Studies in Comics - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2016

Page layouts are one of the most overt features of comics’ structure. We hypothesized that American superhero comics have changed in their page layout over eight decades, and investigated this using a corpus analysis of 40 comics from 1940 through 2014. On the whole, we found that comics pages decreased in their use of grid-type layouts over time, with an increase in various non-grid features. We interpret these findings as indicating that page layouts moved away from conventional grids and towards a ‘decorative’ treatment of the page as a whole canvas. Overall, our analysis shows the benefit of empirical methods for the study of the visual language of comics.

In Action Comics #8, Joe Shuster draws a group of juvenile delinquents as initially adult-like and then child-like in later panels. How are readers to make sense of the visual contradiction? Drawing from comics studies’ interdisciplinary fields – including art criticism, communication, literary criticism, philosophy, and psychology – at least four kinds of explanations are available for resolving the tension: literal, accidental, psychological, and metaphorical. I discuss each and their implications for the problematic role of naturalism in superhero comics in general, analyzing further visual examples from Jack Kirby, Sal Buscema, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Neal Adams. By combining elements of cartoon and abstraction with the narrative necessities of minimal counterintuitivity, superhero comics art is grounded in paradox. Ultimately the genre and form reverses assumptions about the metaphysics of the page and its relationship to its implied reality, culminating in the closure-mirroring reading process of diegetic erasure.

Grant Morrison is one of the most prolific and well-known superhero comic writers of all time. He wrote his magnum opus, The Invisibles, as a 59-issue comic book series that was published under DC comics’ Vertigo label from 1994 to 2000. At the end of the narrative humanity supposedly enters into a 5th dimensional space called the ‘Supercontext’, which Morrison has at one point described as ‘everyone peaking on the acid trip that never ends’. This article clarifies and contextualizes the role of psychedelics in Grant Morrison et al.’s The Invisibles. There has been a lack of critical attention regarding the influence of psychedelics in Morrison’s work despite Morrison’s frequent comments regarding their significance in his life and writing. The first section of this article introduces some of the common formal attributes found in prior attempts to express various aspects of the psychedelic experience in the comics medium. The Invisibles is then compared with these, thereby confirming the various functions of psychedelics within the text. The next section goes on to demonstrate The Invisibles’ formal similarities with a largely overlooked influence: Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy (1984). By examining the way in which Wilson and Shea utilized William Burroughs’s ‘fold-in’ technique in order to attempt to depict a higher dimensional ‘universal consciousness’ through the formal attributes of the text, one can identify an analogous relationship to Morrison’s use of braiding to show readers the perspective of the ‘supercontext’ as a higher-dimension outside time. This relationship is identified in order to finally assert that The Invisibles can be grouped alongside other texts of an emerging genre of fiction characterized by its depictions of consciousness at a future stage of human evolution as envisioned through the author’s psychedelic experiences.

The 1970s in Quebec is often referred to as the Springtime of Québécois Bande Dessinée. Following the so-called Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, a period of intense social change and modernization, the decade saw Québécois creators and publishers seek to create a distinctly Québécois incarnation of the Bande Dessinée form. Groups of creators sprang up throughout the province and publishers sought Québécois creators to help them capture for themselves contemporary interest in imported titles. Bojoual le Huron Kébékois (1973) by J. Guilemay is a Québécois version of Astérix that attempts to use the form, style and content of Goscinny and Uderzo’s albums to make something that is at once familiar to a reader of comics but also distinctly Québécois in tone. Populated by characters inspired by contemporary political figures such as Jean Drapeau, hapless Mayor of Montreal, these albums give insights not only in the development of the BD form in Quebec but also the contemporary political situation. This article will address Guilemay’s depictions of René Lévesque, leader of the pro-independence Parti Québécois and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. It will also address why their appearance in this BD aimed at a young audience is so significant for the contemporary political situation. Following their victory in the 1976 provincial elections the Parti Québécois became a crucial voice of opposition within the province. A referendum on Quebec sovereignty became inevitable and so Trudeau and Lévesque were positioned in opposition to one another as assumed leaders of the Yes and No campaigns. This relationship was echoed in the comics produced before and during the referendum campaign and this paper will explore the significance of these comics and the depictions of Trudeau and Lévesque via a close reading of the three Bojoual albums and the political background to their production.

Texas History Movies was first published as a comic strip in the Dallas Morning News from 1926 to 1928 after which it was distributed to Texas schools and used as a history textbook until the late 1950s. The collection of 428 comic strips mainly reproduces the dominant historical narrative of the time, with the Anglo Americans as the real Texans and with other ethnic groups (Native Americans, African Americans and Mexican Americans) as historical enemies or counter-images to the Anglo American. However, Texas History Movies also differs from this dominant narrative, and it does so in particular ways due to its combination of media and genres. With Texas History Movies as the example this article discusses how the interaction of narrative conventions, medium-specific characteristics and genre expectations both strengthen and undermine dominant narratives about the past and, in this case also, more particularly, of the ethnic dynamics in the comics’ present. The study of a comic such as Texas History Movies constitutes a relevant contribution to historical research by recognizing comics as historical sources and by suggesting a strategy to study comics as such. With relevance more specifically for comics research, the article shows how it is possible to include a broader historical and media-related context in the study of comics while at the same time maintaining an explicit focus on their medium-specific characteristics.

‘Live visual recording’ refers to the act of drawing a visual record in real time, combining words with imagery, in order to represent the content (and sometimes the visual characteristics) of an event, discussion or process. The most notable examples of this are sketchnoting and graphic facilitation. Graphic facilitation, which seeks to promote active participation, is mostly a professional field, and has been practised for decades within the corporate, independent and public sectors, whereas ‘sketchnoting’ is a relatively new term, describing an increasingly popular method, typically undertaken largely on an amateur basis. Context is crucial for understanding. While the outputs from different live visual recording practices can look similar visually, the environment in which they are produced, and the method used to create them, may differ significantly. For example, because there is a certain appeal that comes with watching people draw by hand, or with seeing a large, colourful, witty poster suddenly appear, it is tempting to think that a recording represents ‘quality’, when in fact its content may not reflect the key ideas discussed. Likewise an apparently ‘poorly drawn’ live visual record may in fact represent careful listening, and include highly sophisticated processing, art and design. Complexity and skill can be missed, or misunderstood: therefore, it is necessary to go beyond aesthetic or formal analysis, and consider the conditions under which work is produced and, if relevant, commissioned. This article will consider the benefits and disadvantages of sketchnoting, and contrast these with the more methodologically grounded field of graphic facilitation. It will refer to examples of both emanating from UK comics scholarship and public sector contexts, and conclude by offering thoughts regarding future opportunities and challenges. In so doing, the hope is to deepen our understanding of what is, in the academy, a relatively under-examined area. (Note: The author is a professional graphic facilitator, and some examples will refer to her work.) (This discussion will be of relevance to graphic facilitators, visual practitioners, sketchnoting enthusiasts, artists, cartoonists and comics scholars: however, it may also be of interest to other researchers and artists, and those who seek to employ creative, visual methodologies in order to successfully engage groups of people, communities, organizations and partnerships).

Sonny Liew is a Singaporean comic book creator and painter. He is an important figure both in Singaporean comics and as a prominent representative of a minority group within the American comic book industry. He has worked with Disney, First Second, Marvel, and DC. His most famous works include the Eisnernominated Shadow Hero (2014) with Gene Luen Yang, Dr Fate (2015), Malinky Robot (2011), and, most recently, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (2016). The latter work, famously, had its funding publically withdrawn by the Singapore’s National Arts Council. Sonny has a distinctive artistic style. His works often engage with both Singaporean politics and the place for Asian creators and characters in American comics. I communicated with Sonny by e-mail in March 2016.

Ryan North is a Canadian author who writes a host of comics, most notably Dinosaur Comics (www.qwantz.com, 2003-present), Adventure Time (2012–2014, winner of both an Eisner and a Harvey Award), The Midas Flesh (2013) and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (R. North and E. Henderson, 2015). North is also the creator of To Be Or Not To Be (2013), a choose-your-own-adventure version of Hamlet funded through Kickstarter, published as a book and also as a computer game. North has recently followed this with Romeo And/Or Juliet (2016).

Dan McDaid is a comics artist and writer who currently lives in Dundee, Scotland. He has worked on projects for Doctor Who Magazine, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, DC Comics, BOOM! Studios, and IDW, among others. His most recent projects are Dawn of the Planet of the Apes for BOOM! Studios and Judge Dredd: Mega-City Zero for IDW. I spoke with Dan in Dundee on 28 November 2014 to discuss his career, his artistic and writing influences, and his creative process.

The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics, Ramzi Fawaz (2016) New York: NYU Press, 368 pp., ISBN: 9781479823086, p/bk, $29

Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, 22–25 March 2016, Sheraton Hotel Seattle, Seattle, Washington

Mythologies du superhéros: histoire, physiologie, géographie, intermedialité, François-Emmanuel Boucher, Sylvain David and Maxime Prévost (eds) (2014) 1st ed., Liège: Presses Universitaires de Liège, 257 pp., ISBN: 9782875620491, p/bk, €40

La bande dessinée en dissidance/Comics in Dissent, Christophe Dony, Tanguy Habrand and Gert Meesters (eds) (2014) 1st ed., Liège: Presses Universitaires de Liège, 219 pp., ISBN: 9782875620385, p/bk, €36