MCA comics exhibit features work by D+Q artists

You could, this summer, should the mood strike you, travel to three Chicago museums, visit three exhibits on comic books and walk away with an expansive and remarkably thorough understanding of the history of comics and cartooning.

You could travel, in only a handful of CTA stops, from “Gasoline Alley” to the Daily Bugle to Wicker Park circa 1992. Or go “Dick Tracy” to “Black Panther” to Lynda Barry. Or even “Brenda Starr” to the ’60s Underground to the Chicago Reader to Kerry James Marshall. Eventually, should you try this — and I recommend one show a month, to encourage digestion and avoid burnout — a pair of cultural truisms will float into your head and refuse to dislodge: No. 1: Chicago is the spiritual home of American comics.

No. 2: Chicago doesn’t know it’s the spiritual home of American comics. Otherwise, considering the history in these shows, it’d be on license plates by now.

Since spring, the Museum of Science and Industry has had a hit with its surprisingly incisive, self-critical, exhaustive (and exhausting) show on the history of Marvel Comics. This week, the Museum of Contemporary Art opens a sprawling survey of Chicago comics from 1960 to now. Meanwhile, not to be outdone — as a companion to the MCA exhibit — the Chicago Cultural Center hosts a veritable excavation, curated by Oak Park godhead Chris Ware and retired city historian Tim Samuelson, covering 1880 to 1960. Check out our new Chicago Tribune comics page, featuring "Calvin and Hobbes," "Broom Hilda," "Dilbert," "Garfield," "Peanuts" and more. » Minus the Marvel detours into Manhattan publishing, it’s largely a Chicago story, shaped by Chicago artists. Indeed, by the time you leave the MCA show alone, you’ll argue: Comics is a Chicago medium. We already claim the blues, jazz, house music, improv.

What’s one more? Michael Darling, former head curator at the MCA, had the idea to make that monster argument a couple of years ago. Following the museum’s blockbuster exhibits on David Bowie, Virgil Abloh and Takashi Murakami, he wanted “another big-tent populist show that went beyond contemporary art.” He was stuck on the feeling that “Chicago doesn’t know the depths of its comic legacy — it’s never recognized how rich a vein of creativity it’s been.”

To be specific, it’s less a vein than a central nervous system. Emphasis on nervous.

“Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now,” which runs through Oct. 3 at the MCA, is a snapshot of a perpetually anxious, sweaty, insecure, disorganized, scrappy, pissed-off strain of local artist, a group that often seems to be barely holding it together. And yet, it’s also a group way too diverse, caustic, self-sufficient and eccentric to have generated a signature local style.

I asked Darling and Dan Nadel, the show’s curator, if they identified a recognizable Chicago style while working on “Chicago Comics.” Nadel said, nope. But there is a common attitude here, Darling countered. Nadel scrunched up his face at this: No, not really.

Nadel is not from Chicago. He’s curator-at-large of the Museum of Art at University of California, Davis; he’s been a publisher of graphic novels and editor of The Comics Journal; he’s written histories of comics (and is currently at work on a biography of R. Crumb). As for his Chicago cred: He’s curated shows on Chicago pioneers Suellen Rocca and Karl Wirsum and designed the album cover for Wilco’s “A Ghost is Born.”

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