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  5. Volume 12, Issue 2, 2022

Studies in Comics - Volume 12, Issue 2, 2022

Volume 12, Issue 2

Volume 12, Issue 2, 2022

Language: English
  • Articles

      • Penning the pain of partition: Refugee camp narratives in Indian comics

        https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00062_1

        Within the melange of comics studies, migration studies and autobiography studies, this article investigates the process in which the collective trauma as well as the personal trauma of refugee women has been portrayed through the visual medium in Malini Gupta and Dyuti Mittal’s ‘The Taboo’, Syeda Farhana’s ‘Little Women’ and Maria M. Litwa’s ‘Welcome to Geneva Camp’. These stories focus on the issues faced by women who migrated to Bangladesh from parts of Bengal and Bihar and thereby experienced a crucial, grief stricken life in refugee camps during the Indo–Bangladesh–Pakistan partition. Life in these refugee camps meant not only meagre resources but also a loss of nationality. In the absence of such validation, these migrants faced an extreme sense of identity or existential crisis. The group photographs, family photographs, complex roadmaps and the map of the subcontinent in the aforementioned graphic narratives are merged to serve as the ‘narreme’, the base of narratives. They are organized on the basis of experiences of women from various classes, castes and provinces, contesting with the interminable psychological violence of partition and post-partitioned reality.

    • The ins and outs of possible cities in comics: 1

      https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00063_1

      Disappearing traffic jams, endless rain and the transformation of a city and of its inhabitants’ urban life due to mysterious and eventful incidents: these are the possibilities of everyday life in the short comic series . Created by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, explores the artists’ own relationship with their native city, expanding on the city’s existing urban imaginaries to approach a specific characterization and critique of its sociocultural and urban spaces. In other words, the urban imaginary is filled with alternative possibilities of the same city, offering different albeit real perspectives, as is the case with the Brazilian city of São Paulo in this comic. My analysis engages with the dynamics between this urban imaginary and a reality where hypothetical and fantastical situations are evoked within a realistic setting of everyday stories and places. This creative narrative used in a critical fashion precipitates examples of significance and identification with urban spaces, integrated with the whimsical situations depicted in the comic. Due to this comic’s engagement with both reality and imagination, I build upon Edward Soja’s concept of thirdspace and Alejo Carpentier’s concept of the marvellous real. This article calls for an improvement in the scope of comic studies to include the questioning of urban experiences and spatial representation. In addition, the case study investigated by this article calls for a critical postcolonial perspective to be brought forward in the construction of global comics production. More than just an escape from reality, reflects on the real city and its issues, simultaneously questioning its conditions and the relationships between inhabitants and spaces through imagination.

  • Visual Essays

      • Comics, emceeing and graffiti: A graphic narrative about the relationship between hip-hop culture and comics culture

        https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00064_3

        Hip-hop culture will officially turn 50 years old on 11 August 2023. This cultural movement began in a recreational room in The Bronx, New York City, and is now enjoyed throughout the world. In recognition of its upcoming half-century celebration, this article reviews the origins of hip-hop culture (e.g. hip-hop pioneers such as DJ Kool Herc, Keef Cowboy and Lovebug Starski) and the relationship its emceeing and graffiti elements have with comics culture. I begin with a brief review that demonstrates how graffiti predates hip-hop culture. This is illustrated through depictions of cave paintings, ancient Roman street art and ancient Mayan graffiti. I also highlight hobo graffiti and the graffiti from the Cholos and Bachutos gangs from twentieth-century Los Angeles, California. The introduction of the ‘Kilroy was here’ tag during the Second World War and the protest graffiti from a German anti-Nazi group are also depicted. I conclude the historical review of graffiti with an introduction to the early appearances of hip-hop-styled graffiti. Next, I present multiple historical influences on hip-hop emceeing. Examples include (but are not limited to) West African griots, enslaved Africans, Muhammad Ali, Millie Jackson, The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron. Likewise, older genres, such as funk music, blues music, jazz poetry and Black militant poetry inspired much of rap music. Afterwards, I examine the bidirectional relationship between graffiti and comics art, and emceeing and the textual/storytelling aspects of comics. This includes comics-inspired graffiti, hip-hop monikers (e.g. Big Pun, Snoop Dogg, MF Doom and Jean Grae), hip-hop lyrics (from artists such as Grandmaster Caz, Inspectah Deck, Jay-Z and The Last Emperor) and album covers. Conversely, I offer examples of how graffiti has inspired comics visuals and storytelling as well as how emceeing has inspired the comic-book storytelling and the protagonists featured in fictional and non-fictional comic book narratives.

    • On time and space: An excerpt from ‘Drawing unbelonging’

      https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00066_3

      This short comic is an excerpt from my doctoral dissertation ‘Drawing unbelonging’, where I draw comics with an experimental approach to explore the potential of the medium and its uses in scholarly communication and graphic medicine. Throughout the dissertation I make use of several innovations enabled by the medium, such as the De Luca effect (where the artist draws multiple images of a single character in different stages of action against the backdrop of one static scene), to demonstrate how the medium allows for multiple temporalities to co-exist simultaneously on the page. My goal is to use comics not as an illustrative tool to supplement the text, but as a method to think, strategize, find patterns, give form to an inchoate idea through investigative drawing and develop a deeper understanding of how the visual grammar of comics can be utilized to map the connection between the public health challenges of our time, and socioeconomic, racial and environmental inequality. In this excerpt, I use the ‘sequential and simultaneous’ nature of comics to show the various and intersecting uses of the medium through visual metaphors.

    • Imagining: An interview with Dave McKean on the early years

      https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00072_7

      Surrounding his early work in art and comics, this 2020 interview conducted with Dave McKean investigates his first years within the comics community with comics luminaries such as Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and Karen Berger. In it, McKean reflects on his early years in the world of art, those first meetings with DC Comics alongside Gaiman, and their inculcation into the ‘independent spirit’ of the Vertigo aesthetic and brand. McKean offers direct remark and commentary on his work on books such as and . In the end, even many years later, he still remains somewhat ‘conflicted’ and ‘undecided’ about DC’s editorial department and Karen Berger in her capacities as an editor, or, at least, as his editor.

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