Category Archives: Guest Writers

I have a confession to make. When I sent the manuscript for Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero (Dittmer 2013) to its publisher, I fell off the wagon. After reading superhero comics for the better part of a decade, documenting the adventures of flag-draped superheroes in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom from 1940 to the present, I quit. I’m not someone who believes that a big wall separates the superhero comics from the rest of the comics world, but after over a thousand superhero comics I was definitely ready to switch things up a bit. So I dabbled in all the great new stuff that I had missed when my reading time was occupied by my book project – some of which were discovered by reading this very website (Fransman 2012) and are highly relevant to this essay. And all the while my monthly delivery of Captain America arrived like clockwork, joining its predecessors on my office desk. Last week, I was finally shamed by the verticality of the stack (almost a year and a half’s worth!) into taking them home and giving them some attention. The comics included the end of Ed Brubaker’s eight year run on the title (a pretty remarkable achievement nowadays), during which he famously brought Bucky back from the dead and walked Captain America through the Civil War crossover that made headlines around the world (e.g., Gustines 2007). One might expect a triumphant victory lap for Brubaker’s swansong on the title. Nevertheless, the end of Brubaker’s run seemed fixated on decline and the limits to power. In this essay I hope to briefly trace the ‘Powerless’ storyline (Brubaker and Davis 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2012,d, 2012e), as well as the events leading up to and following from that storyline, before contextualizing it all with a tiny, painless dose of political theory. I will then argue that the trope of ‘Powerless’ (in which, not surprisingly, Captain America’s body loses its superpowers) is a relatively common one over the history of the character. While this is to a certain extent true of many superheroes, in the context of Captain America the plot device is freighted with the baggage of the nationalist superhero genre.

‘Powerless’ follows on from a 2010 story in which Steve Rogers (then not occupying the role of Captain America) briefly lost his superpowers at the hands of the villain Machinesmith. Like many moments in his long history when Captain America loses his superpowers, this serves as an opportunity to demonstrate that the hero is more than just the chemicals that gave him his powers; he defeats his enemies as much through courage, moral rectitude, and self-made skill as through his biotechnological advantages (a narrative that obviously buttresses America’s vision of its own role in the world). Steve Rogers quickly regained his powers in 2010, but ever since then the hero has suffered a repetitive nightmare. It is thus that ‘Powerless’ begins: with Captain America dreaming of a battle in which he suddenly loses his powers – visually represented by his normally taut uniform baggily hanging off his body. Meanwhile, a riot has broken out in New York City, the result of a sonic ‘madbomb’ set off by unknown villains. In the ensuing melee, Captain America suddenly shrinks just as he did in his dream, and he is unable to stop the villains from pulping him. He later returns to ‘normal’ (I use the term advisedly), but scientific tests show nothing wrong. Captain America begins to worry:

It happened another time, too. Years ago…Not from anything scientific or magical…I was just in shock. And something in my own mind shut the super-soldier serum down. Like I’d lost faith…and lost my strength with it.

(Brubaker and Davis 2012b, p.12)

Another riot breaks out and the whole story repeats itself: this time, however, Captain America loses his powers at a crucial moment when the rioters turn on him. He is saved once again; and this time his allies have identified the nanotechnology that was inserted into his bloodstream by allies of Machinesmith and which led to his deflation in times of stress. This technical solution to his bodily woes restores Captain America’s self-confidence, and he strides out to face his tormentors in physical combat. However, the story ends not on this high note, but on the news that television footage of Captain America battling rioters has hit the airwaves, making him look bad. This serves as a bridge into the final storyline of the Brubaker era, in which a vigilante uncovers and executes ex-villains who have entered into the witness protection program. This causes Captain America to consider his own moral culpability for ‘cutting deals’ with supervillains who have committed ghastly crimes. In short, ‘Powerless’ and the following story (‘Shock to the System’) make for bleak reading, in which both Captain America’s body and moral compass are offered to the readers as unreliable.

In my book I argue that the body of the nationalist superhero, in this case Captain America, is a metonym for the nation-state. This is distinct from metaphor in that a metaphor is simply a claim that something resembles something from a different field in one particular way, whereas a metonym stands-in for something from the same field. A subtle distinction perhaps, but it is an important one. There are plenty of antecedents in this metonym: most obviously the notion from political theory of the ‘body politic’, in which the nation-state is imagined as a human body. Hobbes famously visualized the nation-state in this way, with the people of the nation composing the body (providing vigor) while the king occupied the role of the head (providing rationality and voice). Foucault notes in Society Must Be Defended (2004) that this pluralization was a change from the previous body politic, which was simply the sovereign’s body itself. The monarch literally embodied the state, and the people of the nation (which of course did not yet exist as a concept) simply lived on his (or occasionally her) land. From this equation of the body of the sovereign with the state itself came an intimate concern with the sovereign’s body, health, and reproduction. The vitality of the sovereign was perpetually being studied from afar as a measure of the ebb and flow of inter-dynastic relations.

With this in mind it becomes possible to reexamine ‘Powerless’ as a text that asserts the contemporary vulnerability of American hegemony through its portrayal of a nationalist hero whose body fails him just when he needs it. The metonymy of Captain America and the United States, which is simultaneously obvious (he wears the stars and stripes and is named after the country) and subtle (his body stands in for the virile sovereign in the way outlined by Foucault), transforms this common superhero plot device into political allegory. It is perhaps not surprising that Captain America, which has long (like many comics and other popular culture) closely tracked the political and cultural mood of its markets, should narrate an impotent America during an economic crisis that has dragged on for several years and during an election campaign that featured few new visions of the future. However, as the quote from Steve Rogers earlier implied, this is not the first time this has happened; nor does it always happen at times of economic malaise or during nadirs of geopolitical power. For instance, it happened in an extended storyline in the mid-1990s, when the United States was arguably at its zenith in terms of (perceived) global power and economic strength (excluding the period directly following the Second World War). However, the narrative of globalization that underpinned the 1990s was very uninspiring for vast swaths of the population who found themselves losing out. Similarly, today the United States (and other countries in ‘the West’) find themselves in a post-’War on Terror’ era, returning to a technocratic 1990s politics in which the fiscal negotiations of Euro-crisis and debt ceilings dominate headlines but without the booming 1990s economy to soften the edges.

In the end, I’m glad that I read the stack of comics. But I am even gladder that I finished my book before getting to the end of Brubaker’s run. I would have hated for the bleakness of his final books to have infected mine.

Bibliography

Brubaker, E. and Davis, A. (2012a) ‘Powerless, Part 1’ In Captain America vol.6, #6. (New York: Marvel Comics).

Brubaker, E. and Davis, A. (2012b) ‘Powerless, Part 2’ In Captain America vol.6, #7. (New York: Marvel Comics).

Brubaker, E. and Davis, A. (2012c) ‘Powerless, Part 3’ In Captain America vol.6, #8. (New York: Marvel Comics).

Brubaker, E. and Davis, A. (2012d) ‘Powerless, Part 4’ In Captain America vol.6, #9. (New York: Marvel Comics).

Brubaker, E. and Davis, A. (2012e) ‘Powerless, Part 5’ In Captain America vol.6, #10. (New York: Marvel Comics).

Dittmer, Jason (2013). Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero: Metaphors, narratives, and geopolitics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).

Foucault, Michel (2004). Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76 (London: Penguin).

Fransman, Karrie (2012). ‘The Body as a Canvas in Comics: Karrie Fransman Explores the Influence of Corporal Studies in the Creation of her graphic novel The House That Groaned.’ http://comicsforum.org/2012/02/24/the-body-as-a-canvas-in-comics-karrie-fransman-explores-the-influence-of-corporal-studies-in-the-creation-of-her-graphic-novel-the-house-that-groaned/ (last accessed 17/1/13).

Gustines, G. (2007). ‘Captain America Is Dead; National Hero Since 1941.’ New York Times, 8 March. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/books/08capt.html (last accessed 17/1/13).

Hobbes, Thomas (2008 [1651]). Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Jason Dittmer is Reader in Human Geography at University College London, and the author of Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero: Metaphors, Narratives, and Geopolitics (Temple University Press, 2013) and Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).

On September 11, 2001, Art Spiegelman, son of Auschwitz survivors and renowned author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus (1992), found himself on a “ringside seat” to the attacks on the WTC (Spiegelman, 2004: p. 2). This was it; the moment his parents had anticipated when they taught him “to always keep [his] bags packed” (Spiegelman, 2004 [1]). Personal life and world history collided once again on Ground Zero and, after years of writing and illustrating for The New Yorker – though never combining the two disciplines – the cartoonist returned to the medium that he considers to be ultimately his own: comix.[2]

Spiegelman’s second opus In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) contains ten large-scale cardboard pages, each with an eclectic collection of images and frames: comic figures from the dawn of the twentieth century feature prominently in the autobiographical story that is further built on references to popular culture, including the author’s familiar ‘disguise’ as a mouse. Produced in the two years right after the attacks, the shape of the towers is frequently mirrored in both single panels and in page structures. All together, the book provides a nearly surreal report of life in lower Manhattan; the neighbourhood in which the absence of the Twin Towers was ultimately present. Further, in order to do justice to “oversized skyscrapers and outsized events” (Spiegelman, 2004) the templates are extraordinary in size; each of them designed to precisely fill a full newsprint page, in colour.

In this essay, I will discuss how Spiegelman takes comics out of their comfort zone through an exciting play with panels and scale and thereby creates a space for different levels of narrative to be voiced within a single template. In the Shadow of No Towers turns narrative into geography and challenges its readers to navigate through its different layers: both personal stories and (geo)political critiques; stories in which the reappearance of figures from a long-gone era of comics-making voices a strong sense of ephemerality which is, in turn, reflected in the apocalyptic sensibility of Spiegelman’s present persona (Versluys, 2006: p. 983). The abolishment of comics’ “grammar” of sequential art (Eisner, 1985: p. 2) and the absence of a clear reading route (Szczepaniak, 2010: p. 89) within a single template, reminds one of that other comics author that infiltrated mainstream publications with his extraordinary, challenging works, Chris Ware.[3] The close reading of In the Shadow of No Towers aims to support the argument that this particular book fits in a tradition of comics-making; a tradition that challenges classic definitions by theorists and cartoonists as, among others, Scott McCloud and Will Eisner. In other words, I aim to emphasize how Spiegelman’s work, like the works of Chris Ware,[4] explores the potential of the comics medium through a violation of its classic conventions.

Spiegelman’s approach to comics is an architectural one: each page is a totality (Spiegelman, 2011: p. 203) and each panel is a brick in its construction (Szczepaniak, 2010: p. 87). In an attempt to relive his memories of 9/11, Spiegelman utilizes the structure of a template to resonate with his scattered traumatic experiences: the towers are frequently rebuilt by piling up the panels and their form is mirrored in the shape of the frames. The result is a collection of diary fragments spread over ten templates that each displays a collage of narrative themes. As such, In the Shadow of No Towers challenges both Coulton Waugh’s characterization of comics – presumably one of the first attempts at defining the medium – and McCloud’s notion of closure. The former argued that comics first and foremost present their readers with a pictorial overview: “the special feature […] is that it jumps at the reader picture side first – you see the situation” (Waugh, 1947: p. 14. My emphasis). The latter introduced the concept of closure – the “phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole” (McCloud, 1994: p. 63) – as a key feature of the comics medium. Yet, the templates and panels of In the Shadow of No Towers are best characterized as parts of a decentralized network (Mikkonen, 2010: p. 80) in which linear sequences are replaced by architectural structures. Consequently, the lack of a clear – i.e. at one glance – pictorial coherence and the absence of closure shift the reader’s focus from the goal-oriented consumption of a narrative to the process of actively tracing the narrative themes (Szczepaniak, 2010: p. 91).

One of the narrative themes unfolds once the reader discovers the critical potential of the American flags that s/he encounters throughout In the Shadow of No Towers. Stars and stripes as sign of public spirit are recurring visual elements that criticize the agenda of the mainstream media: too quickly after the attacks, the act of mourning was turned into the insincere sense of patriotism (Jameson, 2002: p. 299). Initial tears and fears were rapidly covered by American flags and U.S. citizens were forced back into their passive daily routine that Spiegelman refers to as “the new normal” (Spiegelman, 2004: p. 2) Further, the televised form of the reports on 9/11 is ironically critiqued by highlighting the medium’s inability to represent scale in a book which narratives are ultimately told through a playful use of scale and space. The medium of comics enables Spiegelman to map out a personal alternative to the patriotic agenda of the mainstream media. Taking his own position as a starting point, space and time are reorganized into a mental zone (Spiegelman, 2011: p. 166) that does justice to the author’s individual memories of 9/11. Whereas television spectators cannot escape the “stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor” (Sontag, 1973: p. 18), the static imagery of comics allows for readers to contemplate the versatility of 9/11. The size of In the Shadow of No Towers thus ultimately lends itself not only to the juxtaposition of fragments of memory (Dony and Van Linthout, 2010: p. 181), but also to changes in scale to emphasize the importance of certain narrative themes in relation to other storylines that are told simultaneously.

The simultaneity of different storylines make for a book that communicates a mood rather than a clear-cut narrative; feelings, rather than actions. In the Shadow of No Towers reads like a poem or, more specifically, like a sonnet:

Movements from page to page in these events do not reveal one continuous narrative; rather, these strip collections recall sonnet sequences, in that each page is a single unit and the aggregate whole is more concerned with communicating mood and feeling than in presenting narrative.

(Kannenberg, 2001: p. 178).

To put it differently, imagination is not at the service of narrative action; it is turned into a subject matter, demanding a different approach to comics-making. Whereas Eisner stressed that “[i]n visual narration the task of the author/artist is to record a continued flow of experience and show it as it may be seen from the reader’s eyes” (Eisner, 1985: p. 40), Spiegelman considers the pleasure of literary fiction to derive from “entering into another’s brain and seeing the world through that set of eyes” (Spiegelman, 2011: p. 201). This expressionist ideal of the comic does not so much influence the content of the picture as it does determine the architecture of a template. Fantasy of mankind is rich and multilayered, but it also has its holes and detours (Spiegelman, 2011: p. 201); mapping out the versatility of the imagination hence requires an intellectual construction of panels, gutters and towers. Whereas gutters are commonly used to trigger the imagination of the reader, a requirement to meaningfully connect the different panels (McCloud, 1994: p. 66), Spiegelman has an extra visual strategy at his disposal: the towers. The merging of comic structures (panels and gutters) with architectural constructions (towers) enriches In the Shadow of No Towers with a level of abstraction that forces the reader to imagine what one did not actually witness: no visual information on the human action inside the towers is provided, but “experience tells you something must be there” (McCloud, 1994: p. 67. Emphasis in original). The large-scale pages of the book facilitate the frequent depiction of outsized towers as architectural constructions that ensure that the reader, just like the author, is now haunted by imagined memories s/he prefers not to keep (Zelizer, 2004: p. 159). The haunting quality, inherent to the depiction of the towers, is utilized by Spiegelman to enhance the mood of confusion and trauma he aspires to voice with his collection of templates.

The multidirectional nature of the reading experience is facilitated by the shape of the book; the newsprint pages allow for great architectural freedom in communicating a personal account of 9/11 through the shapes and juxtaposition of panels and the playful use of scale. The simultaneity of different layers of narrative culminate into the realization of Spiegelman’s ambition to communicate inner experiences rather than the whole of a narrative: “An artist’s limitations […] are actually an asset: you enter into a person’s brain and world, and every brain has its deformations and its limitations. That’s part of what it is to see through somebody else’s eyes” (Spiegelman, 2011: p. 201). In the Shadow of No Towers is thus not so much about the presentation of a narrative as it is about the communication of mood and feelings through an ingeniously constructed explorative space, that is the template.

To conclude, the works of Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, and similar artists call for appropriate models for analysis and close reading through which to study their playful use of space in order for comics scholarship to grow in keeping with the alterations of the medium. Still scarce in both production and theorizing, the study of comics that play with simultaneity – of both levels of narrative and reading routes – within the boundaries of a single page can deliver great insights in the potential of the medium. This essay, then, is but a small peek into the future of comics-making and its scholarship.

Works cited

Dony, Christophe and Linthout, Caroline van. “Comics, trauma and cultural memory(ies) of 9/11.” Goggin, Joyce and Hassler-Forest, Dan (eds.). The Rise and Reason of Comics and Graphic Literature. Critical Essays on the Form. London: McFarland & Company, 2010: pp. 178-187.

Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art (1985). New York: Norton & Company, 2008.

Goodbrey, Daniel Merlin. New Experiments in Fiction. http://e-merl.com/

Jameson, Fredric. “The dialectics of disaster.” The South Atlantic Quarterly. Vol. 102, no. 2, 2002: pp. 297-304.

Joyce, James. Ulysses (1922). New York: Random House, 1986.

Kannenberg, Gene, Jr. “The comics of Chris Ware. Text, image and visual narrative strategies.” Varnum, Robin and Gibbons, Christina T. (eds.). The Language of Comics: Word and Image. Jackson: University Press Mississippi, 2001: pp. 174-197.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.

McKean, Dave. The Rut. London: Pump House Gallery, 2010.

Mikkonen, Kai. “Remediation and the sense of time in graphic narratives.” Goggin, Joyce and Hassler-Forest, Dan (eds.). The Rise and Reason of Comics and Graphic Literature. Critical Essays on the Form. London: McFarland & Company, 2010: pp. 74-86.

Spiegelman, Art. In the Shadow of No Towers. New York: Pantheon Press, 2004.

—. Maus. New York: Pantheon Press, 1992.

—. “Why comics?” MetaMaus. A Look Inside A Modern Classic, Maus. New York: Pantheon Press, 2011: pp. 164-234.

Sontag, Susan. “In Plato’s cave” (1973). On Photography. New York: Penguin Group, 1977: pp. 3-24.

Szczepaniak, Angela. “Brick by brick. Chris Ware’s architecture of the page.” Goggin, Joyce and Hassler-Forest, Dan (eds.). The Rise and Reason of Comics and Graphic Literature. Critical Essays on the Form. London: McFarland & Company, 2010: pp. 87-101.

Versluys, Kristiaan. “Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers: 9/11 and the representation of trauma.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies. Vol. 52, no. 4, Winter 2006: pp. 980-1003.

Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan. The Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon Press, 2000.

Waugh, Coulton. “In the beginning.” The Comics. New York: MacMillan, 1947: p. 1-15.

Zelizer, Barbie. “The voice of the visual in memory.” Phillips, Kendall R. (ed.). Framing Public Memory. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004: pp. 157-186.

Aletta Verwoerd is a graduate student in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. This article is a short version of an extensive and detailed analysis of the reading routes through specific templates of Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers. Interested in the full version? Please contact Aletta at A.D.Verwoerd@uva.nl.

[1] – Here, I refer to the introduction of Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) in which pages are not numbered.

[2] – The late sixties saw the emergence of underground comics that dealt with topics of their time: sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll. The cartoonists of the movement distinguished themselves from the mainstream comics by slightly adjusting the spelling of their medium from comics to comix; the “x” highlights their x-rated characteristics. Spiegelman joined the comix movement in 1968 and continues to use their spelling to this day; a spelling that is appropriate considering the trouble he had finding a publisher for the templates that make up In the Shadow of No Towers.

[3] – Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan. The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) has been compared to James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). The comparison is not so much made on a thematic level – both novels explore themes of fatherhood and alienation – as on the level of comprehension; tackling Ware’s work in its entirety is commonly considered a daunting task.

[4] – On paper, Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware are the leading artists when it comes to challenging the comics’ conventions. Yet, there is a rising number of artists that takes comics of the page and experiments with so-called ‘infinite canvas’ comics online (among others, the works of Daniel Merlin Goodbrey) as well as with the presentation of graphic narratives in installation art (e.g. Dave McKean’s The Rut).

This article examines the way a temporary inflexion towards a cinematic representation in City of Glass: the Graphic Novel – an adaptation which actively seeks to explore the specificities of the comics form – brings to the surface the fragmented and incomplete state of tradition in comics.

Among many other things, David Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik’s adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass (City of Glass GN in the rest of this text) is a visual interpretation of the noir homage present in Auster’s book. City of Glass, the first novel of the New York Trilogy, initially relies on a loose pastiche of detective fiction and more specifically of the novels of Raymond Chandler, in which private eyes accept unclear missions for the sake of beautiful women. This archetypal scene is replayed both in the novel and in the graphic novel, when Quinn, the main protagonists, accepts to keep watch over a man named Stillman in part because of his attraction to Virginia’s Stillman, the man’s daughter-in-law.

In most of the book, Quinn functions as a “post-existential private-eye”, in the words of Dennis Drabelle quoted in (McCaffery, Gregory et Auster 2), and his surveillance of Stillman quickly leads him to semiotic and linguistic interrogations rather than to the down-to-earth investigation of a Philip Marlowe. The challenge in adapting City of Glass therefore rested mostly on the transposition of this verbal rather than visual narrative. To quote from Art Spiegelman: “For all its playful references to pulp fiction, City of Glass is a surprisingly nonvisual work at its core, a complex web of words and abstract ideas in playfully shifting narrative styles”. (Spiegelman). While others, notably David Coughlan and Spiegelman himself in his introduction, have examined the strategies used by the two authors to represent these non-visual elements, what interests me here is precisely the way the text’s “playful reference to pulp fiction” are adapted.

In the novel, Virginia Stillman’s initial description already points to her potential role as the archetypal victim/femme fatale. It is hard not to agree with Dan Holmes who, in his investigation of the links between post-modernism and crime fiction in Auster’s writing, has described this precise passage as “very Chandler-esque” (n.p.)

The woman was thirty, perhaps thirty-five; average height at best; hips a touch wide or else voluptuous depending on your point of view; dark hair, dark eyes, and a look in those eyes that was at once self-contained and vaguely seductive. She wore a black dress and very red lipstick.

(Auster 13)

Of course, this “depends on your point of view”, for just as the woman is usually caught between two roles in noir fiction (as exemplified to the screeching extreme by Faye Dunaway’s cry: “I’m her mother”/”I’m her sister” in the conclusion of Polanski’s Chinatown, 1974), Quinn is at this point of the novel caught between his playing the role of a private-eye and his becoming one. While Mazzucchelli’s mostly minimalist rendering [1] initially masks the sexual allure suggested by this depiction, Virginia’s Stillman’s attractiveness is later pushed to the fore in a panel in which we understand that Quinn is imagining her naked. This overt sexual fantasy has no direct equivalent in the novel.

Later on, still in the same discussion, the same structure is used and reversed. This time, Quinn is shown as an archetypal gumshoe, complete with raincoat and crumbled hat (echoing Spiegelman’s use of the same archetype in “Ace Hole, Midget Detective”, 1974, and anticipating the “Frank Kafka” strip in Brubaker and Philips’s Criminal, 2006-), while the focalization suggests that this representation is to be attributed to Virginia Stillman. This is the second occurrence of the detective in the narrative, which was previously introduced as a representation of Max Wonk, the hero of a series of crime novels which Quinn writes.

The two sequences of three panels each are symmetrical (Quinn – Virginia – Virginia/Virginia – Quinn – Quinn) and even their lieu on the page suggests that they are meant to balance each other, with the first occupying the top tier and the second the bottom tier of their respective page. By contrast, throughout this conversation, the novel provides no clue as to the thoughts of the protagonists, consisting solely of dialogue and succinct depictions of movement.

The multiplicity of overlapping narrative instances in comics makes it difficult to positively assign these fantasies to either character. The repetition of the point of view between panels suggests that since we are placed in the physical location of Quinn and Virginia respectively, the fantasized panel is an expression their mental state. This seems to be contradicted, however, by a later sequence in which Quinn “sees” himself transforming into a private-detective, and is represented again as the archetypal gumshoe (47). While this later reversal complicates our reading of the scene (the whole scene may after all be a reflection of Quinn’s mental state, since he is the main focalizer, or Virginia Quinn may be imagining herself naked in an especially embarrassing moment), it does signal the connection between this specific scene and popular fiction – between noir and erotica – in a more overt fashion than the novel. Moreover, as pointed out by Alex Shakar in his review of the graphic novel: “Work is drawn in the chiseled lines of Dick Tracy, with all the backlit shading effects of film noir. He is visibly generic, but drawn with more care” (Shakar). His identity is therefore clearer, more easily defined than that of Quinn. His presence in the scene thus temporarily outweighs Quinn’s, and pushes genre to the fore.

This generic encoding means that the reader of City of Glass GN is more primed for a generic reading of the kiss that concludes the scene than a reader of Auster’s novel. Here is the scene in the novel:

For several seconds they stood there in silence, not knowing whether there was something to add or if the time had come to say good-bye. In that tiny interval, Virginia Stillman suddenly threw her arms around Quinn, sought out his lips with her own and kissed him passionately, driving her tongue deep inside his mouth. Quinn was so taken off guard that he almost failed to enjoy it.

(Auster 31-32)

The willful contrasts at work in this depiction, between light-hearted romance (“tiny interval”; the last sentence) and more sexualized elements (the matter of fact depiction of the penetrating kiss) again opens up the scene for a range of possible meanings.

In the graphic novel, the element of surprise is here, and there are traces of the stylistic dissonances at work in the novel, as the emanatas/speed lines over Quinn’s head (only four panels contain emanata in the first 25 pages of City of Glass GN) contrast with the elaborate rendering of Viriginia’s hair. Surprise is present in Quinn’s expression –a raised eyebrow and wide-opened eye; in the sudden disappearance of the background – a break with the previous ten panels and again a rare occurrence in the graphic novel as a whole; and by the imbalance in the composition of the panel, suggesting a quick leftward movement. The sensual element present in Auster’s depiction is even made manifest to a certain extent by the shift from a cartoonish and angular approach to a more naturalistic depiction of the faces and bodies. This restored corporeality in the context of a scene of seduction can certainly be read as pointing to physical sex, achieving the same effect as the depiction of the probing tongue though through a very different means.

However, the specific panel in which the kiss occurs does more than simply transcribe Auster’s prose; in the context of the graphic novels and of comics in general it suggests the necessity of borrowing from cinema. As mentioned above, the whole sequence in the comics makes explicit something slightly less overt in the novel: the presence of a pulpish subtext to the whole discussion. The kiss itself therefore appears as the culmination of these erotic and noirish fantasies. However, it does so by invoking a very cinematic image. I would like to suggest that what is at stake here is not simply a temporary recourse to a form inherited from another medium but also an indictment of the lack of a usable past in comics.

The debt towards cinema in this panel is made manifest through several devices. One is the choice of a more naturalistic mode of representation, mentioned above, a form of “realism” which mitigates “the challenge of a narrative mode that uniquely never lets us forget, in which the kind of immersive magic that seeks to demystify simply cannot happen” (Gardner 66). This is by no mean a “realistic” drawing, but contrasted with the other panels on the page, it makes immersion considerably easier. The lack of balloons also contributes to this possible reading of the image as having a cinematic ancestry. The balloon is that “white presence which neutralizes the background” (Groensteen 82), but it is also a reminder of the system of comics, thus conveniently erased. The format of the panel is another noteworthy element, since its horizontal shape (1.25:1) is very close to that of the 4:3 aspect ratio, in use in cinema until the 1950’s and in television long after that. City of Glass employs a regular nine-panel grid, but panels within a tier are regularly merged. The shape of the panel is therefore not unusual in itself, but the choice to use at this specific point is significant: by contrast, the vertical panel dominant in the rest of the graphic novel (1:1.66) reads as specific to the form.

More strikingly, the off-balance nature of the picture pushes significant elements out of the panel, including a part of Quinn’s head and Virginia’s arm. Again, people and bodies are not always presented in full in the rest of the graphic novel, but in a majority of cases, framing is always very deliberate isolating faces, postures and details in carefully composed pictures. The imbalance and the ostensibly absent elements here suggest an accident, an arrested movement and the existence of an off-screen space, toward which Quinn is falling. However, as pointed out by Groensteen and Peeters among others, there is no such thing as an off-panel space in comics, the way there is in a film (Groensteen 50; Peeters 82).

None of these elements is decisive in its own right, but their combination strongly points towards cinematic representation as the implied source of this picture.[2] This is especially true in the context of City of Glass, a narrative in which every variation in the choice representation is meant to be meaningful, from a variation in the thickness of the line to a change in the level of details to the shape of the word balloons (Coughlan 838), a graphic novel built around the very idea of the comics grid and its expressive possibilities (Nadel and Karasik 140-1). Thus, even the relatively minor disjunctions enumerated above do suggest a break in the narrative regime.

This cinematographic reading is also not suggested by the narrative and stylistic choices we identified earlier, it is also encouraged by the status of this type of closely framed kiss, seen in profile, as a paradigmatic image in Hollywood cinema. Since 1896 and the showing of the then scandalous The Kiss, the image has been an integral part of the public representation of cinema. This is convincingly illustrated, for instance, by the opening sequence of the French “Cinema de minuit” – a weekly TV show dedicated to classic cinema – in which famous cinematic couples about to kiss are united by a series of dissolve, emphasizing the highly codified nature of the scene.

The same point could be made through the abundance of books devoted to Hollywood kisses, or simply through the fact that one of the lobby cards for Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep emphasizes the kiss between Bogart and Bacall, while the film itself devotes much of its energy to frustrating this expectation.

The climax of the generic drive latent in this scene therefore appears to necessitate a move away from the specific code of comics. City of Glass GN constantly explores the ambiguity of images in comics, of a code in which highly symbolized representations (faceless figures, thick black lines) can be used to suggest both a “realistic” world and a highly symbolic imagery. This versatility however is found lacking at a point when the novel and the graphic novel seek to evoke an existing tradition – in this case detective or noir fiction.

I would like to suggest that this points to the lack of a usable icon in comics tradition, which could be used as capstone to this specific subtext. In Auster’s text, the noirish elements function without an explicit reference to the cinematic treatment of the genre; though of course intertextual inferences color our reading on several occasions. This suggests that in this case, as well as in other occasions in City of Glass GN, the history of comics does not offer usable icons. The graphic novel includes several overt pastiches – which is unsurprising for the adaptation of Auster’s referential text – but crucially, they are not pastiches of other comics. Instead, Karasik and Mazzucchelli reference other visual forms: woodcuts, children pictures, Jerome Bosch’s paintings and cinema. By contrast, again, Auster’s City of Glass references literature and most specifically the novel without the need to allude to other forms.

Yet, comics do offer examples of forms which could have been used in this context, notably those comic books produced in the late forties, be them crime or romance comics. I hope to have demonstrated that this is not what Karasik and Mazzucchelli have done here, instead choosing to reference a form with cultural clout and more importantly, a more visible cultural form, one which is likely to function as meta-textual reference for the greatest number of readers.

What this recourse to cinema highlights is the incompleteness, real or perceived, of the comics corpus. When it comes to representing 17th century religious dogma, which the graphic novel does by imitating woodcuts (42) , the brevity of comics history is of course of factor, since there are no contemporary texts available. When it comes to the kiss, however, the lacuna points to the fact that a significant portion of comics works – entire genres even – was until recently entirely submerged. Whatever useable traditions comics have focus on a small subset of influential comic strips (Dick Tracy, Krazy Kat, Little Nemo, Peanuts…), a few genres which benefit from a voluntary or involuntary historicization (super heroes, funny animals, horror shorts) and a smattering of culturally bound aesthetic references (Kirby and possibly Steranko in the United States, la ligne claire or l’école de Marcinelle in French speaking countries, certainly others elsewhere). This accessible and regularly used tradition encompasses a mere fraction of the history of the medium, and a strikingly small subset of genres. The general availability and persisting presence of a number of noir or neo-noir films thus contrast with the unavailability or invisibility of entire periods of comics history – although the recent “golden age of reprint” has altered that situation to some extent.

Discussing the origin of these lacunae would go beyond the scope of this article, though one may point to lateness of serious of critical engagement with the form (Beaty), the unavailability of much of the material for a long time and the perceived hierarchy of cultural forms as contributing factors. In any case, the minute variations in such a controlled environment as City of Glass GN function as an enlightening comment on the limits of comics not as form but as a corpus when it comes to recreating such an ambitious intertextual effort as Paul Auster’s novel.

Bibliography

Auster, Paul. City of Glass. in The New York Trilogy. London: Faber and Faber, 1987.

Beaty, Bart. ‘Introduction.’ 26 August 2010. Transatlantica. 21 October 2012. http://transatlantica.revues.org/4938.

Coughlan, David. ‘Paul Auster’s City Of Glass: The Graphic Novel.’ MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 52.4 (2006): 832-54.

Gardner, Jared. ‘Storylines.’ SubStance 40.1 (2011): 53-69.

Groensteen, Thierry. Système de la bande dessinée. Paris: PUF, 1999.

Holmes, Dan. ‘Paul Auster’s deconstruction of the traditional hard-boiled detective narrative in The New York Trilogy.’ 2005. 21 October 2012. http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/Articles-Summer05/DanHolmes.html.

Karasik, Paul et David Mazzucchelli. City of Glass, the Graphic Novel. New York: Picador, 2004.

Kartalopoulos, Bill and David Mazzucchelli. ‘Three Questions for David Mazzucchelli.’ 2004. Indy Magazine. 21 October 2012. http://www.indyworld.com/indy/spring_2004/mazzucchelli_interview/index.html.

McCaffery, Larry, Sinda Gregory et Paul Auster. ‘An Interview with Paul Auster.’ Contemporary Literature 33.1, Spring (1992): 1-23.

Nadel, Dan and Paul Karasik. ‘Interview with Paul Karasik.’ The Ganzfeld Fall 2000: 105-149.

Peeters, Benoit. Case, planche, récit : lire la bande dessinée. Tournai: Casterman, 1991.

Shakar, Alex. ‘Nowhersville.’ Vers. Issue 6. 1997-98. ebr, the electronic book review. 21 October 2012. http://www.altx.com/EBR/reviews/rev6/r6shakar/r6sha.htm.

Spiegelman, Art. ‘Picturing a Glassy-Eyed Private I.’ Paul Auster: City of Glass. New York: Picador, 2004. n.p.

Tremblay-Gaudette, Gabriel. ‘Douter de la folie de Daniel Quinn : lecture du roman graphique City of Glass de Paul Karasik et David Mazzucchelli.’ Postures 11, Printemps (2009): 69-88.

Nicolas Labarre is an assistant professor (maître de conférences) at University Bordeaux 3, France. He has worked on mass culture theories, but his current research focuses on issues of adaptation, genre, narrative constraints, and cultural legitimacy in comics. He is a regular contributor to The Comics Grid. He also draws and writes comics, mostly published on his blog.

[1] – Interestingly, Mazzucchelli’s style is perceived as “naturalistic” by Coughlan (838), while others have likened it to a woodcut novel (Tremblay-Gaudette 72). Mazzucchelli himself emphasized ambivalence as the main characteristic of his style in the book: “I wanted a drawing style naturalistic enough to evoke the “real world” in which the story takes place, calligraphic enough to bend easily into the other styles I planned to use, and simple enough to be clear in the book’s small format.” (Kartalopoulos and Mazzucchelli)

[2] – The ‘cinematic reading’ of the scene is further encouraged in the Picador reprint of the graphic novel, which uses on the cover an atypical panel, displaying the intricate entrapping shadows often used as a visual metonymy of film noir. The original cover did not establish such connection.

[This article was updated on 14/01/2013 to correct a spelling error]

Judging from my recollection, the most animated discussion (pun intended) at the Third International Comics Conference (“Comics Rock,” held at Bournemouth University, June 28-29, 2012) took place in the aftermath of the keynote address given by David Lloyd (Kickback, V for Vendetta) and Steve Marchant (The Cartoonist’s Workshop, The Computer Cartoon Kit). That their address was to be, at some level, reactive to a perceived challenge was a foregone conclusion based on the chosen title, “No Artistic Value that Anyone Can See.” There is a double-entendre in that provocative title. On the face of it, the title seems to allude to a dismissive comment made about the value – or, more precisely, the lack thereof – attributed to the entire genre. Yet simultaneously it is a camouflaged assertion, obtained by astutely rewording an opposing sentiment, namely “artistic value that none can see.” That is indeed the crux of the problem, especially for David Lloyd. The genre has an image problem. Ironically, in the same fashion that the Guy Fawkes mask popularized by David Lloyd immobilizes the physiognomy of the protagonist in V for Vendetta behind an incongruously comical smile, the merit of David Lloyd’s own serious artistic production is continually dissimulated, in large part, by virtue of the blanket use of the baggage-laden umbrella term comics to refer to the whole gamut of sequential art, everything from the Sunday funnies to graphic novels of notoriety such as V for Vendetta. It is certainly by design that the objectionable word is absent from the title of the keynote talk. Why continue to tacitly dignify a word, simply by virtue of using it, that one wishes to overthrow? Sequential art is the term David Lloyd would like to promote in its place.

I repeat here something I first mentioned in the discussion that immediately followed that keynote address: Historically speaking, sequential art is not alone in its disrespected misery. In order to thrive and evolve into something of substance, many art forms have gone through a necessary struggle and, in part, a revolt against their own roots before becoming something more than a diversion: fictional writing and film are examples. The process is not easy and the trajectories will not be the same, but sequential art is now pursuing a similar path in attempting to liberate itself from the constraints of its past, as perceived in the public eye. Of course the parameters of this problem are not the same in every country where sequential art has had prominence. For example, though usually not accorded the same standing as works of literary prose or poetry, there is nevertheless widespread acceptance of bande dessinée as a worthy art form in Francophone Europe.

But to take up David Lloyd’s lament, to what extent does nomenclature help or hinder the process of legitimization? It is certainly true that we can and do dignify an object of our attention by virtue of the nomenclature that we choose. We study film and cinematography; we do not study movies and talking pictures. But the latter died on its own, and movies is still well entrenched in informal usage. And let’s not forget motion pictures, which, though much less current, retains its dignity, even though it is transparently identical in origin to the term movies. So before jettisoning comics and jumping on the sequential art bandwagon, let’s consider some of the linguistic pros and the cons associated with the vocabulary used to designate the genre. To create a basis for comparison, let’s begin by looking at French.

The term “bande dessinée,” it has been asserted (Le Grand Robert de la langue française), was introduced in the early 1930s by the French-based editor Paul Winkler who was importing American comic strips for publication in France. The term is a loose translation retaining strip in the form of bande. Whether a conscious act or fortuitous, the elimination of comic in favor of the neutral term déssinée (‘drawn’ + fem.) has been, one could certainly argue, advantageous in avoiding the transferal of the baggage associated with the former. However, concision is often the mother of linguistic invention. Though semantically advantageous for the reason cited, bande dessinée needed a concise alternative. English had already arrived at one: comic paper (1883, Oxford English Dictionary) became comics (1889, OED), which continued in usage as the handy umbrella term for everything to follow, including comic strip (1920, OED) and comic book (1941, OED), leading to our present trouble. But for all its happy neutrality, bande dessinée did not similarly lend itself to reduction by virtue of the pluralization of one of its components and the suppression of the other. Instead, French users resorted, in the first instance, to using the initials BD (since 1966, Le Grand Robert). Economy of reference is surely one of the most important factors contributing to our stubborn retention of the word comics in the Anglophone world. For all its trouble, comics is a concise form that neatly sums up an entire genre. While graphic novel has gained some currency in general use, it cannot compete for economy of form or generality of reference, and it comes with semantic baggage of its own: graphic can connote explicitness in the portrayal of violence or sexuality. Though still lacking in economy of form, graphic narrative and graphic storytelling, and David Lloyd’s preferred sequential art, are less problematic alternatives on other counts.

However, along with concision, the need for derivation can also drive neological activity. By opting for a neological device that, though present, is less robust in English (let it be noted in passing, this is somewhat exceptional; by and large, English is less constrained than French when it comes to lexical creativity and word building), BD was converted into the homophonic transcription bédé (1974) in order to provide a suitable root for a range of affixationally derived terms: bédéiste (a useful general term referring to any type of BD author or artist), bédéthèque (BD store, BD library or large private collection), bédéphile (someone who is a fan of BD), bédéphage (someone who is an avid consumer of BD), etc. By way of comparison, comics does not lend itself well to affixational derivation. Nor do, for that matter, the series of compounded terms incorporating graphic. While graphic novelist and graphic writer are possible, graphic artist and graphic designer are already taken, leading to the confusion of semantic fields. On the other hand, sequential art, absent the art (a plus in terms of concision), can at least buy us sequentialist and sequentialism, which in fact are beginning to see some currency (though there can be semantic confusion here as well due to prior usage in the domains of musicology and philosophy). In abandoning comics, however, what little is gained in affixational possibilities, is lost when it comes to compounding. Comics lends itself with alacrity to the formation of a series of compounds: comic paper, comic strip, comic book, comic art, comics studies, comic-con, web comics, etc. The term graphic is also found in a series of compounds, but not devoid of semantic and structural infelicities, as already noted. The term sequential, however, appears to be the least combinable of all, becoming a kind of rhetorical tautology if united with the same components as graphic, components where sequence is already implicit: *sequential storytelling, *sequential novel, *sequential writer, etc. Sequential only works when juxtaposed to art or artist.

I understand and appreciate that David Lloyd has a strong personal stake in the proper dignification of the art form that underlies his life and livelihood. But no matter what nomenclature is chosen to designate the genre, the choice will not be baggage-free. There will be incongruities owing to the pragmatics of the term’s past use and past associations, and there will be inherent restraints based on the particular term’s combinatorial limitations. Ironically, given the referential trouble that accompanies comics in Anglophone regions, in some other countries, the borrowing comic is the very term being used to dignify the genre, since the native term carries with it child-oriented connotations (for this reason, in Spain, el tebeo alternates with el comíc). For the foreseeable future and until usage dictates otherwise, since no single term appears to be optimal, we will, no doubt, continue to juggle a number of different expressions, including but not limited to David Lloyd’s favorite, sequential art.

Michael D. Picone is Professor of French and Linguistics at the University of Alabama. During a nine-year residency in France, he earned his doctoral degree at the Sorbonne (Université de Paris IV). He is author of Anglicisms, Neologisms and Dynamic French (1996), a detailed study of borrowings and other types of lexical creativity in the French of France, is a co-author of the Dictionary of Louisiana French as Spoken in Cajun, Creole and American Indian Communities (2010), and is co-editor of Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (forthcoming). He is also author of “Teaching Franco-Belgian Bande Dessinée” (in Teaching the Graphic Novel, ed. S.E. Tabachnick, 2009). For a more detailed summary of his background and program of research, please visit http://www.bama.ua.edu/~mpicone/.

Over the past three years the Transitions symposium at Birkbeck College has established a presence in the annual events calendar of UK Comics Studies. For an excellent description of how this came to be, the rationale behind the event and of the collaborative DIY-ethos that continues to characterise Transitions I’d like to refer you to ‘The indisciplined middle space’ by Tony Venezia. What Tony wrote a year ago is as relevant now as it was then.

The organisation of this year’s event has been a team effort involving a small group of PhD students at both Birkbeck and the University of East Anglia. Our aim has been to provide a continuation of Transitions, and to maintain the attitude and character of what originated as Tony’s brainchild. We hope that the diverse and promising programme of papers will offer the opportunity to trace some of the current directions as indicated by new research, with the proviso that this selection should be seen as loosely indicative rather than necessarily representative. This year’s keynote, by Chris Murray and Julia Round, will provide insights into the current challenges and opportunities of teaching and researching comics in the academic context. In addition, a roundtable discussion will provide a chance to reflect on the shared scholarly context we inhabit, as constituted by networks of practices and initiatives.

The term ‘comics studies’ in itself seems to suggest that comics scholarship can be identified as a distinct, if diffuse, academic field. I doubt that I am alone in repeatedly finding myself referring to it as ‘an emerging field’. This expression however, calls for closer scrutiny. First, emergence indicates something being in the process, unfolding with no specific reference to a start point or completion. Such imprecise developments, alignments and connections are often easier to discern in hindsight. But the implied vagueness belies what is at stake here; ideas leading to actions, initiatives, practices and processes demanding committed and continued work. Second, in keeping with an image of emergence as disparate fragments and uncertain indications of forms, the connections between which gradually become visible, at what point do we recognise or identify the field as such? Seminal works on the subject have been published long before it was possible to speak of comics studies as a distinctive field. Instances when comics take on a prominent role as conference topic or the themed edition of a journal might easily remain an isolated and fleeting flavour of the month, flash in the pan or momentary fascination. But, a shift appears to take place once even a few recurring and regular events and manifestations, whether in the shape of a journal, archive or online forum, assert a presence. This becomes especially apparent in the intersections, connections and traffic between such points. It would in effect appear that a field is constituted by precisely the practices, actions and processes through which it emerges. This may seem convoluted, or perhaps self-evident, but some real-world examples can be used for clarification.

In the last few years a range of initiatives have seen the light of day; there are evident connections between them and they all contribute to the collective identity of UK comics scholarship. The first Comics Studies journal published in the UK, European Comic Art, appeared in 2008. In 2009 Mel Gibson set up the mailing list UK Comics Scholars JISCM@il List to facilitate contact between interested parties, and Ian Hague organised the first Comics Forum in association with the Thought Bubble comics convention in Leeds. Comics Forum has since become one of several regular fixtures. It also provided the initial inspiration for the Transitions symposium in London. 2010 saw the first issues of two journals, Studies in Comics (Intellect) and The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Routledge) and a conference at Manchester Metropolitan University. Comics Grid, the peer-reviewed online journal was conceived as a collaborative project between a group of scholars who met at some of these conferences, leading to a first publication in January 2011. These examples are by no means fully representative; the annual comics conference in Dundee, for example, dates back to 2007 and other significant connections will have been made leading up to the subsequent groundswell. Nor does it feel wholly appropriate to name-check Comica: London International Comics Festival, Women in Comics, Laydeez Do Comics and Graphic Medicine without further contextualisation. I will work on the assumption that if not familiar already, links providing the relevant information will be at your fingertips. To provide a more apt description of the numerous important nodes in UK comics studies it would probably be better to draw a spider diagram, as the multiple connections and interchanges seem particularly badly suited to the linear format of a written list. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to suggest that a field emerges, expands and is maintained in the form of initiatives, connections and collaborations through which debate and the exchange of ideas can take place.

The range of fields and disciplines which comics studies inhabits is undeniable; the study of comics extends across a broad range of academic fields; social sciences, media studies, modern languages and literature, history, geography, visual communication and arts. It would seem that the field is inherently interdisciplinary. This is a term with strong currency in academic and institutional contexts, but is often used with limited precision. Seductively evoking ‘collegiality, flexibility, collaboration, and scholarly breadth’ (Austin, 1996: 272), the term has sustained its political cachet and asserted an institutionalised imperative (Mitchell, 1995: 541) for decades. At the same time the difficulty in decisively establishing or defining interdisciplinarity underlines the contingent, rather than fixed, and institutionally specific contexts in which specialist areas and disciplines are demarcated (Reese, 1995: 544; Austin, 1996: 272). The idea that interdisciplinarity depends on the reiteration of disciplinary specificity and distinction might nevertheless be perceived as particularly troubling. On the other hand, conceived as ‘boundary dialectic’ (Schmidt, 2011: 253), and the productive capacity of borderlands (Anzaldúa, 1987) suggest that this does not preclude its own opportunities. In addition, reconsidering the categorising and separating lines, or disciplinary configurations with their inclusions and exclusions, has the potential to reveal new, previously impossible to conceive of, subjects (Rancière, 2009: 15-19; Schoenfeld and Traub, 1996: 281).

But to what extent do such ambitions actually correspond to the contexts and practices habitually referred to as interdisciplinary? Individual projects which use frameworks associated with more than one discipline, such as textual analysis drawing on linguistics, semiotics, narratology and genre theory in tandem with philosophy, cultural and critical theory, trauma theory, feminist-, postcolonial- and queer theory and so on, is a prevalent feature of comics scholarship. Media theories and those more readily associated with social sciences offer different sets of possibilities, and historical work might equally draw on multiple theoretical frameworks. As WJT Mitchell (1995: 542) has pointed out, some of these discursive and disciplinary formations have grown from social movements and others organised around theoretical objects, but most are applied in multiple academic contexts, across discipline boundaries. The extent to which this constitutes interdisciplinarity or would be more accurately described as ‘borrowing from another field or extending the domain of a discipline’ (Henkel, 1996: 278) remains open to debate. Methods used for research might equally be derived from a plurality of contexts and be more or less associated with particular disciplines. These kinds of interdisciplinary approaches, whether object-, theory, or method-oriented (Schmidt, 2011: 253-255) are by no means unique to comics studies. The speed at which the term ‘interdisciplinary’ unravels on the other hand, hints at the woolliness of everyday academic jargon.

All the same, the study of comics; as texts, as narrative and meaning making processes, fan communities and production, industrial contexts of production and circulation and more, takes place under the auspices of diverse schools and within multiple theoretical and methodological frameworks . As a consequence, projects with markedly different emphases, ambitions and concerns are regularly juxtaposed with one another at conferences and in journals, to at times surprising and stimulating effect. Yet it would be unfortunate if this remained the extent of the interdisciplinary aspect of comics studies. The theoretical implications are certainly worthwhile pursuing, and there is no reason why individual research cannot achieve such aims to great effect. Moreover, due to its ‘lack of institutional footing’ (Hatfield, 2010: 39) comics studies is well positioned to contribute an acute perspective to broader academic debates around disciplinarity and the normative and prescriptive, yet porous boundaries of such structures. Yet, if the opportunities to pursue the potential of such evident disciplinary diversity are not explored in terms of actual collaborations and research projects, continued references to interdisciplinarity might eventually come to seem overstated.

Comics studies is ideally placed to generate inventive interdisciplinary projects, using networks spanning a broad spectrum of schools and departments and instigating interchange and productivity across still very real boundaries of specialisms, whether in the curriculum planning of comics specific courses or the design of collaborative research projects. A necessary precondition for such undertakings incorporates multiple perspectives and stakeholders. The challenges involve negotiation and communication from the very outset; ‘an ongoing effort to achieve mutual understanding’ (Thompson Klein, 2004: 521), and possibly a ‘preference for both-and over either-or solutions (Robinson, 1996: 278). Not content with asserting the interdisciplinary-ness of the field as an existing state, we might consider it as a possibility and aspiration to be actively pursued, with all the audacity, tenacity and rigorous reflection that it requires. This is not to say that such projects are not already in progress. However, in view of Transitions’ aim to provide a space from which future collaborations might emerge, the potential of developing further intentionally interdisciplinary research projects based around or including comics, may well be worth more thought.

Transitions has been organised according to the time honoured motto of ‘beg, borrow and barter’. So wilfully ignoring that this will read like a gauche awards ceremony speech, I will take the opportunity to extend some due acknowledgements. Birkbeck College has yet again provided accommodation for Transitions, and together with Community University Engagement at University of East Anglia made it possible for us to provide some modest refreshments. Paul Gravett, as the leading light of Comica, has been instrumental in promoting the event, as has the support of Studies in Comics, Comics Forum and Comics Grid. Julia Round and Chris Murray have kindly agreed to travel from their respective ends of the island to deliver the keynote this year, and we owe Roger Sabin thanks for his continued support and interest. Last, but resoundingly not least, I want to thank Karrie Fransman, who generously contributed time, effort, patience and talent to create this year’s poster.

References

Anzaldúa, G. (1987), Borderlands/ La Frontera: the new mestiza. San Fransisco: Aunt Lute Books.

Austin, T. A., Robinson, L., Robinson, L., Henkel, J., Schoenfield, M. and Traub, V., de Marco Torgovnick, M. (1996), ‘Defining interdisciplinarity’, in PMLA, Vol. 111 (2): 271 – 282.

Hatfield, C. (2010), ‘Indiscipline, or, the condition of comics studies’, Transatlantica 1, http://transatlantica.revues.org/4933

Mitchell, W. J. T. (1995), ‘Interdisciplinarity and visual culture’, in Art Bulletin, 77 (4): 540-544.

Rancière, J. (2009), ‘The aesthetic dimension: aesthetics, politics, knowledge’, in Critical Inquiry, 36 (1): 1-19.

Reese, T. F. (1995), ‘Mapping interdisciplinarity’, in Art Bulletin, 77 (4): 544-549.

Schmidt, J. C. (2011), ‘What is a problem? On problem-oriented interdisciplinarity’, in Poiesis & Praxis, 7: 249-274.

Thompson Klein, J. (2011), ‘Prospects for transdisciplinarity’, in Futures, 36: 515-526.

Venezia, T. (2011), ‘The indisciplined middle space’, http://comicsforum.org/2011/10/27/the-indisciplined-middle-space-by-tony-venezia/

Nina Mickwitz is a PhD candidate at the School of Film, Television and Media at UEA. She has been working together with Hallvard Haug from the English and Humanities department at Birkbeck, and Ed Clough from the School of American Studies at UEA, backed by the consistent and vital support of Tony Venezia, to realise Transitions 3. Her efforts to complete a thesis on comics and documentary will continue with renewed focus after the 3rd of November.

[1] – For a comprehensive and rigorous contribution on the position of comics scholarship and debates on interdisciplinarity, see Charles Hatfield’s (2010) ‘Indiscipline, or, the condition of comics studies’.