Missing

Ozick in the new (4/07) Harper's:

"...what was missing, and has long been missing, in American letters: criticism that explains, both ancestrally and contemporaneously, not only how literature evolves but how literature influences and alters the workings of human imagination...What is needed are critics who can tease out hidden imperatives and assumptions held in common, and who will create the contentious conditions that underlie and stimulate a living literary consciousness."

I tried reading it with "comics" inserted instead of "literature," go ahead, you try it, it's fun--but what's the comics equivalent of "literary?" "Cartoony?"

"a living cartoony consciousness"

"a living comic book consciousness"

"a living comical consciousness"

No. We don't have the word to say it, even if there are writers and cartoonists wanting to write/draw about it, which maybe there ain't.