{"title":"Review","authors":"","doi":"10.1386/stic_00010_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00010_5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43890742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Focusing on the relation Charles Burns' Black Hole weaves between identity, illness, performance and desire, this article reads in Black Hole a celebration of perversion as its own epistemic structure as it simultaneously exposes the possibilities opened up by performance for a re-articulation of abnormality as a positive identity whose own idiosyncratic value can, in turn, become a site of investment for new individual and cultural forms of desire. Narrating the story of a group of American teenagers whose community is prey to a sexually transmitted disease, which visibly transforms the body of its host through the addition of extraordinary appendages, Black Hole opens up the experience of sickness to the notion of performance. Multiplying the set of responses available to the subject, it promotes an idiosyncratic understanding of illness as an identity while cultivating an understanding of the latter as the solidification of a specific mode of performance. Exploring the ways in which the two contrary practices of dissimulation and voluntary spectacularization embodied by Burns' protagonists signal new possible spaces of resistance to the visual dominance of the medical apparatus and its identificatory discourse, this article exposes how the willful appropriation of the sick identity and its correlative self-objectification force the re-articulation of the unidirectional relation set up by the gaze as a bidirectional mode of address in which both actors participate in the constitution of desire. Reading in Burns' portrayal of Eliza a positive and active embrace of monstrosity as its own form of identity and a disruption of the traditional relationship posited by the dominant discourse between active observer and passive patient, this article explores the potential implicit in performance to challenge the traditional hegemonic discourse of medicine and public health and to articulate a new approach to desire and sexuality for and around the contagious monster.
{"title":"Rethinking illness through performance: The gaze and the aesthetics of health in Charles Burns' Black Hole","authors":"Mathieu Donner","doi":"10.1386/stic_00007_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00007_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Focusing on the relation Charles Burns' Black Hole weaves between identity, illness, performance and desire, this article reads in Black Hole a celebration of perversion as its own epistemic structure as it simultaneously exposes the possibilities opened\u0000 up by performance for a re-articulation of abnormality as a positive identity whose own idiosyncratic value can, in turn, become a site of investment for new individual and cultural forms of desire. Narrating the story of a group of American teenagers whose community is prey to a sexually\u0000 transmitted disease, which visibly transforms the body of its host through the addition of extraordinary appendages, Black Hole opens up the experience of sickness to the notion of performance. Multiplying the set of responses available to the subject, it promotes an idiosyncratic understanding\u0000 of illness as an identity while cultivating an understanding of the latter as the solidification of a specific mode of performance. Exploring the ways in which the two contrary practices of dissimulation and voluntary spectacularization embodied by Burns' protagonists signal new possible spaces\u0000 of resistance to the visual dominance of the medical apparatus and its identificatory discourse, this article exposes how the willful appropriation of the sick identity and its correlative self-objectification force the re-articulation of the unidirectional relation set up by the gaze as a\u0000 bidirectional mode of address in which both actors participate in the constitution of desire. Reading in Burns' portrayal of Eliza a positive and active embrace of monstrosity as its own form of identity and a disruption of the traditional relationship posited by the dominant discourse between\u0000 active observer and passive patient, this article explores the potential implicit in performance to challenge the traditional hegemonic discourse of medicine and public health and to articulate a new approach to desire and sexuality for and around the contagious monster.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41928954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"Madeline B. Gangnes","doi":"10.1386/stic_00001_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00001_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1386/stic_00001_2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42478297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Comics are a medium distinct from and yet tied to other forms of storytelling. A rich body of theory exists on the nature of the medium, its narrative techniques and the visual language unique to it. In light of the increasing interest in digital interactive technologies, however, there is a need to examine how the current theoretical understanding of comics is complicated by interactivity, as has been studied for other media such as text-based stories and games. This article outlines an exploratory study that introduced interactions, reminiscent of the Quick-Time Events found in games, into a four-panel comic. The results of this study, based on exposure to experimental prototypes, followed by retrospective protocol analysis and qualitative interviews, begin to shed light on various theoretical implications of including interactivity. These include empirical support that the notion of comics as an interconnected multiframe remains valid in the context of interactivity; the relative hierarchy between the iconic image and interactive elements; functions of interactivity within the comic form; the role of challenge; and the role of fluency and learning. These findings highlight possible ways in which the inclusion of interactivity expands current theory regarding the comic form, serving as openings for future theory-building.
{"title":"Expanding comics theory to account for interactivity: A preliminary study","authors":"T. Neo, A. Mitchell","doi":"10.1386/stic_00002_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00002_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Comics are a medium distinct from and yet tied to other forms of storytelling. A rich body of theory exists on the nature of the medium, its narrative techniques and the visual language unique to it. In light of the increasing interest in digital interactive technologies,\u0000 however, there is a need to examine how the current theoretical understanding of comics is complicated by interactivity, as has been studied for other media such as text-based stories and games. This article outlines an exploratory study that introduced interactions, reminiscent of the Quick-Time\u0000 Events found in games, into a four-panel comic. The results of this study, based on exposure to experimental prototypes, followed by retrospective protocol analysis and qualitative interviews, begin to shed light on various theoretical implications of including interactivity. These include\u0000 empirical support that the notion of comics as an interconnected multiframe remains valid in the context of interactivity; the relative hierarchy between the iconic image and interactive elements; functions of interactivity within the comic form; the role of challenge; and the role of fluency\u0000 and learning. These findings highlight possible ways in which the inclusion of interactivity expands current theory regarding the comic form, serving as openings for future theory-building.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43775407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article explores the decades-long influence of the Comics Code on American comic books’ storytelling form by identifying the interpretive processes underlying the Code’s application and adapting the Code as a theoretical model for approaching the narrative structure and implied ethical stance within 1950s Superman comics. Instead of treating the Comics Code as a series of regulations seemingly interpreted arbitrarily, this article explores how interpretive issues were framed by figures such as Charles Murphy, Leonard Darvin and John Goldwater to identify ‘the spirit and intent of the Code’ and resolve challenges such as distinguishing between the ‘spirit’ and ‘letter’ of the Code, identifying interpretive authority outside the Code, weighing past interpretive precedent and locating authorial ‘intent’. Ambiguities and aporia within the Code’s language demanded that administrators reconstruct the Code’s possible meanings and conceptualize ‘justice’ by distinguishing between the Code’s general preferences and actual prohibitions, resolving terminological nuance and prioritizing conflicting stipulations. Administrators’ efforts to balance competing stipulations regarding characters’ physical unattractiveness, criminality, justice and institutional authority shaped comics’ storytelling form and perpetuated ambiguities that comic creators could ‐ intentionally or unintentionally ‐ exploit. Where Silver Age DC Comics have often been viewed as sacrificing psychological complexity to plotting and social conformity, this article argues that the plotting intricacy in several 1950s Comics-Code era Superman comics in fact enabled writers to present a more complex rendering of moral issues. Where the Comics Code explicitly forbade that ‘crimes’ be ‘presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal’, the Comics Code’s own textually unstable meaning ‐ coupled with the narrative complexity of the stories’ plotting, shifting points of view and situational and dramatic irony ‐ enabled 1950s Superman writers to create sympathy for a supposed ‘criminal’, depict the frequent inaccuracy of assumed knowledge and introduce moral ambiguity, all while arguably ‘following’ the Code.
{"title":"Hero or villain? Moral ambiguity and narrative structure under the Comics Code in 1950s Superman stories","authors":"John C. Traver","doi":"10.1386/stic_00005_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00005_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores the decades-long influence of the Comics Code on American comic books’ storytelling form by identifying the interpretive processes underlying the Code’s application and adapting the Code as a theoretical model for approaching the\u0000 narrative structure and implied ethical stance within 1950s Superman comics. Instead of treating the Comics Code as a series of regulations seemingly interpreted arbitrarily, this article explores how interpretive issues were framed by figures such as Charles Murphy, Leonard Darvin and John\u0000 Goldwater to identify ‘the spirit and intent of the Code’ and resolve challenges such as distinguishing between the ‘spirit’ and ‘letter’ of the Code, identifying interpretive authority outside the Code, weighing past interpretive precedent and locating\u0000 authorial ‘intent’. Ambiguities and aporia within the Code’s language demanded that administrators reconstruct the Code’s possible meanings and conceptualize ‘justice’ by distinguishing between the Code’s general preferences and actual prohibitions,\u0000 resolving terminological nuance and prioritizing conflicting stipulations. Administrators’ efforts to balance competing stipulations regarding characters’ physical unattractiveness, criminality, justice and institutional authority shaped comics’ storytelling form and perpetuated\u0000 ambiguities that comic creators could ‐ intentionally or unintentionally ‐ exploit. Where Silver Age DC Comics have often been viewed as sacrificing psychological complexity to plotting and social conformity, this article argues that the plotting intricacy in several 1950s Comics-Code\u0000 era Superman comics in fact enabled writers to present a more complex rendering of moral issues. Where the Comics Code explicitly forbade that ‘crimes’ be ‘presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal’, the Comics Code’s own textually unstable\u0000 meaning ‐ coupled with the narrative complexity of the stories’ plotting, shifting points of view and situational and dramatic irony ‐ enabled 1950s Superman writers to create sympathy for a supposed ‘criminal’, depict the frequent inaccuracy of assumed knowledge\u0000 and introduce moral ambiguity, all while arguably ‘following’ the Code.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49266252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article responds to McCloud's theoretical framework for comics and applies this framework to audio drama, which I argue is, like comics, a mono-sensory medium (one can only be seen in static image and the other can only be heard); both require a great degree of closure from the audience to frame together sequential narratives (of visual art and sound, respectively). To do this, it uses the case study of Marvel and Stitcher's Wolverine: The Long Night (2018), a 'scripted podcast' (audio drama). While comics are escaping from decades of critical disregard due to their status as a popular or lowbrow medium, radio and by extension audio drama still suffer from critical neglect. It is, therefore, one of the aims of the article to release audio drama theory from torpor by applying theory from comics. W:TLN has been chosen as a case study due to its status as a made-for-podcast story rather than an adaptation from an existing comic book; it also responds to trends within audio drama towards a non-fiction/fiction amalgamation influenced by true crime podcast conventions. This article argues that W:TLN's understanding of audio/radio as a mono-sensory medium is overdetermined in its use of blindness, darkness and radiogenics. It also discusses the ways in which comics and audio drama use time and space. The article also examines the reasons why the podcast medium has been deemed acceptable within the wider Marvel Comics Universe and the ways in which W:TLN responds to implied continuity through a transmedia conception of character attributes (e.g., how the continuity of the X-Men films influences the story and characters in W:TLN).
{"title":"Dark night of the soul: Applicability of theory in comics and radio through the scripted podcast drama","authors":"Leslie McMurtry","doi":"10.1386/stic_00004_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00004_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article responds to McCloud's theoretical framework for comics and applies this framework to audio drama, which I argue is, like comics, a mono-sensory medium (one can only be seen in static image and the other can only be heard); both require a great degree\u0000 of closure from the audience to frame together sequential narratives (of visual art and sound, respectively). To do this, it uses the case study of Marvel and Stitcher's Wolverine: The Long Night (2018), a 'scripted podcast' (audio drama). While comics are escaping from decades of critical\u0000 disregard due to their status as a popular or lowbrow medium, radio and by extension audio drama still suffer from critical neglect. It is, therefore, one of the aims of the article to release audio drama theory from torpor by applying theory from comics. W:TLN has been chosen as a\u0000 case study due to its status as a made-for-podcast story rather than an adaptation from an existing comic book; it also responds to trends within audio drama towards a non-fiction/fiction amalgamation influenced by true crime podcast conventions. This article argues that W:TLN's understanding\u0000 of audio/radio as a mono-sensory medium is overdetermined in its use of blindness, darkness and radiogenics. It also discusses the ways in which comics and audio drama use time and space. The article also examines the reasons why the podcast medium has been deemed acceptable within the wider\u0000 Marvel Comics Universe and the ways in which W:TLN responds to implied continuity through a transmedia conception of character attributes (e.g., how the continuity of the X-Men films influences the story and characters in W:TLN).","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1386/stic_00004_1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46555220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The practice of translation in comics has received relatively little scholarly attention. This article focuses on translation decisions as they are carried out in the medium-specific interplay of words and images that constitutes the comics text. Using the case of Dengue (Santullo and Bergara) in both its Spanish (2012) and English (2015) versions, analysis explores how polysemiotic interactions, visual paratexts and image-specific translation inform the resulting graphic novel. Discussion centres on how the English version effects a significant thematic shift that is consistent across the cover art, frontmatter, chapter title pages, and individual panel rewordings.
{"title":"On polysemiotic interactions, visual paratexts and image-specific translation in comics: The case of Rodolfo Santullo and Matías Bergara's Dengue","authors":"B. Fraser","doi":"10.1386/stic_00006_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00006_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The practice of translation in comics has received relatively little scholarly attention. This article focuses on translation decisions as they are carried out in the medium-specific interplay of words and images that constitutes the comics text. Using the case of\u0000 Dengue (Santullo and Bergara) in both its Spanish (2012) and English (2015) versions, analysis explores how polysemiotic interactions, visual paratexts and image-specific translation inform the resulting graphic novel. Discussion centres on how the English version effects a significant\u0000 thematic shift that is consistent across the cover art, frontmatter, chapter title pages, and individual panel rewordings.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1386/stic_00006_1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42051967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Writer and editor Wilf Prigmore worked at Fleetway/IPC in the 1970s. He was group editor for Girls' Adventure Comics, co-creator of Misty (1978‐80) and editor of Tammy (1971‐84), amongst many other roles. The following interview is taken from conversations with Wilf by telephone, e-mail and in person, between November 2016 and December 2019.
{"title":"British girls' comics: An interview with Wilf Prigmore","authors":"J. Round","doi":"10.1386/stic_00008_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00008_7","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Writer and editor Wilf Prigmore worked at Fleetway/IPC in the 1970s. He was group editor for Girls' Adventure Comics, co-creator of Misty (1978‐80) and editor of Tammy (1971‐84), amongst many other roles. The following interview is taken\u0000 from conversations with Wilf by telephone, e-mail and in person, between November 2016 and December 2019.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41332964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract How does one translate silence onto a silent medium? Printed comic books and graphic novels are generally a non-auditory art form. This has caused them to be traditionally perceived as ‘silent’. This also means that comics artists have come up with some of the most innovative ways of translating sound to a primarily visual medium ‐ bold letters, onomatopoeic words, fading images, etc. Nonetheless, these innovations have often in fact failed to address silence. As an art form where both the blank space and the printed word acquire their own unique visual signification, is comics rather a stubbornly un-silent medium? If so, then how does one depict silence in an un-silent medium? My article addresses these questions by first examining the works of Scott McCloud, Thierry Groensteen and Barbara Postema and their study of sound in comics. I then build on these theoretical frameworks to problematize the conventional correlation of visual signifiers with sound and silence, primarily examining the use of blank space or the lack of words as a default signifier of silence. Ultimately, I will argue that comic books provide a unique transmedial approach to re-analyse our conventional ideas for visual representations of sound.
{"title":"The sound of silence: Blank spaces, fading narratives and fragile frames in comics","authors":"Debarghya Sanyal","doi":"10.1386/stic_00003_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00003_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract How does one translate silence onto a silent medium? Printed comic books and graphic novels are generally a non-auditory art form. This has caused them to be traditionally perceived as ‘silent’. This also means that comics artists have come up with some\u0000 of the most innovative ways of translating sound to a primarily visual medium ‐ bold letters, onomatopoeic words, fading images, etc. Nonetheless, these innovations have often in fact failed to address silence. As an art form where both the blank space and the printed word acquire their\u0000 own unique visual signification, is comics rather a stubbornly un-silent medium? If so, then how does one depict silence in an un-silent medium? My article addresses these questions by first examining the works of Scott McCloud, Thierry Groensteen and Barbara Postema and their study of sound\u0000 in comics. I then build on these theoretical frameworks to problematize the conventional correlation of visual signifiers with sound and silence, primarily examining the use of blank space or the lack of words as a default signifier of silence. Ultimately, I will argue that comic books provide\u0000 a unique transmedial approach to re-analyse our conventional ideas for visual representations of sound.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1386/stic_00003_1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47856610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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