for many of us, have become things of serious study and objects of undeniable fascination. To me, and for the purposes of abbracadabbling the comics blog, what's most fascinating is the notion of what I call the Comic Meme.
The 'ideas of superheroes' that were once completely confined to the comic book realm have survived now for the better part of a century. Slowly but steadily, in their own abbreviated form of Darwinian evolution, 'ideas of superheroes' have evolved beyond their newsprint pages into the greater 'genetic' pool of Popular Culture. Some examples of this include the diversification of comic book readership, the San Diego Comic-Con's annual sold-out attendance, the billion dollar world-wide box office of Warner Bros' second Batman feature, this summer's Guinness Book of World Records' awards to the Batman Arkham Asylum video game as well as the game's sales of over two million units within two weeks after its release.
The popular CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory is another great example of my Comic Meme concept. The show's characters are all comic book fans, and even dressed up as superheroes for one of last season's episodes.
As one good turn deserves another, Howard Wolowitz, Leonard, Sheldon, and Koothrappali popped up in DC Comics fourth issue of Power Girl, trying to pick-up on the book's busty leading heroine inside a movie theater.
Your Dabbler doesn't need to point out the obvious (although he will): the Comic Meme has become extraordinarily virulent. We're all infected, even those of us who don't make weekly pilgrimages to the comics shop and so fall outside of the meme's primary risk group. Memes, and especially the Comic Meme, no longer require direct exposure to find a suitable host.
Memes and the Comics Blogosphere
Comics bloggers love memes as much as psychology bloggers, biology bloggers, IT bloggers, and lit bloggers. Comics Blogger Ryan Estrada's humorous Frank the Comic Strip uses the comic strip form to give us a better idea of the meme in this context:
Estrada cleverly shows the viral spreading of memes within the comics blogosphere, especially as a kinds of Dawkinsian comics 'jingles' or catch phrases. Most comics memes I've found are actually very similar to the idea I'm currently using for abbracadabbling's FlashCAPTION contest, in which I've asked you and all our other dabblers to creatively complete a caption box from a Flash comics panel in order to win a copy of Flash: Rebirth #5.
I don't consider this a meme; i consider it a contest. Maybe it would have been a meme if I'd labeled it as such and posted it as meme, perhaps without the other requirement of watching this blog to find clues about Wally West's current whereabouts. That's what makes it a contest, in my mind. Of course, even without asking folks to name the right 'Mystery City,' I'd never have thought this silly little exercise was a meme. At most, it's an exercise in creativity -- no matter how many other folks around the comics blogosphere jump aboard my magic party wagon and get involved.
If they had, however, FlashCAPTION would then certainly fit the comics blogosphere's concept of a comics meme. I've found a few examples of the comics memes that are currently floating around to illustrate my point (no pun intended). They're funny, yes. But I wouldn't call them 'memes.' Take a look:
With his Green Lantern cover, Bully at Comics Oughta Be Fun blog asks his readers in his "Bully's Activity Fun Time Page" post to create their own text for the cover's talking power ring. Bully titled this really fun idea as an 'activity,' but once it got out, it quickly then became - and was labeled as - a meme. Sleestak's Lady, That's My Skull is just one of the many comicsblogs that joined the fun with a post. (Ironically, by virtue of my own blog entry here, so have I.)
On his livejournal blog, Mooncalfe started a Power Girl meme back in 2007, asking readers and other comics bloggers to draw their own Power Girl, post it, and pass the idea along. Like a game of internet telephone, scads of folks did, too -- as the list on his blog attests. Mark Engblom, a popular blogger whose work I really admire, also got involved with his own rendition of DC's big-bosomed brawler:
Engblom's stuff is great, and this is no exception. His March 22nd, 2007 blog entitled "Meme Alert! Power Girl" clearly delineates that Mooncalfe's call for Power Girl pin-ups isn't an activity, it's a meme. And Mooncalfe's idea, which he wrote he got from dryponder, another livejournal blogger who posted his own earlier request for followers to "Draw Supergirl," certainly spread in its slightly mutated way across the 'net.
A couple other notable examples of self-labeled memes of this kind have included Batman -- a character that's extremely (and understandably) popular here as he is in so many other forms -- and J. Jonah Jameson, the always-irritated newspaper publisher from Marvel Comics' Spider-Man comic books. Let's examine, shall we?
The Batman example (above) was labeled as a 'Bat-Meme.' Along the same lines, then, the funny Batman panels I posted in an earlier LongBox Short blog also qualify as - and probably originated from -- Bat-Memes.
The JJ's below come from the Wordpress blog Simon Fitzkit...In The Field :
Simon Fitzkit is definitely a popular culture-influenced blog, but not one exclusively dedicated to comic books and all their glory along the lines of Engblom's Comic Coverage blog or even abbracadabbling. While the J. Jonah Jameson / Spider-Man 'meme' gained some small distance from the comics blogosphere by making it to Fitzkit, in all truth the 'meme' didn't really get that far, either.
In my estimation, the strength of a meme comes from how far from the tree it can fall. All the examples of 'memes' above, so named by their originators, have by and large circulated within the internet comics community. To me, this fact alone signifies these 'memes' aren't actually memes -- they're activities. Bully was right.
The comics blogosphere has been selling memes short. The activities are great, and I hope my fellow bloggers keep 'em coming. I'm sure I'll be posting some of my own, too. All this aside, though, I've yet to stumble across a site that takes a more meaningful approach to the comic meme.
Which means that Comic Meme on abbracadabbling might be the first and only place on the world wide that will endeavor to do just that. Not to be different or unique, not at all. Comic Meme exists simply because I'm fascinated by comic memes. At the heart of Comic Meme are questions like What about superheroes has become so required by society beyond the niche? and How are the specific comic memes functioning in the milieu to which they've spread? Not every Comic Meme will directly answer these or similar questions; it's more than likely my future blogs will serve more to present than to dissect.
I'll also do my best to stay away from the obvious examples -- video games, action figures, movie tie-ins, etc. They're the first non-comic book populations to have become infected by the notorious comic meme, but they're not too exciting anymore. At least, for the purposes of the Comic Meme blog.
Comic books remain the source of superheroes, and the comic meme phenomenon illustrates what could be the collective superheroes' greatest power -- to find relevance and become meaningful in places seemingly light years away from the nearest comic book shop or drug store spinner rack. Getting a handle on today's virulent comic meme may lead us to discover exactly what is the true foundation of superheroes in our contemporary society.
If you have some thoughts you'd like to share with me about comic memes, or have a great example of what I'm getting at here, please get yourself down to the our Back Issues and let me know. Comic Meme is still all about fun, but it'll be a little more than passing around the empty word balloon, too.
Next time in Comic Meme: Batman remains fashionable.
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