Comics/Sequential Art

This booklet is an introduction to my basic approach to drawing and cartooning the human figure based on workshops I have taught since 1993. "Stick figures" (the gesture or pose) and simple geometric solids like spheres, cubes, and cylinders are used to construct supple, fluid figures with simple but convincing contour outlines. The ability to draw the figure (or schematic mannequin) based on a "canon of proportions" from memory, supplemented by drawing the live model and studying photographs and anatomy resources, is invaluable to the artist, illustrator, cartoonist, animator, and comic book storyteller.

Comics are a pervasive art form and an intrinsic part of the cultural fabric of most countries. And yet, relatively little has been written on the translation of comics. Comics in Translation attempts to address this gap in the literature and to offer the first and most comprehensive account of various aspects of a diverse range of social practices subsumed under the label 'comics'.

Focusing on the role played by translation in shaping graphic narratives that appear in various formats, different contributors examine various aspects of this popular phenomenon. Topics covered include the impact of globalization and localization processes on the ways in which translated comics are embedded in cultures; the import of editorial and publishing practices; textual strategies adopted in translating comics, including the translation of culture- and language-specific features; and the interplay between visual and verbal messages. Comics in translation examines comics that originate in different cultures, belong to quite different genres, and are aimed at readers of different age groups and cultural backgrounds, from Disney comics to Art Spiegelman's Maus, from Katsuhiro Ōtomo's Akira to Goscinny and Uderzo's Astérix. The contributions are based on first-hand research and exemplify a wide range of approaches. Languages covered include English, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, French, German, Japanese and Inuit.

The volume features illustrations from the works discussed and an extensive annotated bibliography.

Contributors include: Raffaella Baccolini, Nadine Celotti, Adele D'Arcangelo, Catherine Delesse, Elena Di Giovanni, Heike Elisabeth Jüngst, Valerio Rota, Carmen Valero-Garcés, Federico Zanettin and Jehan Zitawi.

Narratives are an integral part of human expression. In the graphic form, they range from cave paintings to Egyptian hieroglyphics, from the Bayeux Tapestry to modern day comic books (Kunzle, 1973; McCloud, 1993). Yet not much research has addressed the structure and comprehension of narrative images, for example, how do people create meaning out of sequential images? This piece helps fill the gap by presenting a theory of Narrative Grammar. We describe the basic narrative categories and their relationship to a canonical narrative arc, followed by a discussion of complex structures that extend beyond the canonical schema. This demands that the canonical arc be reconsidered as a generative schema whereby any narrative category can be expanded into a node in a tree structure. Narrative “pacing” is interpreted as a reflection of various patterns of this embedding: conjunction, left-branching trees, center-embedded constituencies, and others. Following this, diagnostic methods are proposed for testing narrative categories and constituency. Finally, we outline the applicability of this theory beyond sequential images, such as to film and verbal discourse, and compare this theory with previous approaches to narrative and discourse.

Japan uses more paper for commercial *manga*, or comics, than for toilet paper, but hundreds of thousands of Japanese girls and women want more, and support a thriving amateur manga community so large it can hardly be labelled "underground."  Mainstream readers of commercial manga for girls and women find meaning in individual manga and apply that meaning to their lives actively, but the female creators and fans of amateur manga go farther, giving expression to their own ideas, fantasies, and interests free of editorial restrictions.  The most popular amateur genre is *yaoi* (the acronym of a phrase meaning "no climax, no resolution, meaning unknown"), in which male characters are "poached" from commercial manga for boys and recast in homoerotic relationships.  Based on interviews with fans and creators, as well as on participation in the festival-like "comic markets" in which the works are sold, I examine the implications of this community that seems largely driven by the Pleasure Principle, yet also speaks volumes about the politics of gender and sexuality in post-postwar Japan.

Scholars and students, argues historian Julian Chambliss, can use superhero comics and their related media to investigate how culture and power changed in American society. Focusing on Iron Man and Superman, Chambliss explores issues of nationalism and identity since the 1930s.

In current criticism on comic books and graphic novels there is a recurrent use of the terms ‘comic’ or ‘comic book’ to refer both to the language employed by these texts and to the different subgenres that use this language. Comic strips, comic books and graphic novels share the common characteristic of employing the same iconical language. Nevertheless, they are different texts that should each be placed in their own context in order to understand their generic specificities. Their contextualisation will help avoid the confusion produced by the indiscriminate use of the term ‘comic’. This article aims to offer a proposal for the assessment and classification of the different types of texts that exist under the umbrella terms of ‘comics’ and ‘comic books’, with a view to placing them within what can be called the ‘iconical discourse community’.

From its creation The Simpsons proved different, but how the irreverence of a show can be enough for the American public to select this sitcom as it preferred primetime watching time? How the show confronts capital issues of our decadent society as race, gender, religion sex and first, family and marriage. It’s not all in the humor or the quality of color or maybe selecting aggressive topics like the environment of corruption. How the gender representation in topics like homosexuality in majority of male characters on the show affect the way the audience react to them. Multiple recog-nitions around the world, but also critics about their political agenda and controversy. This show create a momentum for success on television for shows oriented to social aspect and adult anima-tion, awakening also a wave of copycats around the world. The success of the sitcom resides in big part in how the show presents actual social topics that make them attractive for all. Now society is moving on, moral decay is all around and a family show, with a very dysfunctional family, agree, it’s getting behind. Are we seeing the last of them or the team have more surprises under their hat? Will see. That’s the reason of the few ideas put together in this paper.

This paper examines gendered speech in a corpus of 10 popular manga (Japanese comics) series, with attention to realism and genre-based differences. While traditionally described as a highly gendered language, Japanese recently appears to be becoming less so. Manga are often given as one influential factor for these changes, particularly regarding girls’ use of masculine first person pronouns; however, previous research has been contradictory, and the importance of gendered-genres leads one to anticipate differences in characters’ speech. In response, I looked at two markers of Japanese gendered speech, personal pronouns and sentence final particles (SFPs), finding that while personal pronoun usage was generally normative, all genders used a variety of gendered SFPs. While genre-based variations such as more stereotypical speech in manga for boys may reflect narrative differences, I suggest that the data show that manga reflect previously established changes, as with SFPs, thus appearing consistent with reports that mass-media are not a clear source of linguistic change. However, their perception as low texts may be influential in their association with negative changes, even when such claims are not supported empirically, as with PPs. In this way, popular media’s role in changing gendered language is shown to be more complex than commonly assumed.

Key words: Manga, Japanese, corpus linguistics, personal pronouns, sentence final particles, yawakuri-go

This thesis discusses current visual and narrative representation of Western female superheroes. As the concepts of protection and heroism are considered to be inherently masculine, female heroes are often portrayed as contradictory in nature as the author grapples with her status as both woman and hero. This piece ultimately aims to suggest ways of bypassing cultural assumptions and linking signifiers of femininity with heroism.

The structure of comics has long been compared to that of language. This paper reviews the diverse research examining sequential images with methods from linguistics. Throughout, I argue that the notion of "comics" is separate from the "visual language" that they are written in. I then outline how this visual language is analogous to spoken and signed languages, and describe how it can be studied using the same questions that guide the study of those linguistic systems.

""UEA Thesis (2011)

In this thesis I draw upon recent formulations of fantasy theory, from Rosemary Jackson’s psychoanalytic analysis to the socio-historical approaches of José Monleon and Mark Bould, and the poetics of fantasy literature of Farah Mendlesohn, to illuminate the interlocking political debates about fantasy fiction which are important to literary theory: whether fantasy is a minor sub-set of literature or the basis of all fiction; whether fantasy functions primarily as a satirical or utopian idiom, or as sheer escapism; and whether fantasy is a liberating expression of the imagination or a limiting and commodified form. ""

The full thesis can be downloaded via the UEA Digital Repository: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/19302.

As Andrea Most points out, every comic artist dealing with Jewish characters has to decide “how to represent a Jewish body and how to determine what exactly a Jewish narrative looks like” . Hence, “[t]he choices each artist makes about how to represent Jewish bodies tell a story about the shifting status of Jewishness in contemporary […] popular culture” . In fact, when it comes to gendered Jewish identities, the body plays a crucial role. In her expressionistic (auto-)biographical comics Jewish-American Underground cartoonist Aline Kominsky Crumb addresses the central role of the body for the representation and cultural construction of Jewish women, showing that [..] the Jewish body is always inevitably a gendered body” . Paying particular attention to comic-specific modes of (visual) representation, my paper explores how Kominsky Crumb’s distinctive style manages to generate Jewish Gender Trouble. As will be shown, her ‘grotesque’ and cartoony drawings not only question the reliability and authenticity of the things depicted, they also undermine established notions of what is considered to be suitable, acceptable and beautiful to look at – especially when it comes to representations of the female (Jewish) body. In this respect, the gendered Jewish identities found in the comics of Kominsky Crumb must be understood as constructed, performative concepts, of doing gender and doing (Jewish) identity.

Consumidos largamente no Japão e em vários países ao redor do mundo, os mangás – quadrinhos japoneses – tornaram-se um dos estilos de arte sequencial mais conhecidos e adorados, devido a sua ampla gama de temas e características visuais únicas. Atualmente, são um dos principais meios de expressão da arte e cultura nipônica no Ocidente, onde influenciam diversas mídias como jogos, videoclipes, filmes e animações. No Brasil, a paixão por mangás e outros elementos da cultura pop japonesa mobiliza milhares de fãs a participarem de grandes convenções espalhadas por todo o país, além de despertar-lhes o interesse pelo estudo do desenho, língua japonesa, artes marciais, entre outros. Por estas razões, estes quadrinhos merecem seu espaço nas pesquisas brasileiras, especialmente no que se refere a seus aspectos visuais.
A monografia em questão propõe o estudo dos mangás com o principal objetivo de ressaltar suas qualidades artísticas, através da demonstração de sua constituição a partir da hibridização entre elementos de diversas expressões da arte como cinema, gravura (ukiyo-e), rolos de pintura (emakimono), quadrinhos ocidentais e teatro. Entre os assuntos a serem abordados a respeito dos mangás encontram-se: sua história e precedentes; as contribuições de Osamu Tezuka para o meio; sua importância na sociedade japonesa; a difusão dos mangás e animês no Brasil e no Ocidente; e a análise de algumas de suas principais características – divisão por gêneros, cinematografia, quadrinização, onomatopeias, traço, expressões emocionais e estética kawaii.

Since the 1940s, comics have played an important role in the American cultural
landscape, constantly reinterpreting, institutionalizing and reinventing former cultural experiences
such as non-graphic literature, cinema, and photography. Postmodernist fiction related to comics
not only through the appropriation of themes and characters, but also by re-adapting narrative
structures and textual strategies typical of comic books, such as the violent juxtaposition of scenes
and the use of stratified frames. On the other end, postmodernist techniques eventually contributed
to the evolution of comics into the graphic novel form, that added a degree of permanence to
an entertainment object which started and developed mainly as a disposable one. Far from being a
mere “translation” or a derivative work, Paul Karasik’s and David Mazzucchelli’s City of Glass:
The Graphic Novel shows how an allegedly “simple” medium such as comics is able to reinvent
the full narrative potential also of insistently language-oriented texts. The authors do not just
“translate” Auster’s text; they “adapt” the poetics of postmodernist fiction, inventing a “visual
poetics” for their medium. The graphic novel’s visual dimension adds further levels to the narrative
instability of the text, by inventing visual metaphors and emphasizing similarities and parallels
that in the original text remained underground.

[Article's introduction] Born a decade prior to the Islamic Revolution, Marjane Satrapi grew up in the midst of turmoil. Her critically acclaimed graphic memoir Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, which spans the years immediately before and after the Revolution, and its sequel, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return, have found an abundant readership around the world. As Satrapi indicates in her introduction to the first volume, in creating this narrative of her life, she hoped to provide non-Iranians, particularly those in the West, with a more accurate perspective on Iran. Implicit in this aim is a distinction between the Iranian Self and the Western Other, with the latter constituting Satrapi’s major implied audience. While the didactic aspects of the two Persepolis volumes cannot be denied, another, perhaps less appreciated, aspect of Satrapi’s work resides in its critical dialogue with Iranian culture. Satrapi’s assertion at the end of her introduction to Persepolis—“One can forgive but one should never forget”—applies as much to Iranians as to Western readers and reflects her attention to the Self as the other important implied audience for the text. Indeed, as Amy Malek notes, many Iranian readers have praised Satrapi’s work “for preserving the communal memory of a generation” (375). In narrating her own memories, Satrapi critically intervenes in the culture and politics of censorship and compulsory veiling under the post-revolutionary Islamic regime and touches upon the important psychological consequences of such tactics of repression.

By choosing to present her story through the medium of comics, Satrapi further establishes a dialogue with the Other, in the form of her engagement with the established Western attitudes and aesthetic values that surround the production and reception of comics. Satrapi’s relative unfamiliarity with comics before producing the Persepolis volumes seems to have contributed to her eclectic approach to the medium. Her style shows influences from various sources, not only the cartooning style of her mentor, David B., but also the tradition of Persian miniature painting and probably the satiric political cartoons that at one point appeared in newspapers and magazines in her native country. Yet Satrapi has clearly forged a cohesive, and very distinctive, style of her own, one that successfully deploys the expressive visual language of the medium.

L’histoire de la narratologie est paradoxale. Sa naissance découle de la prise de conscience précoce que l’horizon des travaux portant sur la narrativité déborde
du cadre de la théorie littéraire. Pourtant, cette discipline émergente a longtemps été réticente à s’émanciper de son périmètre d’origine. Il en a découlé qu’un certain nombre de concepts se sont figés dans des définitions qui les rendent difficilement applicables à des formes non verbales. A une époque où les grands récits de notre culture se déclinent sur une vaste gamme de supports médiatiques, souvent coordonnés, au sein desquels les narrations bédéiques, filmiques, télévisuelles ou vidéoludiques occupent une place de plus en plus centrale, il est devenu urgent de développer une théorie du récit capable d’embrasser cette diversité. Mais cet élargissement ne doit pas se faire au mépris d’une conscience aiguë des contraintes que chaque support, par sa matérialité, mais aussi par sa tradition historique, impose au message narratif. Si l’on regarde au-delà du phénomène de l’adaptabilité des histoires, il devient alors essentiel de refonder des concepts transversaux suffisamment souples pour s’adapter à n’importe quel média, tout en réfléchissant à la manière spécifique dont chacun d’entre eux s’incarne médiatiquement.

This colloquium paper is an attempt to reflect my thoughts on stories, and telling thereof using visual sequential art as the media. It also briefly discusses my understanding of the art form and its parallel evolution over time, in dispersed locations on the face of Earth, sometimes citing a few examples to illustrate the point, and at other times quoting the exemplars of the field to suggest the influence they had on ideas and perceptions of the followers, here mostly being the comic book readers and artists. The paper also towards the end opines on the current surge of graphic novels in the popular yet not so mainstream readership, India being the context.
Following is the sequenced outline of this colloquium, yet the subsections can be read on their own, irrespective of the order; coherence being subject to the familiarity of the readers with the media of sequential art.

1. The Inception
1.0 The Need To Tell Stories
1.1 In Early History
1.2 Medieval Make-believe

2. In The Modern Sense
2.0 Sequential Art, the Term
2.1 Modern Comics, an Introduction
2.1.1 Manga
2.1.2 Franco-Belgian Comics
2.1.3 American Comics

3. The Graphic Novels
3.0 Graphic Novels
3.1 Criticism of the Neologism

4. End Note.

Art Spiegelman lleva toda su vida artística luchando con como expresar lo inexpresable. El Horresco Referens, el horror a la referencia es uno de los ejes narrativos de su obra gráfica. En el caso de Maus (1986), el autor se enfrentó a muchos dilemas representativos: en cuanto a la capacidad explicativa del trauma paterno; los problemas que conlleva la
autobiografía; pero sobre todo, la problematica de la representabilidad de la magnitud del Holocausto, tratada por primera vez en este cómic.
______________________________________________________________________

Art Spiegelman has spent his entire artistic life struggling with how to express the inexpressible. The horresco referens, the horror of reference is one of the main narrative of his graphic work. In the case of Maus (1986), the author faced many representative dilemmas: how to deal with the explanatory power of parental trauma, the problems with the autobiography, but above all, the problem of representability of the magnitude of the Holocaust, first addressed in this comic.

En este trabajo se pretende analizar el género del cómic erótico, en el ámbito europeo y extraeuropeo. La atención se centra también en el estudio de la producción de cómic en España mediante el análisis y la traducción de El corazón de la serpiente, historia ilustrada escrita por Antonio Altarriba, conocido guionista y experto en materia tanto de cómics como de literatura erótica. La elección de este tema ha constituido un reto importante: el de proporcionarle al lector un estudio profundizado y objetivo del cómic. Esto resulta necesario, ya que, a lo largo del trabajo, parece evidente que los estudios acerca de este género son muy escasos y pobres. Además, se ha podido comprobar que alrededor de la temática erótica todavía reina cierto prejuicio injustificado. En efecto, el erotismo es un ámbito que, incluso hoy en día, se estudia muy poco desde el punto de vista académico. Además cabe señalar que, aunque la traducción de cómic sea un sector especializado y reconocido, todavía no existen guías completas u orientaciones al respecto. Por esta razón, se ha pretendido proporcionarle al lector una serie de pautas que podrá utilizar todo aquel que quiera dedicarse a este tipo de tarea.

In this, my research master thesis, I looked at laughter as a form of resistance in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke, Tim Burton's Batman and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. The aim is to analyze if the Joker's most famous characteristic, his continuous laughter, can be seen as a form of resistance in itself. Following two laughing theorists, Nietzsche and Foucault, this work analyzes the laughter and the madness of the Joker in three of its most famous incarnations.

Science-fiction comics and graphic novels portray realistic scenarios of how our cities may evolve. These are based on the extrapolation of present trends as well as speculation, “what if” scenarios that can inform us about past, present and future. The objective of this paper is to study these and assess how they can change the way we think about future cities in design. This will be achieved by studying 15 comics and applying a four matrices onto them. A spatiotemporality matrix will be applied as well as a thematic matrix which will be a first comparative analysis to understand how these worlds are constructed. A city type matrix and a matrix of extrapolation and speculation will form a second comparative analysis which will determine what we can learn from the types of cities depicted as well as the methods to reach them.

En este artículo se proponen algunas herramientas para la descripción semiótica de los cómics en tanto narraciones visuales secuenciales, identificando las dos formas semióticas principales que los constituyen: los códigos narrativos y los códigos visuales. En la segunda parte se propone una aproximación, a partir de cuatro ejemplos, del giro realista en la novela gráfica de las últimas décadas: Maus (Spiegleman), Palestina (Sacco), Persépolis (Satrapi) y El diario de Nueva York (Doucet).

Aunque las secuencias narrativas de imágenes no son desconocidas por los estudios del arte, apenas se ha investigado, desde el punto de vista formal, cómo están estructuradas secuencias visuales como las de la Columna de Trajano o las de los manuscritos iluminados. Este trabajo pretende elaborar un primer esbozo de los principales patrones formales que escultores y miniaturistas siguieron, desde la Antigüedad a la Edad Media, para organizar dichas imágenes en un relato, analizando asimismo las necesidades tecnológicas y sociales que influyeron en la elección de determinadas opciones estilísticas.

Although narrative sequences of images are not unknown to Art Studies, a formal analysis about the structure of visual sequences like those we can find in illuminated manuscripts or all over Trajan’s Column, has never been undertaken. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the main formal patterns sculptors and illustrators followed from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in order to organize images in a narrative way. In addition, we will also analyze the technological and social needs that influenced the formal choices made by these pioneer visual narrators.

This article explores how the speculative worlds of contemporary US superhero comics have addressed the problem of difference and human diversity through stories about the catastrophic threat of genocide. It focuses on a classic DC Comics storyline—the Legion of Super-Heroes’ Legion Lost from 2000–2001—that depicts a diverse team of teenage superheroes collectively struggling against the genocidal actions of a former friend and colleague. The author shows how superhero comics in the late twentieth century visually present human heterogeneity—in the figure of the superhero team as a kaleidoscopic gathering of ethically motivated but widely divergent actors—not only as a quality of human difference but also as a set of values that actively work against forms of genocidal violence. In so doing, the author develops a critique of the contemporary demand for representational diversity in comics, which equates progressive politics with the mere numerical expansion of minority characters in the fictional worlds of mainstream comics production, and asks how we might reframe this demand not as a plea by minority subjects to be visually represented by predominantly white male comic book creators but as a claim to collaborative world building. In Legion Lost, the desire to obliterate or extinguish life that is different than oneself is linked to the experience of social isolation from friendship, camaraderie, and collectivity—it is loneliness, the narrative argues, that facilitates xenophobia and fear of difference, and friendship and trust that dispels them. Ultimately, the article unpacks how the visual and narrative conventions of American superhero comic books like Legion Lost offer fantasies of collective solidarity that provide fictional models of collaborative world making that exceed classical models of recognition through representation.

Essa tese procurou analisar as histórias em quadrinhos da editora Marvel Comics nas últimas três décadas como crônicas políticas e sociais dos Estados Unidos. A grande penetração dessa mídia na cultura estadunidense faz dela uma parte significativa da indústria do entretenimento desse país. Assim, essa obra indagou as representações sobre a sociedade americana tendo como objeto uma manifestação cultural tipicamente americana. Os profissionais que envolvem a produção dos quadrinhos, tais como editores, desenhistas e roteiristas realizam a transposição dos fatos reais de forma didática. Nesse sentido, utilizam a noção de realidade e a associam por meio da linguagem dos quadrinhos com o referencial de que o leitor entende que é ficção, mas percebe o diálogo com os acontecimentos reais. Por meio da mediação, a cada leitor é permitido um fluxo permanente de sentidos em função de suas experiências culturais e estéticas. Tendo o tempo como pano de fundo e grande articulador de eventos atuais, esse trabalho lança um olhar sobre a construção da memória na sociedade contemporânea dos EUA.

Yaoi/BL Fandom Survey (only takes 10 mins to complete): https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey

Abstract
‘Fujoshi’ (rotten girl) is a derogatory Japanese term for female fans of homoerotic manga and anime in the genre know as Boys’ Love (BL). BL is a global phenomenon and one of the largest, female-oriented, erotic subcultures. I have underway, what is already, the biggest survey of the Anglophone fandom (https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey) and have, so far, completed 14 face-to-face and around 100 e-mail interviews. This is the first project I have conducted on sexually explicit material and, although I consider myself to be a fujoshi, I am not, otherwise, a user of pornography/sexually explicit material. In fact, this research has presented a huge challenge to me in terms of becoming more comfortable discussing sexual topics and, even more personally, in making my own investment in male-male sexuality public. This has meant dealing with feelings of embarrassment and shame, but also of relief in finding and communicating with other women who have a similar erotic fantasy life. However, the project has also made me feel, at times, quite anxious given recent UK prohibited images of children legislation. What does BL represent for me that I am willing to put myself through this, spend most of my spare time on it, and is it really ‘research’?

Speech balloons and thought bubbles are among the most recognizable visual signs of the visual language used in comics. These enclosed graphic containers provide a way in which text and image can interface with each other. However, their stereotypical meanings as representing speech or thought betray much deeper semantic richness. This paper uses these graphic signs as a platform for examining the multimodal interfaces between text and image, and details four types of interfaces that characterize the connections between modalities: Inherent, Emergent, Adjoined, and Independent relationships. Each interface facilitates different levels of multimodal integration, tempered by principles of Gestalt grouping and underlying semantic features. This process allows the possibility of creating singular cohesive units of text and image that is on par with other multimodal interfaces, such as between speech and gesture.

One of Art Spiegelman’s motivations for using animal forms for the characters in the two volumes of Maus was to depict the dehumanization of the Jews during the Holocaust and as well the inhuman behavior of the Nazis and people of other nations. There is another side to this dehumanization in Maus that we will explore, namely what Deleuze and Guattari (D&G) call “becoming animal,” which is a mode of social and personal transformation undergone for the sake of survival and vitality and obtained through adaptation and mutation. D&G use Spinoza’s account of bodily composition and affective alteration to explain how threatening influences can push people and their groups into a temporary state of anonymity. While under this mode of indeterminacy, new arrangements and compositions may freely form and dissipate, which allows them to effectively survive, evade, and subvert the intruding powers. D&G further elaborate these notions of “becoming-animal” and the formation of anonymous “packs” by utilizing their concept of the “machinic assemblage,” whose parts reconfigure in order to disrupt or “minorize” the machinery of the larger system. This minorization operates as well on the level of language, where the minor group works within the major language system to undermine their oppressor’s regime of signs and values. Maus for example adopts the visually metaphoric language that presented the Jewish people in rodent form, as seen for instance in the Nazi propaganda documentary The Eternal Jew (Fritz Hippler, Der Ewige Jude, 1940), which depicts the Jews as rats infesting the entire world. But by shifting to mice and by drawing the Nazis as cats, Spiegelman evades the fixed meanings of the major visual language and introduces very different connotations and interpretations. Yet, one criticism of Spiegelman’s use of animal forms is that it sanitizes the horrors of the Holocaust and falsifies them by rendering them cute and harmless. I reply by including Maus under what D&G call a “minor genre,” in this case a particular kind of minor documentary. Filmed documentaries are rarely objective and unbiased, as we have seen already with the propaganda film The Eternal Jew’s distortions and misrepresentations. And Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah (1985), instead of presenting any archival footage of the Holocaust, merely interviews survivors, witnesses and former Nazi SS officers to “document” the subjective realities internal to the events. Maus as well is based on the recorded interviews of a Holocaust survivor, but instead of providing objective depictions of the visual horrors in his experiences, it instead documents the existential experience of losing cultural and personal identity. And the horrors of this particular element of the events are more effectively and faithfully documented using animal forms.

This text is fashioned from an email exchange between the authors during the spring, summer, and fall of 2015. Our aim with this informal, collaborative process was to develop a few of the key principles for discussing graphic narratives as a mode of life writing, especially graphic memoirs relating to illness, disability, and care work, as well as issues of difference more broadly (including gender and sexuality). Thinking through the genres and media of graphic life writing, we discuss narrative, text authentication, institutional positioning, world-making, narrating difference, and the role of the visual, while giving particular attention to the importance of objects and temporality to the comics form. Rather than a resolved or comprehensive series of guidelines, we offer instead an experiment in epistolary criticism, through which we formulate several points of contact between graphic narrative and life writing scholarship—instances and considerations where the central concerns for scholars in both fields overlap. Ultimately, our sense is that graphic memoirs of disability, illness, and other types of difference share many characteristics with more traditional, exclusively textual life writing forms, though in graphic life writing the visual dynamic—involving the connections and disconnections between the verbal and visual—produces specific engagements with disjunction, complexity, and the ineffable.
KEYWORDS
Comics; graphic memoir;
disability; queer

Without a doubt Chris Ware is one of the preeminent creators of comics today. He is a brilliant figure in a generation of extraordinarily talented people. Granted, there are a lot of innovators in the field right now, but no one else in the last seventy years has explored the capabilities of the genre to the same extent as has Ware. His genius, in part, comes from his interest in and understanding of the past accomplishments of figures such as George Herriman and Winsor McCay. One might even say that much of his work is somewhat archaeological in nature: he is interested in a reclamation of the past. Rather than merely excavating the achievements of past masters for the sake of history, however, Ware is also fortifying, expanding, and enriching comics so that it might flourish in the present.

This work begins with a broad examination of the nature of comics. First by briefly discussing the cognitive operations involved in processing this hybrid medium, then by surveying the generic branches of comics, and then by offering an historic examination of its contemporary development, which goes back as far as the sixteenth century. Next is an analysis of comics in relation to literature, film, and the visual arts. Comics utilizes elements from all of these, but it also offers a unique narrative experience.

This book primarily focuses upon Ware’s magnum opus to date, Jimmy Corrigan. It contextualizes his work within developments in comics over the last fifty years, as well as comparing him to other prominent figures such as Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Lynda Barry, and Frank Miller.

Research on the understanding of “how comics work” has grown tremendously over the past 20 years, with more articles and books emerging each year. Much of this research has discussed comparisons between comics and language, and/or has speculated on comics’ cognition. However, much of this research faces limitations, which hamper the seriousness of the endeavor and reflect the youth of this emerging field. This article points out these deficiencies that pervade theories about comics. These include inadequate background research, overly general and unsupportable claims, a lack of adequate evidence, and limitations for research methodologies. To address these concerns, I draw from over 50 years of research from linguistics and cognitive science to inform how the field of “comic theory” can move forward. In particular, I outline two primary ways of progressing with this line of research: 1) explicit manipulation of the component parts of comics’ structure, and 2) cataloging actual comics for various theoretically relevant phenomena. This data-driven approach is offered as a guiding vision for future works on the understanding of “how comics work.”