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- Volume 8, Issue 1, 2017
Studies in Comics - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2017
Volume 8, Issue 1, 2017
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The musicalization of graphic narratives and P. Craig Russell’s graphic novel operas, The Magic Flute and Salomé
More LessAbstractThe term ‘musicalization’ comes from Werner Wolf’s study of intermediality between music and fiction, The Musicalization of Fiction (1999), which proposes the musicalized text as one that has an intentional and sustained connection to music and musical form that moves beyond the purely diegetic or incidental. In this article I draw on Wolf’s arguments to consider the potential for ‘musicalization’ within graphic narratives, interrogating comics both as a unique medium, and through a comparative analysis with the operations of time, space, rhythm, repetition, harmony, dissonance, polyphony, and narrativity in music. I explore these ideas further in a close analysis of two of P. Craig Russell’s graphic novel operas, The Magic Flute (1989–90) and Salomé (1986), which I present as tentative examples of musicalized graphic narratives. These graphic novel operas draw on the affinities that we find between music and comics to translate their musical source texts into graphic narratives through the use of medium specific tools, e.g. manipulations of the panel and the grid, visual approximations of sound, and grammatextuality. This research highlights a long-standing desire among comic writers and artists to represent music in their work, and demonstrates the rich connections between music and graphic narratives, which can facilitate more nuanced representations moving forward.
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Colonialism, postcolonialism and science fiction comics in the Southern Cone
More LessAbstractThis article analyses the science fiction universes imagined by three major Latin American comic books writers: the Argentine Ricardo Barreiro (Bárbara, 1979–83), the Chilean Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Incal, 1983–2010) and the Brazilian Mozart Couto (O Viajante, 1989). I demonstrate that the race relations (between humans and non-humans) depicted in the selected graphic novels correspond to three different time frames of the colonization process: the Conquest, the colonial period, and contemporary times. In his Bárbara series, Ricardo Barreiro describes a future alien occupation of planet Earth, whose process finds its inspiration in the extremely violent Conquest of the Americas. Like the Spanish invasion of the New World, the violence imagined in Barreiro’s world occurs both at the physical and psychological levels. At the physical level, the natives must cope with the destruction of their environment, and being hunted by aliens. At the psychological level, the invaders impose a new language and a new religion on humans. In El Incal series, Alejandro Jodorowsky explores the humanity of aliens, robots, holograms and mutants, which parallels how the whiteness of mestizos and mulattos was questioned in the Iberian continent during the Colonial period. The way in which Jodorowsky uses specific ‘science fiction icons’ – as defined by Gary K. Wolfe in The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (Wolfe, 1979) – exposes the pigmentocratic system that has survived up to the twenty-first century. Such an approach helps us deconstruct the myth that defines Latin America as a ‘racial democracy’. Finally, in Mozart Couto’s O Viajante an apparently progressive, New-Age inspired message of wisdom, betrays a new kind of cultural plundering of the Americas. By relying on the contemporary myth of the Ancient Astronauts (i.e.: giving an outer-space origin to the pre-Colombian Civilizations) for the plot of his graphic novel, Macedo denies the native inhabitants of the Iberian continent any continuity with the cultural and architectural accomplishments of their forefathers.
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Speaking language? The politics of language and power in Saga
More LessAbstractLinguists like to joke that a language is a ‘dialect with an army and navy’, a suggestion which takes on even greater meaning within the universe of Saga, where the strongest military powers speak a dialect known as Language. This analysis explores the power of language in Saga, the continuing series by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. The series uses the graphic-verbal medium of comics to draw special attention to the use of language and to portray linguistic power dynamics within the story. This analysis will first discuss the depiction of linguistic identity and multilingualism in Saga through the use of lettering, discourse and constructed language. The second portion of this analysis will examine two characters through their use of language, artistic representation and lettering: a power holder seeking to maintain power, Prince Robot IV, and a talking animal who subverts power structures with a one-word vocabulary, Lying Cat.
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Virtuality and enhancement in Richard McGuire’s Here(s)
More LessAbstractThe reading process of comics involves a significant virtual component, arising from the often complex ways in which readers navigate space and time. In few instances is the depiction of space and time as radical as in Richard McGuire’s Here, which uses inset panels to jump between various points in time within a single space. The 2014 book version of Here was followed by an eBook containing specifically digital features, such as subtle animation, and the untethering of inset panels from their original host panels. These features led to the eBook being titled Here (Enhanced edition). This article challenges the use of the term ‘enhanced’ with reference to the eBook, regarding an enhancement as an increase in number rather than an improvement. Borrowing from a conception of enhancement from the field of user interface (UI) design, it is suggested that the digital version of Here cannot be considered enhanced in terms of navigation because of a lack of core functionality between platforms. Use of the term is also questionable in terms of content, as despite additional combinations of panels, the potential connections between elements in the eBook are available in the print version if the reader is prepared to make them.
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Reviews
Authors: Madeline B. Gangnes, Erin Keepers, Kevin Cooley and Will D. SimpsonAbstractDrawing the Line: Comics Studies and INKS, 1994 to 1997, Lucy Shelton Caswell and Jared Gardner (eds) (2017) Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 334 pp., ISBN: 9780814254004, p/bk, $27.95/£22.95
‘Comics Remixed’: University of Florida’s 14th Annual Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, Gainesville, Florida, 7–9 April 2017
Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White, Michael Tisserand (2016) New York: Harper, 560 pp., ISBN: 9780061732997, h/bk, $35
On the Origin of Superheroes: From the Big Bang to Action Comics No. 1, Chris Gavaler (2015) Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 264 pp., ISBN: 1609383818, p/bk, £16.95
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