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Volume 14, Issue 2, 2023
- Editorial
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Introduction
By Julia RoundThis introduction to Studies in Comics (SiC) 14.2 signposts the themes covered by the articles, interviews and reviews therein. It summarizes how our first trio of articles address the politics and consequences of conflict, with a particular focus on depictions of space and place and how these speak to – or can challenge – existing hierarchies. It then discusses our second grouping of articles, highlighting the ways that these represent the potential of academic study to bring fresh eyes to old questions, as our contributors use comics to revisit or rearticulate key debates, such as defining metalepsis, exploring the Derridean archive, or teaching literacy. It stresses the wide breadth of both texts and approaches that appear within this issue, which covers many types of comics (graphic novel, small press, educational); multiple methodologies (applied analysis, theoretical discussion, empirical study); and represents contributors and content from diverse locations (including Austria, Belgium, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom and United States).
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- Articles
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From Muslim to Muselmann: Muted prisoner in Guantanamo comics
More LessThis article focuses on two Guantanamo comics, namely Tubiana and Franc’s Guantánamo Kid, and Mirk’s Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison to highlight a shift in comics in depictions of the Muslim Other, from the long-established trope of the ‘dangerous jihadi’ to the aggrieved, muted figure of the Muselmann. Subjected to torture, enhanced interrogation techniques, degradation and humiliation, the abject Muslim prisoner at Guantanamo gradually transforms into the ‘Muselmann’ – a term employed in Holocaust narratives to refer to the cadaveric and zombified existence of the broken prisoner. The characterization of the Muselmann in these two comics not only challenges the notion of the active, sinister, Muslim radical repeatedly featured in Western comics, but also demonstrates the vital role the medium plays in representing those who have lost the capacity to speak for themselves. As witness accounts, both texts aim to ‘unmute’ the Muselmann, even though their depiction of the abusive regimes in Gitmo is neither a redemptive nor an empowering act. Consequently, it falls on the comics reader to bear witness to the atrocities suffered by the Muselmann – not necessarily to restore justice, but at a minimum to recognize the Muslim prisoner’s humanity.
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Separating the territory from the map: The intersection of cartography, memory and identity in autobiographical comics
More LessAlison Bechdel said in an interview with Lynn Emmert that both maps and comics ‘take a complex or confusing three-dimensional reality and iron it out into a much more manageable two-dimensional version’. Yet the way maps weave together space, place, history, tradition and personal experience through multiple levels of signification points to anything but transparency of form, especially when deployed within autographics. We often encounter maps in autobiographical comics, where their uses can be as different as the lives they help to illustrate. When the layers of historical, cultural and personal references that intersect on the map plane are embedded in the formalist structures of comics, the levels of signification become multiplied – panel borders and topographical borders intersect, the geography of space merges with the geography of the page, and the subjectivity of the illustrated line overlays the objectivity of cartography. While the semiotic structures of maps and comics are presentationally different, both derive narratorial power from the relationships they make explicit through the marks on the page, and how their boundaries carve up space and time. Mapping traditions may be referenced to signpost authentication strategies within graphic memoirs. The structures of the map may be utilized – or even disrupted – in order to illustrate dynamics that cannot be signified through text or representational mimesis. This article will critically examine mapping modalities used in a variety of autographic narratives, focusing on the link between representation and experience of place for both the author and reader. By analysing what is included and excluded in a map, as well as the relationships the maps create between signifier and signified, we can draw some conclusions about how the mapmaker is positioning themselves within such frameworks as cultural background, socio-economic structures and hierarchies of knowledge.
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‘Inside this membrane is Us. Beyond the membrane, Them’: Spatiality in Amruta Patil and Devdutt Pattanaik’s Aranyaka: Book of the Forest
Authors: Amrutha Mohan and Nair Anup ChandrasekharanForests have always occupied a significant position as places of exile, transformation and retreat in the epics, myths and folklores that are popular in India. A journey into the forest, as depicted in most of these narratives, is often deployed as a metaphor for epistemological pursuits and also symbolizes a peregrination into the subconscious or the inner self. The graphic novel Aranyaka: Book of the Forest (2019) is a joint creative venture by the Indian graphic novelist Amruta Patil and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik, in which they borrow a thin thread of the story from Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and weave layers of Puranic tales, Vedic philosophy, feminist perspectives and ecological consciousness to create a rich tapestry of metaphors and meanings. Aranyaka (‘of the forest’) is a graphic retelling of the life of the Indian sage Yajnavalkya, his wives, Katyayani and Maitreyi, and of his disciple, Gargi. The forest is not a mere exotic location or an ideal backdrop in which the story of the sage and the three women unfolds. As the title denotes, the forestscape assumes a central role in this graphic narrative and hence it is pertinent to looking into how the forest shapes and is shaped by the narrative. The article hence proposes that the forest is imagined and visualized as a heterotopia in this graphic text. It brings Yajnavalkya’s unscholarly wife Katyayani to the forefront and weaves a story through her words and imagination. The article also strives to foreground the liminal and gendered spaces represented in the narrative. The article therefore offers a critical reading of Aranyaka and explores the spatial dimensions represented in it.
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Materiality and metalepsis in handmade small press alternative comics
More LessThis article reconsiders the narratological theory of metalepsis in comics through a discussion of handmade small press publications. I will argue that material and formal elements can collapse categories through which metalepsis is theorized. I will give examples of cases in which traces of the author’s body coexist on the object of the comic through both mechanical reproduction and artisanal intervention and argue that this undermines binary metaphors such as ‘descending/ascending’ and ‘inside/outside’ through which metaleptic incursions from and into storyworld are understood. I will argue that material aspects, as well as production and distribution contexts, have been under-considered in formulations of metalepsis in comics, and that consideration of these aspects helps us rethink the role that the body of the author and reader play in metaleptic encounters.
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Multiframe fever: Comics as archive
More LessRead through the concept of the multiframe (understood as a database of separable units), this article argues that comics are not a distinct cultural form, but an expression of archive. The principle of the archive orders and animates modern culture in general, infusing it with the unavoidable violence inherent in establishing structure and meaning. If comics are archival, the principles of comics reading can be applied to other archival forms. This article thus also examines the common law (an exemplary modern archive that has wide social and political significance and well-rehearsed connections with violence) as a ‘legal multiframe’ that is nested within the continuum with other frames in the potentially infinite multiframe of material culture. What is seen overall is both the unavoidable nature of the violence of framing in meaningful encounters with the world, and the continuity or interconnectedness of all cultural and meaningful forms. This understanding is enabled by an encounter with the multiframe that is not blinkered to its violent qualities, and does not seek to arbitrarily delineate ‘comics’ from other multiframed structures.
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Constructing socio-scientific issue literacy through comics in learning apperception for elementary school students
Authors: Fadhlan Muchlas Abrori, Zsolt Lavicza and Branko AnđićThis study explores the role of comics in constructing socio-scientific literacy among elementary school students. Through content analysis of conversations between teachers and students, we examined the sources of information in comics, including text, images, multimodal interaction and implicit meaning. Our findings revealed that students rely on more than just explicit information from text and images; they also engage in multimodal interaction, combining visual and textual elements, and interpret implicit meanings within the comics’ narratives. The design of the comics influences the distribution of information, with comic strips providing substantial explicit content and comics with minimal text emphasizing visual elements. Additionally, mathematical representations, such as bar charts, are incorporated to enhance students’ statistical and scientific inquiry literacy. These findings highlighted the potential of comics as effective educational resources for promoting socio-scientific literacy, fostering critical thinking skills and empowering students to engage with complex socio-scientific issues. Educators and researchers can utilize these insights to design educational comics that engage students and facilitate the construction of socio-scientific literacy, ultimately equipping them with the skills to navigate real-world challenges. Further research is recommended to explore the long-term effects of comics on students’ knowledge retention and decision-making skills.
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- Interview
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My lesbian experience with yuri: An interview with Erica L. Friedman
More LessThis is an interview with author of By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga (2022a) and North America’s leading authority, if not spokesperson for all things yuri, Erica L. Friedman (ELF). The interview centres on her breakthrough moment of discovering yuri through to founding Yuricon and publishing one of the most accessible books on yuri history, trends and tropes in the English language.
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- Book Reviews
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Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847–1870, David Kunzle (2021)
More LessReview of: Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847–1870, David Kunzle (2021)
Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 472 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-49683-399-0, h/bk, $90.00
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Drawing from the Archives: Comics Memory in the Contemporary Graphic Novel, Benoît Crucifix (2023)
Authors: Francisco Sáez de Adana and Eva Van de WieleReview of: Drawing from the Archives: Comics Memory in the Contemporary Graphic Novel, Benoît Crucifix (2023)
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 246 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-00925-095-5, e-book, €99.20
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