A daily dose of brilliance

“Americans assume that which is serious and pretentious is by nature high art and that which is simple and cheap cannot possibly have any artistic value.” So wrote Gilbert Seldes in his 1923 notes for an essay that would become “The 7 Lively Arts,” the first book-length evaluation of such popular arts as the comic strip. Though other critics eventually responded to his invitation to celebrate musical comedy, dance and the movies, as of now, 80 years later, the critics’ party boat for the comic strip remains in dry dock.

What is it about words and pictures? Separately, they are beyond reproach, but the moment they mate, their offspring is branded an underachiever. Occasionally an essay argues that the graphic novel medium is worthy of praise, citing the illustrated novels “Maus” by Art Spiegelman or “Jimmy Corrigan” by Chris Ware. But people still suspect this argument reeks of camp, in the same vein as pleas for a reevaluation of the drive-in movie theater. The works discussed are rare, the result of extremely personal vision and issued every few years between hard covers. No one argues that the daily comic strip -- a far more disposable, popular and thus suspect form -- is overrun with artistic brilliance.

In part, the fault lies with the strips themselves. Though adventure strips (“Flash Gordon,” “Prince Valiant,” “Tarzan”) have had their share of successors to N.C. Wyeth, illustrator of such works as “Treasure Island,” in the world of the humor strip and the gag-a-day, the roll call of geniuses is short. Two in particular stride from one end of the 20th century to the other: George Herriman, who died in 1944, and Charles M. Schulz, who just made it to the millennium. Their work couldn’t have been more different. Herriman’s “Krazy Kat” was a chaotic blend of Joycean language and bizarre landscapes. Its few fans (by the end it appeared in fewer than 30 papers) had to fight through layers of murk and misunderstanding to eventually tease out what the strip’s meaning -- and sometimes it meant nothing at all. At its aesthetic polar opposite stands “Peanuts.” What Schulz drew, and how he drew it, was so simple it looked like anyone could do it, which was his brilliance. The huge circular heads with scribbles for hair hid in plain sight a subversive question: What if children could voice their inner conflicts with the vocabulary of adults?

In the post-Schulz world, artists have copied his style without understanding that simplicity doesn’t mean simple-mindedness. Even when the writing is excellent, the comic pages today mostly carry crudely drawn strips, talking heads drawn as vehicles for the verbal gag. We might read strips for the characters, the viewpoint, the laugh, but the art? Not anymore.

Thank goodness for “Mutts” by Patrick McDonnell. Heavyweight art-publishing house Harry N. Abrams, recognizing a gem, has released a monograph devoted to a contemporary comic strip for the first time in its history. The result is a delight, especially for those of us who read the strip one day at a time in the Los Angeles Times or the more than 500 other papers that publish it; the accumulation of work proves that there is even more here than meets the eye, which was plenty to start with. It is a strip with a philosophy as deep and as tranquil as a Zen Buddhist’s, drawn by an artist fully aware of all that has come before him.

The strip’s setup is indistinguishable from many ersatz-Garfield comics: cat (Mooch) and dog (Earl) talk to their animal friends or interact a little more realistically with their human companions. It could be doomed to the “isn’t-that-cute, isn’t-that-true” school of humor. But “Mutts” is saved by a worldview that is profoundly sweet, weighted toward the profound: In subtle ways, it explores the relationship of man and animal, the place of pride and dominion. There are small moments, as when Mooch’s owners silently fall asleep next to their cat, that aren’t exactly jokes but gentle recognitions that defy cliche. Plenty of the episodes are just plain funny, running from the absurd (cat and dog eat until they explode into bits) to the picaresque (the crab explains his visit with disco pirates). At their best, Mooch and Earl play on human emotion as Charlie Chaplin did, from slapstick to high-wire sentimentalism. One Sunday strip features a pack of African animals facing the domesticated pair, with a lion saying, quietly, “We’re scared.” It’s drawn without an ounce of pathos or cuteness; the resulting impact is as disturbing as hearing a distant rifle shot.

The artwork in “Mutts” is energetic, slightly impressionistic, perhaps most like the late “Calvin and Hobbes,” which it also resembles in its childlike exuberance. To watch Mooch and Earl fight with their food, tumble through a windstorm or just amble through the woods is to see balletic grace in pen and ink. When all of his cylinders are firing, McDonnell somehow manages to synthesize Herriman’s chaos with Schulz’s simplicity. And, like Schulz, he has a subversive message that, because they’re reading such a “cute” strip, Americans in 2003 might miss: We do not own the planet; we share it.

The Abrams collection explains the behind-the-scenes of the strip. It offers sketches, character designs, alternate titles (it was almost called “Yap-Yap,” or, as if that weren’t emphatic enough, “Yap-Yap-Yap”), and early work by McDonnell. I’m especially fond of a wicked little strip called “Bad Baby,” a spiritual successor to Edward Gorey’s “The Beastly Baby.” There are short essays by McDonnell on his influences and on the act of creation, illustrated by daily and Sunday strips. He comes across as humble, calm and overwhelmingly pleased that he gets to cartoon for a living. He also has a plethora of apt quotations from artists in many fields: Dali, Picasso and Edward Ruscha, but also Fellini, Miles Davis and Colette.

The quotations aren’t a fluke; they are essential to understanding why “Mutts” isn’t just a well-executed comic. Its Sunday strips sport an innovation unlike anything you’ve seen before. Because some papers have limited space, they knock off the opening panel (which is why Doonesbury, for instance, begins every Sunday with a two-panel gag that can be omitted). McDonnell took advantage of this by inserting a different title panel each week, often based on a piece of fine art. Technically, it could be omitted, but that would remove an essential layer of meaning from the strip. Contemporary artists are free to use comics as inspiration (Raymond Pettibon and Roy Lichtenstein come immediately to mind), but how often is the reverse true? Turn the pages of this book, and you’ll find riffs on Vermeer, Jasper Johns, Henri Matisse, Jean-Michel Basquiat, old film posters, rock albums, other comic strips, outsider art and far more obscure source material that -- guess what? -- forces you to become educated if you want every nuance of the gag.

Now, does the inclusion of Japanese painter Hokusai’s famous tidal wave in the funny pages elevate the strip? Degrade the source? Or does it leave them both unaffected? McDonnell, who has co-written a history of Herriman, is a scholar of comic artwork. He seems to have a well-developed appreciation for fine art, too, in that his choices of Sunday images are never random. If, at first, it just seems like caprice (or hubris?) that he’s used “Starry Night” by Van Gogh to open a strip in which he shows captive animals dreaming of freedom, a bit of art history reminds us that Van Gogh painted this image from memory while trapped in an asylum. The juxtaposition of the incarcerated painter creating a thing of beauty from his past against animals doing more or less the same is not just poignant but a haunting meditation on freedom. In other words, there’s a new discussion formed by the two pieces of art: The painting shouts out a question that the strip considers and amplifies.

I think McDonnell has seized the reins of that bucking bronco Postmodernism and is riding it for all he’s worth. Yet he does it in a way that is emotionally engaging -- unlike the usual Po-mo creations that are cited as hip and edgy and droll. But McDonnell’s achievement is Po-mo with a heart of gold.

One reason might be his cast of characters. Biological theory finally admits that animals have emotions (as any pet owner could tell you), but perhaps only one at a time. This means an unconflicted joy when the can opener sounds, wrath when the mail comes and fear when thunder claps. Hence we do not just love our pets, we envy them that pure spirit. It’s a feeling that in the hands of lesser observers gets diluted and gooey, a greeting card sentiment.

McDonnell captures it perfectly. The frontispiece of the book reproduces an archetypal strip: Mooch dances past Earl, announcing “It’s a holiday. I’m off.” Earl, excited, responds, “Off!?! For us, every day is a holiday!” And then, in the final panel, wordlessly, Earl and Mooch dance past the birch trees, holding hands, suspended above the ground by no known power beyond the generosity of the hand that’s holding the pen.

This collection is a holiday for the rest of us.