KANE: I had a muse of my own; I never abandoned any of my own deep preoccupations with action. I was a very, very good athlete, and I was interested in track and gymnastics. I was too big to be really great at gymnastics, but I really loved it. When I started to see dance for the first time, I couldn't get over the parallel between dance and gymnastics. They seemed identical to me in a strength and grace in combination. So, I became hooked on dance as an expression of movement, and it sharpened my desire to do figures that personified strength and grace.

I began to realize that unless I understood something, I wasn't going to be able to do anything about (it). For instance, I always loved drawing horses. I had a great feeling for horses, but I could never articulate horses. I think Kubert has a feeling for drawing horses, but Kubert never bothers to learn how to actually draw a horse. He still does it the same way he did it 30 or 40 years ago. It was necessary for me to learn how to draw a horse, to learn the strides of a horse, the run, the gallop, all of those things, and through that, I became obsessed with western drawing, tough Fred Harmon and Will James. I always knew what the best was, so I tried as much as possible to close the gap between where I was and what I already foresaw as work that was in the direction I wanted to go but really far above me. The one thing I managed to do was compared to most artists I know, I would say I modestly, that my overwhelming virtue was that I liked more art than anybody else I knew. I liked a greater variety of art. No one liked the variety of artists I liked. People like Frazetta would be fixated on Raymond and Foster and Bridgeman; everyone, even Kubert, had his favorites.

There were western artists who were very good at utilizing the pulp western technique. There were artists who were preoccupied with an urban style. There was a range of styles, techniques, and approaches -- dozens of different, competitive styles.

The loss here nowadays is at the level of editing. I don't think that any of the editors have a point of view that would lead -- I mean, in some instances, the editors do have a grasp about what will make money for them. But on the other hand, I don't know any editors who demonstrate a point of view that makes for the kind of material I think --

GROTH: Of course it's incestuous, isn't it? The companies hire the kind of editors who will perpetuate the company's institutionalized editorial policies. They're not going to hire editors with wildly different perspectives.

KANE: Absolutely.

GROTH: They wouldn't hire an editor who would be compelled to commission Jaxon to work for them.

KANE: Right. They simply won't hire challenging personalities. That's part of the problem of corporate America. The only thing is the bigger corporations are more informed of the value of individual contribution, and they have areas open for creative people and they make an accommodation for their unique personalities, recognizing that their creativity comes out of that. In these smaller situations, it would be impossible to accommodate a person like that who doesn't fall into a pattern that coincides with the point of view of the publisher [...] independents are shot down primarily because they're badly thought-out enterprises nearly always generated by fans nevertheless the independent way is the way that everyone will go. It happened in the recording business. In the 1940s, the recording business was down the tubes. It was lousy. Then, little by little, these small, little, marginal outfits were recording in their basement -- they changed the entire face of recording. Record companies that never had any existence became rivals to RCA and Columbia, certain old traditional labels -- Decor -- went out of business, and brand new ones you never heard of took over. They all started because they had a point of view that had a real audience waiting out there, not a narrow, limited audience that the major record labels had cut themselves down to. It's like movies, too. The movies had cut themselves down more and more to a hardcore sort-of audience, and then with the European films supplying the kind of realism and alternative viewpoints, they began to change the movie-going habits of the audience. First of all, they broke up the general audience that attended every movie, and broke the entire audience down into special groups.

[...]

KANE: But already you can see that there are attempts to pass laws: people who support the environment and maintain an environment that is healthy. They represent a large force in the society and they are working continuously to offset the kind of transgressions by people who create poisons in the atmosphere and in the environment, and considering -

GROTH: No, no, no. I agree that there are certain social problems that have political solutions, but the cultural disintegration which has lead to the creation of the mass man doesn't seem to lend itself to these kinds of solutions.

I'd like to pursue something we talked about earlier, which is the artificially accelerated way in which cultural values are transformed. We spoke earlier of how the popular entertainment values of '40s comics have been assimilated by today's young comics creators. There is a pernicious kind of cultural evolution at work here, because the cultural values embraced by the current generation of creators aren't cultural values so much as commodity values.

KANE: My feeling is that everyday the society at large is encountering the results of everything that preceded it. Everyday, there is a new problem that requires a new resolution, problems that have never occurred before and will never be the same again. One thing about human society is that generally there is some impulse that forces a corrective, and once society recognized the destructive thrust of some social situation, it starts working toward the control of it, usually getting it to become an integral part of the culture and the society so it doesn't dominate and overwhelm it. The whole point is now that so many things are happening so quickly that the culture seems to be in danger of not being able to catch up, that their controls are so far behind its new discoveries that it's having trouble overtaking them. I'm sure they'll overtake them in time. I just don't know if they'll overtake them in time at every level. Technology is throwing up possibilities to such an extent, and clearly the changes in style, in attitude, almost from year to year, value systems burn out, that are constantly reflected in long hair, short hair, you can see that society doesn't know what to do with itself. It doesn't have a point of view of its own, and somehow or other it's reacting entirely to the larger shock waves that are affecting the society as a whole. The problems that are being generated are multitudinous and the responses and controls for this are slower and slower in developing. The only thing I see in terms of comics is the possibility, just like the rest of the society, of being educated to the problems within the structure, within the form, within the society.

GROTH: You're saying that society has certain mechanisms that act as antidotes to what I perceive as a transition of values. Do you think the society is still capable of generating those antidotes in a mass technocratic society?

KANE: It's happened continuously faced with extraordinary problems. The industrial age brought in a sweatshop psychology, an acceptable treatment of people that was incredible, unbelievable, which amounted to slavery, people dying, tuberculosis, people dying by the millions as a result of the kind of jobs they held, and they were the only jobs possible because agriculture stopped becoming the basis, the city bc-me the basis for everything. Yet, somehow or other by degrees, they managed to exert themselves, and they were constructive from every point of view. The owners began to realize that they had to provide something better because it wasn't even a practical situation for them, and finally the workers began to organize and demand better conditions. Since that had an impact, economically, on the employers, it became a total involvement working toward a better understanding of each other's needs and what, in effect, the other would be forced to do by the pressure from another group. But, always they worked toward a constructive response. I think what's happening now is that everything is getting the shit kicked out of it. [Laughter] I mean, for instance, independent farmers look like they're going to go out of business, and the only ones who are going to be able to farm are large combines, big, enormous food growers and food processors who will be able to do it economically and who economically, of course, will be able to control, like energy. People absolutely turn the fucking country on its ear any time they want to; the major companies will control the food supply, will soon have that same kind of handhold. What happened when Reagan came in, they talked about this trickle-down economy, and what the big corporations did was not spend any money on production, just on buying other companies. All their profits, as much as they could ever make from turning out a product, just from buying and selling other companies. No labor came down, no employment came down, but there was money in exchange at a rarefied level.

GROTH: I'm pessimistic about social mechanisms providing an antidote for what we perceive as a kind of spiritual dislocation, because the problems in the 18th and 19th centuries were remedied by laws, and I don't think legislation can act as a deterrent to our current problems. The massification of society is so complete and so impregnable that laws cannot be passed that can transform consciousness.

You know, it's almost conspiratorial, this continual moronization of the public that shows no sign of abatement.

KANE: Yes, that's because in a democratic situation, a democratic situation is almost impossible not to achieve, as long as there's a free press and there's accessible information through the media, and it doesn't even make any difference if the media screwed up, the fact is, enough information gets through that people become dissatisfied with a situation that is not the equivalent of typical situations that are being lived or experienced elsewhere. I just feel that what's happening now in the world at large is that every dark pocket of the world is being infiltrated with movies and information of one kind or another, the whole planet is in rebellion against colonial attitudes, imperialism, exploitation. Even in our own country everyone feels that they've gotten enough information that they no longer want to tolerate the exploitation that they've experienced for years and generations. The whole process of revolt is a direct result of the progress in disseminating information. It seems to be following a natural progression and if it's a natural progression, a lot of these situations will be remedied, adjusted, the society will hopefully move on from there. Of course, it's capable of annihilating itself at any point, but barring that, it seems to me... Since everything we see is a kind of natural progression of everything's that preceded it -- what we see is the only thing that would be unnatural would be some aberration that would set in that would set off a bomb or something. But, beyond that, as I say, if the media, if information has become accessible and if information is changing the face of the earth, which it is, then information will continue to change it. Why would it stop at this point? What I'm saying is that there is a kind of natural progression we've built the entire society, the whole world culture on the strength of what's being disseminated to us every day, which is essentially what technology knows.

GROTH: OK. Now, the reason I don't think this is perhaps as helpful as you do is because I don't think you're looking at the quality of information so much as the quantity.

KANE: Well, the whole idea that the world won't accept a third-rate standard of living is to me more important -- obviously, nothing is more profound than their grasp that they don't have to live that kind of a life and that they refuse to live it. That seems to me a perception so profound that it transcends all the other qualities of culture or anything else. I mean, we're dealing with the most basic needs of existence. It seems to me that it simply suggests to me, without any question, that what information is doing is it's freeing -- the whole process of freeing is that, like any kind of birth, there's an agony in birth. For any idea to take hold and ultimately reach a resolution, obviously it has to overthrow old ideas.

GROTH: Do you think there's any civilized mean between capitalism and communism?

KANE: [non-plussed] I think it's a question too complicated for me to answer...

GROTH: You mentioned how China is now experimenting with capitalism, and the idea of turning the world onto a consumer society is, to me, pretty disheartening.

KANE: In our own capitalist country at the moment, socialistic ideas seem to be diminished continuously. The government is cutting back, and so forth. But, I think it's part of a cycle.

GROTH: Well, you know, I think it's axiomatic that excessive liberty invites despotism; that is, anarchy invites despotism because as human beings we require order. Socialist forms offer us scale. I wonder if there's a mean between socialism and capitalism that provides liberty on the one hand and serves to regulate our conduct on the other.

KANE: I think inevitably we're moving toward that anyhow. I can't take a situation where people isolate themselves in the security of their income and feel that the government owes nothing to anyone. First of all, there is only so long that people who are denied [...] by people who have against people who have-not. I think it's constantly moving toward that kind of a balance. Information simply won't allow it. The reality of the disenfranchised is simply a reality, and if you deny the reality, all you have to do is see the kind of upheaval that's going on all over the world.

GROTH: It's an accepted reality, though. We have come to accept a certain amount of poverty and degradation. We find a certain amount of misery acceptable.

KANE: I think that's the same position the feudal lords had when they were overthrown, also. They had experienced a period like that, but the truth of the matter is as long as wealth is concentrated in the few and not in the many, they're always going to be in trouble of being overrun. The thing about the many is that now information is dispensed, so that even in the many you find people of such technical brilliance that they can achieve the same effects as the people of means have. The people of means simply write the laws to protect them and their means, but it means nothing if ultimately there's not a reasonable exchange between those who have and those who haven't. They're setting themselves up for the worst kind of crisis. There's no putting that aside, there's no denying people who need desperately. As long as the number of people who need desperately are a sort of manageable number, it's one thing, but obviously with a policy like that, that number is bound to grow. So, it's an inevitable situation. The only thing that made it possible, for instance, in the feudal period, was that as weaponry and technology became available, the superiority of numbers threatened the situations for the feudal lords. You know, one thing I didn't know was that during wartime, before the 20th century, wars were fought where essentially the people who were civilians were not involved in the fight. Places weren't burned and pillaged -- I'm talking about since the industrial age started. It was only during the first World War that either Germany was destroyed or France was destroyed, they fought in trenches, in open areas, and so on and so forth.

Trimmed from The Comics Journal #226

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