Studies in Comics - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2013

How can one read an abstract graphic narrative? Under what conditions do we cease to view a set of images as static representations, or as marks on paper existing for their own sake, and begin to read them as the story of a changing world in motion, or even invest them with impetus, emotions and desires? In this article I will explore the ways in which readers can make sense of abstract comics. The notion of an abstract graphic narrative seems to be a contradiction in terms: how can something be non-representational, and also be a narrative, a category which seems to presuppose representations of characters, settings and events? When confronted with these visual texts, readers will have to seek out and create such ‘actants’ and ‘existents’ from the material abstract comics offer, if the text is to warrant its status as narrative. The article will use a number of exemplar stories from Andrei Molotiu’s 2009 collection Abstract Comics to explore the process of reading these image texts. It will use ideas from narratology and philosophy of consciousness to help outline some of the ways we can ‘animate’ the static images we see across the sequence of panels, in which we recognize and reconstitute persistent entities, bringing a narrative life to the apparently inert marks on the comics page. I will explore the limits of readers’ ability to apply this process and comment on its relevance to more mainstream graphic narrative in general.

Throughout his career in comics Scottish writer Grant Morrison has interrogated concepts of liberty and power and their relationship to revolutionary action, often using the superhero as a metaphor. This article examines liberalism in his work with reference to the ideas of political philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997), whose influential lecture ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ ([1958] 2002), described the dangers of ‘positive liberty’, and set out the case for the virtues of ‘negative liberty’. Both Berlin and Morrison were profoundly influenced by the Cold War, and the philosophical and ideological arguments about the definition of freedom that arose from it. The superhero was also shaped by these debates, and Morrison’s liberalism, as expressed through his writing in this genre, owes much to the distinctions Berlin put in place. This article argues that a greater understanding of the politics of the superhero, and Morrison’s changing attitude towards the genre and its underlying themes of identity and freedom, can be gained by applying Berlin’s schema. Indeed, several of Morrison’s key works, such as Zenith (1987–1993), The Invisibles (1994–2000), Flex Mentallo (1996) and All Star Superman (2005–2008), dramatize the struggle between positive and negative concepts of liberty, but his views have undergone shifts, from a rather sceptical conception of the superhero in his early work to the point where he now enshrines the superhero as the best example of liberty and aspiration.

Gerard Genette’s classic questions about narrative perspective – ‘Who sees?’ and ‘Who speaks?’ – are at their most relevant when it comes to the multimodal narrative intricacies of autobiographical graphic novels. The already complex matter of narration and focalization in a purely visual medium is distinctly complicated when taking the different perspectives of the narrating ‘I’ and the experiencing ‘I’ into account. Furthermore, many acclaimed autobiographical comics, including works like Maus, Fun Home, Blankets or Safe Area Goražde, thematize the construction of their viewpoints, addressing issues of memory, objectivity and (un-)reliability. In this article, I propose a new approach to this complexity, turning to cognitive linguistics – more specifically, to the model of cognitive grammar established by Ronald Langacker and his concept of ‘viewing arrangements’. In Langacker’s theory, all categories of grammar are based on cognitive conceptualizations that represent our position in the world and our relation to our surroundings. These conceptualizations have a distinctly visual bent. In Langacker’s terminology, a ‘viewing arrangement’ is a model of how a viewer conceptualizes a scene, ‘the overall relationship between the “viewers” and the situation, being “viewed”’. These arrangements change constantly, as conceptualizers focus on various parts of their environment, imbuing them with different meanings and expressing various degrees of subjectivity. Applying Langacker’s model to examples from autobiographic graphic novels, I will use the concept of the ‘viewing arrangement’ to illustrate how intricate narrative perspectives in these works can be analysed systematically and how different degrees of subjectivity are constructed with the formal means of comics. The model may not only help to untangle the narrative intricacies of autobiographies, but may enrich discussions of narration and focalization in comics generally.

The following article will discuss the work of Chris Ware in terms of narrative immersion, that is, the state of mental absorption, the capacity of being dragged in the storyworld, or being ‘carried away’ in the game of ‘make-believe’. The taxonomy by Marie-Laure Ryan will be taken here as a guideline to look at three main types of narrative immersion, namely, spatial, temporal and emotional immersion. I will depart from a negative approach, addressing Ware’s unrelenting resistance towards fictional immersion (that should not be taken as a complete rejection, but a deliberate delay).

For decades, Umberto Eco’s essay ‘The myth of Superman’ has been cited as the authoritative study of superhero comics. More recently, however, Eco’s work has been a site of argument as cultural and media studies scholars such as Angela Ndalianis and Henry Jenkins contend that the narrative logic of contemporary superhero comics has become more complex than Eco imagines. These scholars replace Eco’s ‘oneiric climate’ of suspended time with models of multiple and intertextual narratives that extend across diverse media. While Eco’s observations are more historically contingent than he acknowledges, his analysis remains more applicable than his critics allow. Some scholars have misread Eco’s arguments and overstated the radicalism of contemporary superhero narratives. This article argues that it is time to re-evaluate Eco’s work and move beyond the populist, predominantly celebratory tone of his critics.

In contrast to the dynamic ‘visual’ image, Will Eisner in 1985 characterizes the ‘illustration’ as simply repeating a textual description or decorating it, embodying the antithesis of comics idealized form. Curiously it is this very technique that forms a starting point from which British alternative comix artist Hunt Emerson is able to strike a relationship with his readers in the adaptations Lady Chatterley’s Lover! (1986), Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1989) and Dante’s Inferno (2012). This article investigates the ways in which Emerson’s comics participate with a reader in the formation of certain ambiguous narrator positions, exploring their ultimate connections to a project designed to engage with wider audiences both inside and beyond the classroom. In making its investigation, this article utilizes Thierry Groensteen’s concept of the monstrator to delineate between visual and verbal narrative positions in conflict with one another. These positions are fundamental in establishing a sense of humour where, in the case of Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1989), the verbal narrative is seemingly misinterpreted in order to draw attention to its mediation; in the case of Dante’s Inferno (2012) a complicity between visual and verbal channels is employed as a means of issuing forth contextual information needed to appreciate an archaic text; and in Lady Chatterley’s Lover! (1986) a visual narrator is used to bring into question the representation of the subjectivity of certain characters. This article employs theoretical advances made by Monika Fludernik in 1996 to understand the ways in which these visual and verbal narrative channels are ‘narrativized’ by the reader in the formulation of ambiguous narrator positions that offer conflicting accounts of their mediation. As a consequence the reader takes an active role of involvement in the comics thereby completing Emerson’s project of engaging participatory readers beyond the institutional confines of the traditional literatures he adapts.

The Cultural Standing of Comics: Ambiguities and Changes, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2–3 May 2013

International Comics and Graphic Novel and International Bande Dessinée Society Joint Conference, University of Glasgow, June 2013

Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Novels: Comics at the Crossroads, Shane Denson, Christina Meyer and Daniel Stein (eds) (2013) London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 294 pp., ISBN 978-1-4411-875-4, h/bk, £65.00