Studies in Comics - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2013

Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor is infused with trans-generic texts that evoke the spirit of the Rabelaisian carnival, which foregrounds bodily anxiety and sensory engagement. For example, Pekar relates at length his issues with health, food, sex and other so-called ‘base’ preoccupations. There are repeated scenes of physical bodily anxiety, such as Pekar’s struggle with throat ailments and later a cancer, which he presents in such graphic detail that it can be considered integral to his artistic voice. Through this sharing of a visceral, sensory experience, Pekar creates a deeply affecting work to which audiences can relate on a transcendent physical level. The film adaptation of American Splendor (Berman and Pulcini, 2003), with its multimodal and multi-genre form of storytelling, enhances this aspect of his work, retaining much of the physical discomfort and grotesque tendencies but blending music, stage, drawing and documentary film to truly represent the expansive parameters of the original. Most importantly, the film retains Pekar’s ability, through sensory engagement and the grotesque, to reach an audience at their most basic level. This article discusses how the film adaptation of American Splendor, emphasizing the grotesque physical attributes of its characters as well as a multi-modal form of storytelling, demonstrates Pekar’s ability to create a universally understandable mythic universe within a superficially quite personal and specific narrative structure. This, in part, explains why Pekar’s work continues to have a powerful emotional resonance.

According to Linda Hutcheon, adaptation needs to be viewed both as a process and its result. Adaptations do not simply repeat a creative process, they ‘affirm and reinforce [its] basic cultural assumptions’. This article looks at the comic as a central medium in an accelerating ‘convergence culture’, placed between traditional literature and film. Adaptations of novels, poems, even of songs have become a substantial part within the field of the so-called ‘graphic novel’ or ‘graphic literature’. And of course, the almost countless adaptations of comics to films provide an important source of revenue for both the comic publishers and the film industry, not just in Hollywood. To address the aesthetic uncertainties this may raise, and to sharpen the concept of adaptation, we are reconsidering the concept of translation. Drawing upon Walter Benjamin’s ‘The task of the translator’, translation can be thought of both as a mode of aesthetic transformation and its result: It appears neither as replacement nor as retelling, but as a sovereign artefact supplementing the original text. As such, the translation mediates between different ways of expression without overcoming their respective differences. This article takes a closer look at two translation processes: one from literature into comic and one from comic into film. Starting with Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli’s classic City of Glass (2004) and Dri Chinisin (2011) by Sascha Hommer, the visual aesthetics of the comic are examined as an ideal place of exchange between textual and pictorial culture. Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’ iconic Sin City and Tatsumi (2011) by Eric Khoo are employed to illustrate how the translation into moving images can offer an acoustic and narrative supplement to the original comic, while also drawing attention to the aesthetic differences between these two media.

The method of analysis of communications registers outlined by linguists Douglas Biber and Susan Conrad, begins with the identification of what they call the ‘situational characteristics’ of a register. These characteristics are as much social as material. They claim that before a register can be identified or expressive content considered, the analyst must undertake a sociology of the text. Following Biber and Conrad, this article will describe ways in which readers’ expectations of the content of comics, or comics’ genres, are an underlying characteristic of the ‘situation’ of comics as a register. It will propose that, unlike other registers, the apprehension of the comics register as a genre constitutes an ongoing process of adaptation in which the influence of prior knowledge destabilizes rather than stabilizes the register. To do this, it will analyse the adaptation by artists Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio, of specific examples of cover art from EC comics of the 1950s in the covers of their comics. Rather than comparing the original covers with their adaptations as expressive form, this analysis will discuss how the adapted cover images represent the instrumental use of the relationship between comics genres and comics as a register, in which the artists self-consciously conflate the two in order to manipulate the ‘situational characteristics’ in which each comic is read. This approach demonstrates the productive instability of the comics register itself: that is, the register’s availability to adaptation. Evidenced by local newspaper headlines of which they are the topic (Bradford Telegraph and Argus 1996, Eastern Daily Press 2005), Grennan & Sperandio’s comics appear generic in order to adapt the register, and in doing so communicate well outside comic genres. There is no horror, romance, crime, autobiography, confessional or super power in them. Rather, their content constitutes oral history, museology or education. Considered as examples of register, these are comics with ulterior motives. The comics register allows and disallows sets of specific expressions, which are quite different from, although affected by, the sets of expressions allowed and disallowed by comics genres. The overlaps between register and genres (or between the ‘situational characteristics’ and the expectation of content), engender adaptation, parody, appropriation and non-sequiturs. This article will argue that these relationships are formed at the level of register as much as genre, so that each new set of ‘situational characteristics’ of readings, is an adaptation of the register that productively destabilizes genres, and that this is a definition of adaptation itself.

This article examines the ways in which James Sturm and Guy Davis have adapted the superhero comic into a biographical comic, and how this process manifests itself in ‘palimpsests’ visible throughout the adaptation. Written by Sturm, and with art by Davis, Unstable Molecules: The True Story Of Comics’ Greatest Foursome (2003) depicts a day in the life of four people who are, according to Sturm’s conceit, the real life basis for the main characters in Marvel Comics’ The Fantastic Four. First published November 1961, The Fantastic Four marked the beginning of Marvel’s so-called ‘realistic’ depiction of superheroes. In Stan Lee’s words ‘they’d be flesh and blood, they’d have their faults and foibles, they’d be fallible and feisty, and – most important of all – inside their colorful, costumed booties they’d still have feet of clay’. Sturm presents the events in Unstable Molecules as if they actually happened with notes, biographies and a bibliography to back up his story. He extends Lee’s metaphor to show the characters not just as ‘flesh and blood’ with ‘feet of clay’ but also lacking any superpowers. In A Theory of Adaptation (2006), Linda Hutcheon discusses the ‘palimpsestuousness’ of adaptations. She describes this as the ‘oscillation between a past image and a present one’ that occurs when experiencing an adaptation with a prior knowledge of the work being adapted. To be aware of the original work is to be part of what Hutcheon calls the ‘knowing audience’. This article also questions whether Unstable Molecules relies on a ‘knowing audience’ having a familiarity with The Fantastic Four and whether an ‘unknowing audience’ might believe the book to be true.

This article presents a comparative analysis of the movie (directed by Roger Corman in 1960) and the comic-book version (drawn by Richard Corben in 1989 for Pacific Comics) of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Both adaptations can be considered unfaithful to the original tale. However, as M. L. Rosenblat affirms in his book about Poe and Cortazar, the originality of Poe is related to the creation of a new effect. This article studies how this effect is represented visually in Corman’s work and how Corben uses some of the same visual ideas to revive this effect. Corman’s work attempts to identify a relationship between Poe and Freud, affirming that they have the same concept of the unconscious. The difference between the conscious and the unconscious is shown by Corman in the opposition between the narrator of the story and the character of Roderick Usher as the director plays with the concept of on-camera (for the conscious) and off-camera (for the unconscious). The same idea is captured by Corben when he attempts to show this opposition between the two characters, including the physical resemblance of the narrator with Poe himself. This opposition between the conscious and the unconscious plays a crucial role in the way Corman develops the movie’s scenarios (with two levels representing different states of mind) and places the camera. This article shows how Corben includes his own contributions but follows the principles introduced by Corman to create an oppressive atmosphere that reflects the effect created by Poe’s tales. Other aspects examined in this article include the use of colour in both works to represent the melancholy, following the ideas presented by Yves Hersant in his essay about the colours of the melancholy, and the representation of the incestuous relationship between Roderick and Madeleine, which is similar in both works in the understanding of incest as an element of the American Gothic, as defined by Leslie Fiedler. Considering these aspects and following the idea presented by Linda Hutcheon in her book A Theory of Adaptation (2006), it can be affirmed that these adaptations share what can be called, in Benjaminian terms, a common aura.

The formal analysis of the fumetti adaptation of the short film Le Bunker de la dernière rafale (Caro and Jeunet, 1981) and of its stylistic choices, as well as the examination of its editorial framework, offer a basis for a more general discussion of the emergence of ‘graphic novels’ in 1980s France as a term, as a format and as a specific aesthetics. This raises questions about the storytelling dimension of comics and their symbolic and formal boundaries with other art forms. The Bunker was adapted by its two authors, comic book artist Marc Caro and beginner film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. They chose to use a rigid layout of two panels a page, quite different from the traditional comics-inspired fumetti, demonstrating their attention to the stylistic implications of the layout. The book came out in 1982 under the short-lived and innovative Autodafé imprint of the French ‘bande dessinée’ publishing house Les Humanoïdes Associés. There, the Bunker was published next to works of comic book authors Will Eisner, Jim Steranko, Serge Clerc, Keiji Nakazawa and Romain Slocombe. This eclectic array of creators and works shared a new format – smaller and longer books in black and white – and explored various forms of combination of text and image. The Bunker adaptation thus took part in an editorial reflexion on the possibility of ambitious comic books – the graphic novel. This new approach to comics was looking towards literature for its legitimatization but was also opened on other artistic fields (cinema, photography). Autodafé appears as a capsule of the questions, the possibilities and the ambiguities the ‘graphic novel’ genre and term entailed when they appeared – and still do. The fumetti adaptation of the Bunker embodies this attempt at a spontaneous combustion of the boundaries of comics that still inform some contemporary endeavours.

In this article, we apply methods under development in socio-functional semiotics to explore the transfer of resources originally developed for comics to the medium of film. We illustrate this concretely with respect to extracts taken from Ang Lee’s Hulk (2003), a film we consider unique in its particular appropriation of expressive resources from the comic medium. Hulk is often been singled out in discussions of the relations between comics and film because many of the design decisions taken in the film evoke aspects of the comic page. Here, we argue that its use of the resources of comics goes substantially beyond ‘evocation’: Hulk is best considered a highly experimental hybrid, taking resources that were initially essentially comics based and ‘translating’ these filmically in order to extend the medium of film in interesting ways. We show this in two respects: first, we consider the filmic deployment of comicbook conventions for expressing movement; second, we establish that the film’s use of split-screen techniques extends the ability of film to express narrative continuity and connection between perspectives.

Fullmetal Alchemist, a Japanese manga series by Hiromu Arakawa, has achieved global success since its debut in 2001. The work has numerous multimedia adaptations, ranging from animations (including two TV animations and OVA), films, radio drama, PC games and light novels. Not all the adaptations follow the original story; many of them contain alternative or even original plots. If the manga series serves as the kernel of Arakawa’s masterpiece, then some of these adaptations may have become the author’s ‘official fan art’ of the manga, given the extent of changes to the contents and the characterization.

Within this backdrop, my study focuses on the intertextuality between the manga version of Fullmetal Alchemist and the film Conqueror of Shamballa (Mizushima, 2011). I argue that Conqueror of Shamballa deviates drastically from the manga in terms of both the setting and the visual narrative. The film features an alternative ‘parallel universe’ to the universe in the manga; this parallel universe (the Earth in the 1930s) appears more like the real human world in history than the hometown of Edward and Alphonse Elric. The two worlds, one accommodating the wandering Edward while the other inhabited by his friends and family, are linked by nothing but the Gate of Alchemy. In order to explore the representation of alternative reality and parallel universe in the film, I apply theories of adaptation to my study of Fullmetal Alchemist and Conqueror of Shamballa. I contend that the film adaptation orchestrates ‘multiple realities’ by means of duplicating, recreating and parodying the characters, the space and the plot of the original manga version.

Storytelling across media presents a variety of concerns for the practitioner in terms of production and consumption, for transmedia storytelling expands a story across a variety of media within some consistent storyworld, often to enhance and integrate the experience of the audience/user/player. This expansion does not necessarily adapt the same story to generate interrelated narratives within a cohesive cosmos – narratives may be perceived and engaged with separately, and yet may also advance a larger consistent story. ‘The Fallow Narratives’ is a transmedia storytelling project currently being developed at the University of South Wales to explore narrative and the transformation of story across media, and examine what creative writing, particularly scriptwriting, may reveal of its production related media. The themes of identity, memory and perception are explored within each story across the project, told through: Fallow (animation), The Pier (comic), Desistance (video game), The Deep Machine (songs), Observance (journal), dell’ Arte (mixed media), Stain (music video) and The Quay (novel). The Pier tells the story of a boy, Casper Fallow, who loses his younger brother in a late night fire at a pier where they had gone to imagine and play out a Punch and Judy show. It is the story of his subsequent healing and harmful journeys after he is taken to a sanatorium, his release, and his years as a Punch and Judy puppet maker and storyteller. Through exploring the development of ‘The Fallow Narratives’ this article will discuss the process of writing for comics while considering a transmedia cosmology, and through examining the creation of The Pier what this may reveal of comics as image and language text.

The medium of comics is undergoing a transition, as digital display becomes an increasingly popular mode of consumption. Portable display devices such as smart phones and tablet computers have provided a single platform of consumption on which comics, film, animation, games and other interactive visual media are equally at home. As comics gradually leave behind the trappings of print and embrace those of the screen, so too do they invite new crossovers and appropriations of tropes from other screen-based media. This article considers the relationship between space and time in comics and how this relationship has changed during the medium’s transition from print to screen. Using the theories of S. McCloud, T. Groensteen and N. Cohn as its starting point, it examines the passage of time’s representation within the spatially based medium of traditional comics. It then looks at how this representation of time has been distorted by the range of new tropes and devices that comics have appropriated from other screen-based media. Key topics covered in the article include: Replacements for the page turn and their impact on the pacing of comic sequences; The infinite canvas and its implications for panel spacing and layout; Multicursal structures and a reconsideration of comic as temporal map; The impact of animation, both within the panel and in the movement of panels; The limits of animation in comics and the foregrounding of reader control as a key element of the medium.

Comics Versus Art, Bart Beaty (2012) Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 274 pp., 97844262044, Paperback, £19

The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit, Scott Bukatman (2012) Berkeley: University of California Press, 286 pp., 9780520265714, Hardback, $70. 9780520265721, Paperback, $30

Viñetas Serias 2012

Linguistics and the Study of Comic Books, Frank Bramlett (ed.), (2012) London: Palgrave and Macmillan, 328 pp., Hardback, $85. ISBN: 9780230362826