Theorisations of comics and graphic narrative have tended to focus on readership rather than creation. Even McCloud’s seminal Understanding Comics (1993) focuses on interpretation, though the later Making Comics (2006) pays more attention to the work of the creator. McCloud incorporates into his theory five ‘choices of the comic creator’: choices of Moment, Frame, Image, Word and Flow. However, these may not be the most salient choices for a creator to take; nor do they necessarily occur in that order. Using these alongside McCloud’s other notions (notably ‘transitions’) with a group of sixth form comics creators led me to reconsider approaches to comics creation, as well as reading, in my PhD research ‘Making Meanings with Comics: A Functional Approach to Graphic Narrative’. In this work, I take models of meaning-making from the functional linguistics of M.A.K. Halliday, and adapt that framework to specify how comics make meaning. As a linguistics-inspired approach, this takes seriously the production of meaning as well as the reception. In this graphic article, I give a brief illustrated overview of this view of comics meaning making, and present a set of new ‘choices for the comics creator’ which arose from it. These new choices include: Choice of Character Design, Choice of ‘Verb Style’, Choice of Framing, Choice of Density, Choice of Metonymy. I offer a critique of McCloud’s choices, and account for the proposed alternatives, indicating the theory that led to them with illustrative examples, drawn in the main from my own comics created in that sixth form workshop alongside students. The article is drawn digitally and incorporates extracts of comics pages as well as diagrams to illustrate the approach to comics that informs the five ‘choices’ described.
{"title":"New Choices of the Comics Creator","authors":"P. Davies","doi":"10.16995/CG.153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/CG.153","url":null,"abstract":"Theorisations of comics and graphic narrative have tended to focus on readership rather than creation. Even McCloud’s seminal Understanding Comics (1993) focuses on interpretation, though the later Making Comics (2006) pays more attention to the work of the creator. McCloud incorporates into his theory five ‘choices of the comic creator’: choices of Moment, Frame, Image, Word and Flow. However, these may not be the most salient choices for a creator to take; nor do they necessarily occur in that order. Using these alongside McCloud’s other notions (notably ‘transitions’) with a group of sixth form comics creators led me to reconsider approaches to comics creation, as well as reading, in my PhD research ‘Making Meanings with Comics: A Functional Approach to Graphic Narrative’. In this work, I take models of meaning-making from the functional linguistics of M.A.K. Halliday, and adapt that framework to specify how comics make meaning. As a linguistics-inspired approach, this takes seriously the production of meaning as well as the reception. In this graphic article, I give a brief illustrated overview of this view of comics meaning making, and present a set of new ‘choices for the comics creator’ which arose from it. These new choices include: Choice of Character Design, Choice of ‘Verb Style’, Choice of Framing, Choice of Density, Choice of Metonymy. I offer a critique of McCloud’s choices, and account for the proposed alternatives, indicating the theory that led to them with illustrative examples, drawn in the main from my own comics created in that sixth form workshop alongside students. The article is drawn digitally and incorporates extracts of comics pages as well as diagrams to illustrate the approach to comics that informs the five ‘choices’ described.","PeriodicalId":41800,"journal":{"name":"Comics Grid-Journal of Comics Scholarship","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43898451","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}
This article draws on the award-winning fantasy comic Saga (Vaughan and Staples 2012–present), in order to explore how it portrays bodily difference as the norm, presenting to us a fantasy reality that nevertheless uncannily parallels ours in many ways. If ‘enfreakment’ is the creation of the freak, the article argues that the comic achieves something that might be termed ‘dis-enfreakment’. This article is mainly grounded in literary disability studies, drawing upon the work by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and others. The article explores how Saga portrays racism, miscegenation, and homosexuality. The basic argument is that, through the presentation of a variety of races and species of life, Saga deliberately questions the very idea of ‘normal’ by presenting many co-existing forms of normalcy.
{"title":"The New Normal: Enfreakment in Saga","authors":"K. Lipenga","doi":"10.16995/CG.161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/CG.161","url":null,"abstract":"This article draws on the award-winning fantasy comic Saga (Vaughan and Staples 2012–present), in order to explore how it portrays bodily difference as the norm, presenting to us a fantasy reality that nevertheless uncannily parallels ours in many ways. If ‘enfreakment’ is the creation of the freak, the article argues that the comic achieves something that might be termed ‘dis-enfreakment’. This article is mainly grounded in literary disability studies, drawing upon the work by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and others. The article explores how Saga portrays racism, miscegenation, and homosexuality. The basic argument is that, through the presentation of a variety of races and species of life, Saga deliberately questions the very idea of ‘normal’ by presenting many co-existing forms of normalcy.","PeriodicalId":41800,"journal":{"name":"Comics Grid-Journal of Comics Scholarship","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46749758","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}
Comics and Adaptation, edited by Benoit Mitaine, David Roche and Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot, translated by Aarnoud Rommens and David Roche, University Press of Mississippi; 238 pages, 2018, ISBN 978-1-4968-0337-5 This review discusses the contents of the edited collection Comics and Adaptation (edited by Benoit Mitaine, David Roche and Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot, translated by Aarnoud Rommens and David Roche, University Press of Mississippi 2018) and comments on the translation of the text. The review concludes that this is a timely and useful collection which challenges some of the presuppositions of adaptation studies.
{"title":"Challenging Adaptation Studies: A Review of Comics and Adaptation","authors":"Jonathan Evans","doi":"10.16995/CG.159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/CG.159","url":null,"abstract":"Comics and Adaptation, edited by Benoit Mitaine, David Roche and Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot, translated by Aarnoud Rommens and David Roche, University Press of Mississippi; 238 pages, 2018, ISBN 978-1-4968-0337-5 This review discusses the contents of the edited collection Comics and Adaptation (edited by Benoit Mitaine, David Roche and Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot, translated by Aarnoud Rommens and David Roche, University Press of Mississippi 2018) and comments on the translation of the text. The review concludes that this is a timely and useful collection which challenges some of the presuppositions of adaptation studies.","PeriodicalId":41800,"journal":{"name":"Comics Grid-Journal of Comics Scholarship","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41531052","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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