‘Comics and Philosophy’ featured speakers Aaron Meskin and Roy Cook (editors of The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach). Meskin looked at the general relationships between the two fields, while Cook considered a case study, John Byrne’s She-Hulk comics, as a means for thinking about particular philosophical questions. The session ran for just under an hour.

You can download the MP3 below, or from the Comics and Philosophy archive page (where you can also download the event’s poster). All downloads are free.

Comics Forum Presents… Comics and Philosophy: From Maus to She-Hulk by Aaron Meskin and Roy Cook (introduction by Ian Hague)

Direct download as an MP3 here (59:03, 27.0MB (right click and ‘Save Target As…’)).

Online streaming and alternative download formats are available here.

In the mood for more Comics Forum audio? Check back next week when we’ll have another free MP3 download, this time taken from the second Comics Forum presents… event: ‘Death and the Superhero’ by José Alaniz.

United States 

Business

Diamond News announces their top 100 comics based on the total unit sales of products invoiced for April 2013. DC Comics’ Batman #19 leads the pack. Link (03/05/2013, English, MB & EG)

Diamond News announces their top 100 graphic novels based on the total unit sales of products invoiced for April 2013. Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead maintains a dominant position. Link (English, MB & EG)

Marvel Studios released the next part of their Avengers film saga, Iron Man 3, on the 3rd May. By the 28th May, it became the fifth-highest grossing film of all time, netting over $1 billion worldwide. Link (28/05/2013, English, EG)

Culture

The event “Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero” will take place on the 4th June at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art (New York). The event is a celebration of 75 years of Superman. Link (English, WG)

Peter David, writer of series including Hulk, X-Factor, and Star Trek, will be giving a talk at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art on the 5th June. Link (English, WG)

The ABC television network has officially picked up Joss Whedon’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television show, which will feature several characters from his Avengers movie, and see them combating super-threats on the small screen beginning this fall. This reflects Marvel’s recent venture in growing a superhero film universe; now branching into television also. The first trailer for the show was released earlier this month. Link (15/05/2013, English, EG)

Education

Danny Fingeroth has set up an online comics writing course. Link (English, WG)

Obituaries

Twelve-year-old Zachi Telesha, who created and published his comic book “Hero Up!” about crime fighting superheroes, died of bone cancer on the 29th April. Link (08/05/2013, English, MB)

Research

Sequart Research & Literacy Organization has recently published an anthology on Daredevil (The Devil is in the Details: Examining Matt Murdock and Daredevil), and another on Grant Morrison and Chris Weston’s The Filth (Curing the Postmodern Blues: Reading Grant Morrison and Chris Weston’s The Filth in the 21st Century). Link (English, WG)

ImageTexT issued a call for papers for a special issue entitled “Comics and Post-Secondary Pedagogy.” Submissions are due by the 20th July. Link (29/03/2013, English, WG)

The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association (NEPCA) has posted their call for proposals for their autumn conference being held between the 25th and 26th October at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. There is a dedicated area chair for “Comics and Graphic Novels.” The deadline for proposals is the 10th June. Link (English, MB)

The Third Triennial Academic Conference at the Festival of Cartoon Art has released its call for papers which focus on comics studies. The conference will take place between the 14th and 15th November at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at The Ohio State University. The deadline for submissions is the 1st July. Link (English, MB)

The Institute for Comics Studies has released a call for papers for  three major U.S. comic conventions: the New York Comic-Con (comic-con website), C2E2 in Chicago, and Project Comic-Con (comic-con website) in St. Louis, Missouri. The deadline for proposals for the New York event is the 15th July, and the dealine for proposal for the Missouri event is the 1st August. Link (24/05/2013, English, MB & EG)

Ohio State University’s Jared Gardner has issued a call for papers for a forthcoming anthology entitled “The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life.” The collection forms part of the Critical Approaches to Comics Artist, published by University Press of Mississippi. The deadline for abstracts is the 31st October. Link (30/05/2013, English, MB & EG)

Asia

Japan

Culture

On the 8th June, the acclaimed special effects director of Nippon chinbotsu (Japan Sinks), Mr. Teruyoshi Nakano, and Mr. Naofumi Higuchi; film critic, and director in his own right, will give a running commentary on Nippon chinbotsu during a screening of the film, at the Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library. Link (Japanese, JBS)

Law & Politics

The LDP, Japan’s ruling party, is seeking to amend Japan’s child pornography laws. Critics are concerned that the bill would not differentiate between images of actual and fictional children. Link (28/05/2013, English, JBS)

Research

During the 6th and 7th July, the Japan Society for Studies in Cartoon and Comics will hold its 13th yearly convention, at the Kita Kyushu Manga Museum. Link (Japanese, JBS)

Philippines

Culture

Mini-Komikon Night was held at the inaugural Little Lit Festival, organised by the National Book Development Board, on the 31st May 2013. Link (English, LCT)

Singapore

Culture

Three stores in Singapore took part in Free Comic Book Day on the 4th May. Two comic shops and the Kinokuniya book shop at Ngee Ann City gave away comic books and had cosplayers to liven up the day. Kinokuniya also had the launch of The Girl Under The Bed (Epigram Books), by Dave Chua and Xiao Yen, that afternoon. Link (English, LCT)

Europe 

Belgium

Obituary

Fred Funcken, a seminal figure in Franco-Belgian bande dessinée, has died at the age of 92. He collaborated for many years with his wife Liliane on titles such as Le Chevalier Blanc and Jack Diamond; he also worked for Spirou and Tintin. Link 1 (17/05/2013, French, LTa), Link 2 (30/05/2013, English, LTa).

Croatia

Culture

The exhibition “Komikaze vs Comicaze” is being held at the Munich Comic Fest. It presents comics made by the Croatian collective Komikaze and the German collective Comicaze. It lasts from the 28th May to the 9th July. Link (27/05/2013, Croatian, LO)

The comic book and cartoon artist Nedeljko Dragić has received the lifetime achievement award “Andrija Maurović” for his contribution to comic art. Link (21/05/2013, Croatian, LO)

Denmark

Culture

The exhibition “Konfrontation” is taking place between the 25th May and the 23rd June, at the Den Frie Udstilling. Link (Danish, RPC)

The exhibition “Ozamu Tezuka magaens mester” is taking place at the Storm P. Museet between the 9th May and the 22nd September. Link (Danish, RPC)

Research

There was an event about comics and didactics at the University of Copenhagen on the 31st May. Link (29/05/2013, Danish, RPC)

France

Culture

Lewis Trondheim, author of Lapinot, Donjon, and winner of the 2006 Angoulême Grand Prix, has written a radio comedy for Arte. Luc, starring Eric Elmosnino (Gainsbourg), will be broadcast in October 2013. Link (06/05/2013, French, LTa)

Obituary

BD author Kline, aka Roger Chevallier, the illustrator of Loup Noir, which appeared in Pif Gadget between 1969 and 1980, died on the 16th of May. He was 91. Link (23/05/2013, French, LTa)

Finland

Culture

The exhibition “Art farming” by Estonian artist Kristel Maamäki, is taking place at the Comics Centre in Helsinki. The exhibition will be on until the 31st July. Link (Finnish, RPC)

Research

NNCORE (Nordic Network for Comics Research) has published the program for their Helsinki conference that took place between the 23rd and the 25th May. Link (English, RPC)

Germany

Culture

An exhibition at Weserburg Bremen explores the influence of comics on high art. Link (14/05/2013, German, MdlI)

The 6th Dresdner Comicfest took place on the 25th May, and guests included Schlogger and Tim Gaedke. Link (25/05/2013, German, MdlI)

Research

A workshop titled “Vom Schund zum Bildungsmedium” on comics in political education was held in Berlin between the 25th and 26th May. Link (21/05/2013, German, MdlI)

Greece

Culture

Some political cartoonists exhibited their work during the annual Book Exhibition in Athens. Link (Greek, LTs)

There was a party and comics exhibition in Thessaloniki, organised by Inkorrect team, on the 16th May. Link (Greek, LTs)

There is a comics exhibition from the Greek artist Apostolis Ioannou. Link (07/05/2013, Greek, LTs)

A comics competition has been organised by the Sunday School of Immigrants. Link (19/04/2013, Greek,  LTs)

Ireland

Culture

The 2D Northern Ireland Comics Festival took place at the Verbal Arts Centre between the 1st and 2nd June. Link (English,SC)

Macedonia

Culture

The Comic Centre of Macedonia – Veles – has announced a competition for the 11th Comic Showroom VELES 2013. The competition is open to all comics artists, who must submit a 1-6 page comic to be considered for an award at the event. The deadline for entrees is the 25th September. Unfortunately no details are currently available on their website for the current competition, however last years call for entrees (quite similar to this years) is still available. Link (English, WG)

Norway

Culture

A free comics festival took place in Østfold between the 25th and 26th May. Link (Norwegian, RPC)

Serbia

Culture

The international comics fest in Belgrade will take place from the 26th to 29th September. The awards “Grand Prix” and “Young Lion” will be given to the best artists. The application deadline for potential participants is the 15th August. Organisers will soon announce further information about the application procedure on their Facebook page. Link (English, LO)

Spain

 Education

A summer course on comics will take place in Madrid, between the 22nd and 26th July. Registration is now open for the “Images and Migrations of Comics” course. It will be a week long course that provides a formal approach to comics by renowned Spanish experts and academics. Discussion groups will provide students with a better understanding of the unique characteristics of the medium, as well as offer an insight into their favourite works. PDF: Link (Spanish, EC)

UK   

Business

While the downthetubes website is currently running a minimal service due to funding, a link to British comic sales figures can be found in one of their blog posts. Link (17/05/2013, English, WG)

Culture     

The 9th Art Award is a newly developed award to be given to this year’s best English language graphic novel. The winner will be announced at a ceremony during the Edinburgh International Book Festival. More information, and details on submission for the award can be found on their website. Link (English, WG)

Entry into the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize is now open. Link (12/05/2013, English, WG)

Research

David Small is giving a keynote address at the conference A Narrative Future for Healthcare on the 19th June at Kings College, London. Link (14/05/2013, English, WG)

A series of Laydeez do Comics events have been announced in the cities, London (17th June), Leeds (22nd July), Glasgow (25th June; coinciding with the IBDS conference), and Brighton (5th July; coinciding with the Fourth International Conference on Comics and Medicine). More details on these events can be found on their website. Link (English, WG)

There is a call for papers for a forthcoming collection entitled “Global Manga: The Cultural Production of Japanese Comics outside Japan.” Chapter proposals are due on the 31st August. PDF: Link (English, WG)

*                    *                    *

News Editor: Will Grady (comicsforumnews@hotmail.co.uk)

Correspondents: Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto (JBS, Japan), Michele Brittany (MB, North America), Esther Claudio (EC, Spain), Rikke Platz Cortsen (RPC, Scandinavia), Shelley Culbertson (SC, Ireland), Eric Ganeau (EG, North America), William Grady (WG, UK), Martin de la Iglesia (MdlI, Germany), Luka Ostojic (LO, Croatia), Lise Tannahill (LTa, France), Lim Cheng Tju (LCT, Singapore), Lida Tsene (LTs, Greece).

Click here for News Review correspondent biographies.

Suggestions for articles to be included in the News Review can be sent to Will Grady at the email address above.

future generations can

live without the in-

tervals of anxious

fear we know between our

bouts and strolls of

ecstasy.”’

James Schuyler

(qtd. in José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia)

The first two books of comics published by Norwegian dancer, choreographer, and comic book artist Brynjar Åbel Bandlien are also the first two and only comics published in Romania that address queer topics.[1] The author embarked on the doubly daunting task of using a medium that was new for him (i.e. comics) and representing a way of living (that he calls strîmb)[2] whose visual presence in Romania is quite scarce. Bandlien’s two fictional autobiographies, Strîmb Life (2009) and Strîmb Living – 5 Years with Oskar (2011), are related attempts to provide a view of what it means to be living a strîmb life, although more often than not they are simply about living a happy life. These two books are welcome interventions in a space of almost complete silence and everyday invisibility, but they are (thankfully) neither didactic to-do lists meant to guide us through the hours and days of a queer life, nor are they exhaustive exercises in defining queerness.

Queering the Everyday in Bucharest and Elsewhere: Strîmb Life (2009)

Bandlien’s first comic book, Strîmb Life, works really well to convey a sense of the mundanely extraordinary that is his everyday life in Bucharest and elsewhere with his partner, Manuel Pelmuş. In Romanian, strîmb translates as ”bent,” but it is definitely not a familiar term for ”queer,” perhaps because there is no generally used familiar term for ”queer” in Romanian that is not offensive. The first queer (or strîmb) comic book published in Romania is thus square-ish, slim, black-and-white, and has a peephole carved in the front cover (Fig. 1). The book looks strangely unassuming for such an achievement.

Fig. 1. Two-part cover of Strîmb Life, showing Brynjar and Manuel through a peephole.

Through that important peephole in the cover of Strîmb Life, the reader is invited to become a voyeur in possession of a rare gift of visibility: the everyday life of a gay couple, a fairly absent image in contemporary Romania. Divided thematically into a few chapters, the book contains one-page stories with the same panel structure (8 panels plus a round one in the middle, reproducing the peephole on the cover). Two panels inevitably show the two male protagonists asleep, in the morning and at night, perhaps to indicate the same soothing routine in which this couple contentedly basks day after day.

The couple displays a quiet satisfaction with the little repetitions of life, also expressed by their unchanging body postures. Brynjar is always shown casually lying back, hands behind his head, and Manuel is always cross-legged, his Mac on his lap. Irrespective of the activity they are engaged in (Fig. 2)[3], their life is permanently tethered to the central panel, going round it at a steady pace, grounded by the harmony of the ‘home strîmb home’ that the two men have managed to build. In this way, it appears that the apparent “peephole” suggested by the book cover is slowly turning out to be less a gateway to the arcana of homosexuality and more a formal device meant to suggest the separation of the happy couple from the outside world, whose intrusions are not always welcome.

Fig. 2. The first page of Strîmb Life, introducing the two main characters, Brynjar and Manuel.

The “outside” of Bucharest is, however, for most of the time, an extension of the couple’s indoor life, especially when they go to places (such as the Contemporary National Dance Center, The French Institute, The Goethe Institute, underground club Ota, the Contemporary National Art Museum) populated by friends and likeminded people.

The everyday activities of this strîmb couple inside the home are those of any couple: chatting about the events of the day, looking out the window to observe the latest in Bucharest fashion, taking out the trash, having sex (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. ‘Spoons,’ ‘missionary style,’ ‘doggy style,’ ’69,’ ‘ABBA (back to back),’ ‘hybernation.’

The peephole closes when it comes to their carefully listed sexual positions; darkness and a sheet cover the couple’s activities, the labels handwritten in the bookcase above the bed and the wavy line of the bedclothes the only clues for the reader’s imagination. There is even a footnote explaining the fifth position, boasting a private name, ABBA (‘back to back’), although the wavy line does not change significantly and the reader is left scratching her head and, much like in the famous drawing from Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, wondering whether that particular panel contains the drawing of a hat or an elephant inside a boa constrictor.

The narrative of this enviable cohabitation is rarely punctured by conflict, and whenever that happens, the source is never dissension within the couple’s ranks: it is the outside world, manifesting itself, say, as the stray dogs of Bucharest or the made-up drama of “GeorgeMichaelJackson,” a street kid the couple “adopts” after pregnancy predictably fails to follow sex. However, little shakes the harmony of this couple, whose routine is joyfully accepted and peacefully enacted irrespective of geographical location (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4. Snapshots of Brynjar and Manuel’s travels through Berlin, Lisbon, Istanbul, Tangier, New York, and Chişinău.

Strîmb Life is keen on showing that love is indeed the belief in repetition, the belief that the beloved will come again, as queer theorist Peggy Phelan was saying in Mourning Sex, where she also combined autobiography, biography, and fiction. It is a combination of genres that works well in Strîmb Life, in support of the concluding statement issued from the peephole/bubble the Brynjar character says to his partner on the last page, ‘I never get bored with you’ (Fig. 5).[4]

Fig. 5. The last page of Strîmb Life.

One Step Closer to Utopia: Strîmb Living: Five Years with Oskar (2011)

The contented routine of the two characters from Strîmb Life is seamlessly continued in Strîmb Living: Five Years with Oskar, even if the geography of the book has changed: the habitation of the strîmb couple, Brynjar and Manuel, is now thirty minutes from Oslo, in a snug house tucked away in a forest and circled by flying men that appear to have taken the place of the protective peephole from the first book (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. The house where Oskar, Brynjar and Manuel live, circled by the flying men.

The benign Oskar, a pensioner in his seventies one guesses to be a relative of Brynjar’s, although the connection is not explained, is now added to the couple’s formula for happiness. Oskar is a mediating figure, represented as a kind chubby bespectacled man mostly seated between Brynjar and Manuel, whom he has welcomed to his home (Fig. 7). There, they each take turns buying groceries and performing various chores, but more often than not they are so static that they are even vacuumed by the cleaning lady. They rarely leave the house and prefer falling asleep in front of the TV, where they watch various shows as well as what they pronounce to be the same old news, over and over again.

Fig. 7. Oskar seated between Brynjar and Manuel, in a telling panel where Oskar cannot remember a word that the other two characters are already piecing together, in the same harmony as in the previous book.

Indeed, Strîmb Living is one step closer to utopia than Strîmb Life, perhaps because the intrusions of the everyday appear less here, and the harmonious and often dreamlike universe of love and leisure populated by our three main characters tends to contaminate the rest of the world rather than allowing the world to come in and spoil its bliss. These intrusions of dreams upon reality are accepted with calm by the characters, such as when Brynjar and Manuel hitch a ride on a moose’s back on one of the rare occasions when they have to leave the house to attend a party (Fig. 8), or the occasion when Oskar meets and helps the king of Norway whilst skiing in the forest. Even David Attenborough’s nature show features a moose coming out of the crack of a buttock-shaped mountain to possibly sexually assault him; thus, even the documentary TV show is infused with playful fiction.

Fig. 8. Brynjar and Manuel hitch a ride on a moose’s back on their way to a party.

Homophobia is rarely present either in Strîmb Life (where it does not make a full-fledged appearance) or in Strîmb Living, and when it does appear, it is regarded with stupefaction, as in the episode where some kids in an Oslo parade shout homophobic slurs, to Oskar’s dismay (Fig. 9). The latter is an upsetting moment Bandlien downplays by quickly using the opportunity of quoting, in Oskar’s screaming face, the figure of the artist most present in Oslo, Edvard Munch.

Fig. 9. Oskar’s reaction after they are insulted by kids shouting homophobic slurs at them during an Oslo parade.

There is also some related violence, but it is part of the fictional realm, and it appears in the form of a TV show – called Strîmb Kids – featuring two queer children, a male ballet dancer who looks strikingly like Brynjar and a female judo player;[5] they are the strîmb kids who team up to distribute deserved punishment upon homophobes.

The rather ‘extravagant’ lifestyle – as the Brynjar character puts it – of the three men in this second book is, however, periodically threatened by its inevitable end, signaled by Oskar’s increasingly frequent falls which indicate a failing health he is generously trying to keep from his two houseguests, so as not to alarm them. Although the outside world is kept at bay and the little forest utopia prospers undisturbed for a while, the levitating men become rather ominous, associated as they are with Oskar’s episodes, where he loses consciousness and presumably drifts into a dreamlike state. Drawn as they are on extensions to the book, fold-out pages that make it appear to have the ability of flying away at any given moment, the flying men are reality checks – signs of the temporary nature of achieved utopia – paradoxically relegated to the realm of dreams and hallucinations. Oskar is evasive whenever he is asked about his episodes, but their increased frequency indicates that he is slowly leaving the peaceful utopia he has created together with the other two young men. At the end of the book, he simply does not return after one of his episodes, and his half-sketched face signals his evanescence. This is an appropriate representational solution for the disappearance of a character whose connection to life seems fragile at all times, perhaps also because of his rare kindness and incredible benevolence.

Interrogating Queer Life/Living as Utopia

Strîmb Life and Strîmb Living may not be quite successful in establishing strîmb as a new term in the generally poor vocabulary Romanian has for queer things, but Brynjar and Manuel do on occasion attempt to create a vague definitional cluster around the term. For instance, in Strîmb Living the couple playfully solve a crossword puzzle and successfully guess words such as “bum,” “semen,” “butch,” “testicles,” “dildo,” and in the end they realize that the fact that they have a 100% score means that they must be strîmb. This is completed somewhat by the lines of the cheerful song they sing when a friend (in possession of “strîmb beauty,” we are told) gives them a sledge ride home (Fig. 10). The song suggests that the world has never been as straight as all that (“no line runs in one direction/nothing goes in one straight line”) and perhaps that “true love” is responsible for the partner we choose.

Fig. 10. The strîmb song, whose score is also given at the end of the book.

However, the song thankfully maintains a good distance from its own potential axiomatic heaviness, not only because, like most of the book, it whimsically moves from one topic to another, but also because the three goofy characters are all catapulted off the sledge, presumably because of an error committed by the little dog driver with a medical collar around its head.

Bandlien’s strîmb work thus confirms the notorious ‘resistance to definition’ (Jagose 1) of queerness, but also engages in deliberate but playful conversation with the methods of an important comics genre, that of “reality-based comics,” also known by many other names, such as “autobiographical comics,” “graphic memoir,” “autographics” (cf. Whitlock). In the end, Bandlien willingly situates his work on the side of “autobifictionalography” (cf. Barry), where he can productively use fantasy to flesh out the missing pieces of an extravagant world of love and happiness.

At the same time, Bandlien’s decision to place his characters outside of (hetero)normative time manages to draw the important outline of a utopian space where queer/strîmb is a temporarily achieved utopia but also a future hope (Fig. 11) through the joyful routine of a couple that escapes the demons of compulsory chronology,[6] ‘the temporal frames of bourgeois reproduction and family, longevity, risk/safety, and inheritance’ (Halberstam 6).

Fig. 11. The promise of a queer utopia.

In this sense, it is important that so little emphasis is placed on the work of the two main characters, who are well-known and very active artists, because in this manner Bandlien manages to lift his narrative even further out of “grown-up” temporality, responsibility, and fear. There is—importantly—no fear in Bandlien’s work, and it is in this fearless place where repetition is embraced as a confirmation of the beloved’s presence that we can find the blueprints for the Not-Yet-Here [7] of strîmbness.

Author’s Note

I would like to thank Brynjar Åbel Bandlien for allowing me to use images from his books in this paper, and also for his promptness and kindness during the writing process. A few paragraphs from my comments on Strîmb Life, as well as the interview with Brynjar Åbel Bandlien were initially done for a comics app (COMICS RO), financed by an AFCN grant and commissioned by Asociaţia Jumătatea Plină. The writing of this paper was also made possible by UEFISCDI grant PN-II-RU-TE-2011-3-0149, Cross-Cultural Encounters in American Trauma Narratives: A Comparative Approach to Personal and Collective Memories; project coordinator: Assoc. Prof. Roxana Elena Oltean.

Works Cited

Bandlien, Brynjar Åbel. Strîmb Life. Bucharest: Hardcomics Publishers, 2009. Print.

—. Strîmb Living: Five Years with Oskar. Bucharest: Hardcomics Publishers, 2011. Print.

Barry, Lynda. One! Hundred! Demons! Seattle: Sasquatch, 2002. Print.

Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York UP, 2005. Print.

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print.

Phelan, Peggy. Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.

Whitlock, Gillian. ‘Autographics: the Seeing “I” of the Comics.’ Modern Fiction Studies 52.4 (Winter 2006): 965-79. Print.

Mihaela Precup is an Assistant Professor in the American Studies Program at the University of Bucharest, Romania, where she teaches American visual culture, popular culture, film studies, as well as American literature. Her main research interests include autobiographical comics, trauma studies, and family photography. She is the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship with the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Yale University (2006-2007). She edited a volume of essays entitled American Visual Memoirs after the 1970s. Studies on Gender, Sexuality, and Visibility in the Post-Civil Rights Age (Bucharest: Bucharest University Press, 2010). She is currently involved in two research projects funded by the National University Research Council of Romania (NURC), Cross-Cultural Encounters in American Trauma Narratives: A Comparative Approach to Personal and Collective Memories and Women’s Narratives of Transnational Relocation.

[1] – This paper is informed by José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, where he identifies the queer aesthetic as the place that ‘frequently contains blueprints and schemata of a forward-dawning futurity’ (1).

[2] – In Romanian, strîmb translates as bent/not straight. I shall come back to this term later in my paper.

[3] – In an interview, I asked Bandlien what his motivation was for portraying himself here as a loafer, blissfully smiling, hands behind his head, and, I thought, never working. However, Bandlien drew my attention to the fact that, despite appearances, he does portray himself and Manuel working in this part of the book: ‘I do portray myself and Manuel at work on the first page in the second panel/fourth and sixth frame of Strîmb Life [Fig. 2]; Manuel playing music from a gettoblaster and me dancing naked at Centrul National al Dansului-Bucuresti. But its true that my dancing career isn’t very present in Strîmb Life. The fixed positions in which Manuel and myself are posing throughout the book, which by the way are the same as in Strîmb Living, have to be seen in relation with the structure of the panels. At the center of each page is a circular frame of Manuel and me sitting in our living-room. The cover shows even more clearly how we in fact are sitting inside a bubble hovering above Bucharest. I guess that is how I saw us at the time… living from day to day, dancing at parties and hanging around Bucharest with our friends in a more or less decadent lifestyle. I wished for us to remain unchanged by all the situations and events that were taking place around us (…).’

[4] – However, there is definitely a disconnectedness in Strîmb Life from the everyday realities of Romania outside the standard issues of aggressive stray dogs and orphans. Nowhere else is that more visible than in the ”adoption” episode that reads as unnecessarily flimsy and seems to avoid the real social issue behind the caricature (although the couple does do social work in an underprivileged community, which makes that part of the book even foggier ideologically). Perhaps this indicates a certain difficulty of separating the life of a couple so completely from the life of the city, and this hesitation speaks quite aptly about the negotiation with the outside world many couples must perform.

[5] – In my interview with Bandlien, he did say that his next comic book will be entitled Strîmb Kids, and that it is a project developed together with his friend, Stine Lastein, and related to ‘Strîmb Kids, that somewhat violent two episode TV-show in Strîmb Living.’

[6] – It is true, Oskar does die, but it is perhaps more accurate to say that he vanishes. Also, throughout the book, the Oskar character is also portrayed as an individual who lives outside of time.

[7] – I am here referencing José Esteban Muňoz’s Cruising Utopia, where he relies on Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of Hope to suggest that ‘queerness in its utopian connotations promises a human that is not yet here, thus disrupting any ossified understanding of the human’ (25-6).

Fig. 1. Berlin: City of Stones. Book One. © Jason Lutes. Used by permission.

Erich’s interest reflects a natural desire for storytelling and in this example the power of woodcut novels, which are wordless imaginative and realistic stories by Masereel, Otto Nückel, Lynd Ward and others. They are told in black and white pictures that focus on humanistic ideas. The woodcut novel refers not only to woodcuts but also to wood engravings, linocuts, leadcuts, and solid plastic. A woodcut uses the plank cut with the grain, while a wood engraving uses hardwood cut across the grain that allows a finer line. Despite their short-lived popularity, the woodcut novel had an important impact on the development of the contemporary graphic novel.

The popularity of Masereel’s woodcut novel in this scene by Lutes, set in Germany during the 1920s, is due to the commitment of the publisher Kurt Wolff, who was introduced to Masereel’s woodcut novels by Hans (Giovanni) Mardersteig, Wolff’s book designer. Wolff noted his association with Masereel later in an essay:

It was Mardersteig who established the connection with Frans Masereel. When we first published his Stundenbuch (Book of Hours) in 167 woodcuts, the Belgian’s name was completely unknown in Germany. Within a few years Masereel’s series of woodcuts—Stundenbuch, Sonne (Sun), Passion eines Menschen (A Human Passion), Die Idee (The Idea), Geschichte ohne Worte (Story without Words)—produced in inexpensive editions with introductions by Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and others, won a surprisingly large circle of admirers and attained a number of printings we had never expected, given the uncompromising quality and character of these books. (15) [1]

What made these books so popular? At the core of the woodcut novel and the wordless novel is the use of pictures to tell a story. In his critical book Words About Pictures, Perry Nodelman captures the essential ingredients of wordless novels.[2]

Because these books have no words to focus our attention on their meaningful or important narrative details, they require from us both close attention and a wide knowledge of the visual conventions that must be attended to before visual images can imply stories….finding a story in a sequence of pictures with no help but our eyes is something like doing a puzzle. It cannot be done if we do not know that it is meant to be done, so we must first understand that there is indeed a problem to be solved. (186-187)

In addition, a score of artists have found the woodcut novel a perfect medium to express their ideas from a personal, imaginative, and social standpoint. The process of carving a block is a ponderous activity with few practitioners today. Creators of the woodcut novels include George Walker and various artists who teeter between the graphic novel and artists’ books.[3]

Today, readers of comics approach the woodcut novel, and the wordless graphic novel in general, with a sophisticated graphic vocabulary, enhanced over the past two decades by the advances in technology and the greater use of an iconic language in various functions including smartphones, gaming, and, of course, the internet. Immediate access to information also provided answers to inquiries about the development of the graphic novel and artists of historical importance. The recognition of the woodcut novel as part of the medium of comics and its place in the history of comics was confirmed with the selection of Lynd Ward as the Judges’ Choice in the 2011 Will Eisner Hall of Fame.

This was not always the case. With little understanding or scholarly interest in this genre of storytelling these works remained in libraries, private collections, and used bookstores and were largely discovered serendipitously, as in my case. There were single editions of Masereel’s most important woodcut novel, Passionate Journey that Dover Publications (1971), Penguin (1988), and City Lights (1988) kept in print. Ward’s Gods’ Man was reprinted by World Publishing (1966), St. Martin’s Press (1978), and Abrams who collected all six woodcut novels, selected books illustrations and prints in Storyteller Without Words: The Wood Engravings of Lynd Ward (1974). The woodcut novels of Masereel and Ward were mentioned in books on illustration and printmaking but rarely from a narrative perspective. One scholarly article ‘The Novel in Woodcuts: A Handbook,’ published in 1977 by Martin Cohen drew little attention at the time but is now an essential work in the understanding of the woodcut novel.[4] When the comic book expanded from a serial to include a book length format referred to as a graphic novel, a term attributed to Will Eisner [5], the perception of the comic began to change.

It has been my advantage to witness the evolution of the comic that has also increased the awareness of wordless novels, my lifetime undertaking. The additional branding of the graphic novel and the sophisticated level of storytelling changed the public’s idea of comics, which created browsing areas in bookstores, and slowly opened the impenetrable golden gates of the Modern Language Association, so that graphic novels are now discussed at numerous conferences beyond the Comics Arts Conference, established in 1992, and the Popular Culture Association, which was the first national academic conference with a separate division devoted to comics scholarship.[6] Critical journals like INKS: Cartoon and Comic Art Studies (1994-1997) and International Journal of Comic Art (1999-) were established for a growing group of comic scholars and publishers like University Press of Mississippi—an early publisher of scholarly books on comics—are now among many journals and publishers devoted to comic studies. In addition, graphic novels are now taught at colleges and universities and are the subject of a growing number of dissertations.

Rosemary Ross Johnston joins others and me in recognizing the graphic novel as literature: ‘This reflects a significant and deeper shift in ideas about language in general, and about “reading” in particular. Images in narrative are no longer “viewed”; they are “read,” with all the implications that that term carries in the meaning-making process (422).’

Despite being considered oddities, woodcut novels were also being rediscovered and reported as a major influence in the lives of noted comic artists like Peter Kuper, wordless picture book artists like David Wisner,[7] and creators of artists’ books including Jules Remedios Faye. In addition, Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Will Eisner’s Graphic Storytelling were key reference books that identified the woodcut novel’s contribution in the development of comics.[8]

In conjunction with this growing public interest, Dover Publications came out with new editions of woodcut novels: five works by Masereel; Nückel’s masterpiece Destiny, which had not been republished since 1930; all six of Ward’s woodcut novels; and James Reid’s Life of Christ in Woodcuts. The Library of America chose Lynd Ward’s six woodcut novels as their first publication with illustrations in 2012, and an outstanding documentary film O Brother Man: The Art and Life of Lynd Ward by Michael Maglaras and Terri Templeton produced in 2012, that further affirmed public acknowledgment of the woodcut novel.

Earlier, when I was writing introductions to new editions of these forgotten woodcut novels for Dover Publications, I slowly discovered a rising fountain of wordless novels that surged with freshness and showered me with entirely new and exciting work across the continents. What was an anomaly like Pilipino Food (1972) by Ed Badajos or Squeak the Mouse (1984) by Mattioli lead to a series of works like Gon by Masashi Tanaka and the Frank series by Jim Woodring in the 1990s, in addition to single works by a variety of artists like Mea Culpa by Peter Kalberkamp and The Silent City by Erez Yakin.[9]

Forecasting this rise in wordless novels was L’Association, a noted French publisher of bande dessinée, when it published Comix 2000 in celebration of the millennium. This was a mammoth book of 2000 pages of wordless comics by 324 artists from 29 different countries and it became a reference to many artists who would go on to create wordless novels.

What was once only practiced by a few artists slowly began attracting others like Eric Drooker, Thomas Ott, and Chris Lanier, whose scratchboard drawings imitate the appearance of a woodcut. These and other artists committed to the wordless novel have strengthened the foundation for a growing assortment that extends today in the work of Andrzej Klimowski, Vincent Fortemps, Michael Matthys, Winshluss, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Danijel Žeželj and numerous others.

Not only are many of these wordless novels incredibly rich in narrative scope but the media varies as much as the themes. These novels fall within the scope of comics, but there are also choice children’s picture books that have the same sense of excitement and urgency associated with graphic novels that cross back and forth between the two audiences. A good example of this crossover is Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, which won many awards including both the Angouleme International Comics Festival Prize for Best Album and the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books award.

Marshall Gregory in his recent book, Shaped by Stories: The Ethical Power of Narratives, writes: ‘We find stories useful because they swallow the whole world, and in fact the domain of stories may be the only form of human learning other than religion that makes the attempt to encompass the entirety of human life and experience.’ (31) This was true with the woodcut novel and continues today with the wordless graphic novel; they attest to the power of stories to display the mystery of our lives.

Works Cited

Gregory, Marshall W. Shaped by Stories: The Ethical Power of Narratives. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2009.

Johnston, Rosemary R. ‘Graphic Trinities: Languages, Literature, and Words-in-Pictures in Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.’ Visual Communication 11.4 (2012): 421-41.

Lutes, Jason. Berlin: City of Stones. Book One. Montreal, Quebec: Drawn & Quarterly, 2001.

Nodelman, Perry. Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books. Athens: University of Georgia, 1988.

Wolff, Kurt, and Michael Ermarth (ed). Kurt Wolff: A Portrait in Essays & Letters. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991.

David A. Beronä is a historian of the woodcut novel and wordless comics. He is the author of Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels (2008)—with editions in French and Korean, a winner at the New York Book Show, and a Harvey Awards nominee. He has published and presented papers widely on these topics with essays in Critical Approaches to Comics: Theory and Methods (Routledge, 2011) and The Language of Comics: Word and Image (University Press of Mississippi, 2001). He recently selected and edited Alastair Drawings and Illustrations (Dover Publications, 2011) and Eric Gill’s Masterpieces of Wood Engraving (Dover Publications, 2013). He is a member of the visiting faculty at the Center for Cartoon Studies and the Dean of the Library and Academic Support Services at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire.

[1] – It is important to note in the history of publishing that Wolff left Germany in 1930 and immigrated to New York. In 1942 he founded Pantheon Books and published the wordless novel Danse Macabre by Masereel in the same year. Pantheon Books has continued this commitment to graphic artists and championed graphic novels by Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, and others in recent years.

[2] – Although Nodelman’s focus is on children’s picture books, I have found that his evaluation of reading a wordless book also aptly applies to wordless comics.

[3] – There is a growing list of contemporary artists who have published a woodcut novel including Marta Chudolinska, Stefan Berg, Megan Speer, and Neil Bousfield. Chudolinska’s woodcut novel Back + Forth was a finalist in the Best Book category of the 2010 Doug Wright Awards.

[4] – Cohen makes a close association between the woodcut novel and comics when he acknowledges in reference to Passionate Journey that the “cartoonlike flavor of the ending is a characteristic Masereel would repeat again and again in his woodcut novels.”

[5] – There is disagreement when the term “graphic novel,” first originated. Kyle and Wheary published a book length comic Beyond Time and Again: a graphic novel by George Metzger in 1976, which was two years prior to Eisner’s publication of A Contract With God. For further discussion, see:
http://www.oocities.org/rucervine/002261.html

[6] – Tom Inge was instrumental in comic scholarship as he indicates in this email:

“I set up the first panel on comics held at the third meeting of the new Popular Culture Association in Indianapolis, Indiana, in April 1973. I brought together a group of friends to talk about comics as literature, art, and drama (Maurice Duke, Morris Yarowsky, and John Lyle), and somewhere in the files of the association at Bowling Green is a set of their papers. In the first few years of the association conferences, we distributed copies of the papers rather than read them.

The first panel on comics to be held at a meeting of the Modern Language Association was in New York in December of 1978. Under the auspices of the American Humor Studies Association, which I had just helped start, I held a panel on the topic ‘What’s So Funny About the Comics?’ My speakers were Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman. Will had just published A CONTRACT WITH GOD (he had allowed me to read the pencil rough the year before while I was visiting with him in White Plains) and Art was drawing the early chapters of MAUS for RAW magazine. Francoise Mouly came along for the discussion. Unfortunately I did not tape record what they said or keep notes. It has taken the MLA over thirty some years to establish a permanent discussion group devoted to the graphic novel.

(Inge, M. Thomas. “PCA Question.” Email to Nicole Freim and Amy K. Nyberg. 28 June, 2011.)

[7] – David Wiesner Caldecott Medal Acceptance Speech 1991 for Tuesday,”Why Frogs? Why Tuesday?” pays tribute to his discovery of Lynd Ward’s woodcut novel, Madman’s Drum that “became a catalyst for many of my own visual ideas.”

[8] – I sent a copy of one of my earlier articles on woodcut novels to Will Eisner and asked if he was familiar with the work of these earlier pioneers. He replied in a letter dated August 7, 1995, “Thank you for the article from Bookman’s Weekly. I found it so pertinent that I am referring to it in Graphic Storytelling. I share with you your admiration for Lynd Ward and the breed of wood engraving artists who cut the path to the modern graphic novel.”

[9] – For an extended list of wordless comics compiled by Mike Rhode, Tom Furtwangler, and David Wybenga see: “Stories Without Words: A Bibliography with Annotations.”

Comics Forum 2013: Call for Papers

After a fantastic event last year, I’m pleased to announce that the theme of our fifth conference is ‘Small Press and Undergrounds’. Leeds Central Library has agreed to host the event for a second time, and the call for papers is out now (see below).

Click here to download a PDF of the call for papers.

We very much look forward to welcoming a diverse selection of academics, researchers and creators to Leeds for what is sure to be a lively and engaging event covering a wide range of aspects of small press and underground comics. We’re working on lining up a great set of keynotes and will announce them here in due course.

The Comics Forum 2013 page on the website is also online now, and we’ll be updating that with all the details as and when they’re confirmed so keep an eye on that to stay up to date. If you’d like to receive all the latest updates as soon as they’re released you can also sign up to our RSS feed (click the orange button at the top of this box) or put your email address in the box on the right hand side of this page to get every update delivered straight to your inbox.

As in previous years the call for papers was designed by Ben Gaskell of Molakoe Graphic Design. A huge thank you to Ben for his hard work; we think it’s really paid off!

Comics Forum Online: Year Two

The second year of the Comics Forum website kicked off with the launch of a new set of resources in our Affiliated Conferences section as we added information and documentation from 2011′s Comics & Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness. Later in the year we added many more conferences to the archive, including: the Dundee Comics Day series, Germany’s Gesellschaft für Comicforschung (ComFor) conferences, Graphic Details Symposium: Talking About Jewish Women and Comics, The International Comics Conference and Women in Comics. The Transitions series also joined the archive, and was the subject of an article by Nina Mickwitz. This archive is open for submissions; if you are a conference organiser (or have been in the past) and would like to archive your conference materials with us we’d be happy to host them. Get in touch at comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk to talk about setting up your archive. Don’t forget that Comics Forum also hosts a number of other resources including a Scholar Directory and a Digital Texts archive, both of which are open to submissions. The Digital Texts section saw a significant update this year with the release of Steven E. Mitchell’s ‘Evil Harvest: Investigating the Comic Book, 1948-1955′, which is available for download in full and for free now.

This year saw the launch of a brand new monthly column in the form of the Comics Forum News Review. Edited by Will Grady and featuring a top line up of international contributors, the review (published on the 4th of each month) launched in November and pulls together all the major stories from comics scholarship around the world. New contributors are always welcome, particularly for countries that aren’t already covered by our existing correspondents, so if you’d like to get involved contact Will at: comicsforumnews@hotmail.co.uk. Year two also saw the continuation of our column in association with major online journal Image [&] Narrative. Charlotte Pylyser, Steven Surdiacourt and Greice Schneider contributed a series of fascinating articles on a wide range of topics including blank panels, comics and poetry, social aspects of comics, Chris Ware’s Lint as a comic strip opera, and the depiction of boredom in comics. Head over to the column archive to read all the instalments in this fascinating series, which will be continuing into the next year.

We were also very lucky to be able to feature articles by a wonderful group of guest authors this year. The study of comics was the subject of my interview with Mel Gibson and an article by James Chapman. Padmini Ray Murray considered the importance of book history for the discipline, and Michael D. Picone looked at the problem of definition. Christina Blanch discussed the massive open online course (MOOC) on Gender Through Comics that she started running in April 2013, while John Swogger considered the possibility of using comics for archaeology, a topic he also spoke on at the 2012 conference. Sara Duke took us on a tour of the comics collection of the United States Library of Congress, demonstrating the importance of looking at original art in an article illustrated with a range of beautiful examples. The intersections of politics and comics came under scrutiny in articles by Cord Scott and Jason Dittmer. Laurence Grove looked at the early history of comics in his guest article, while Martha Kuhlman considered the possibility of avant-garde comics in hers. Elisabeth El Refaie wrote on visual authentication strategies in autobiographic comics, and Louise Crosby and Helen Iball talked about the launch of Laydeez do Comics Leeds.

We also featured a range of case studies, with Malin Bergström discussing Darren Aronofsky and Kent Williams’ The Fountain, Nicolas Labarre taking a detailed look at David Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik’s adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass and Aletta Verwoerd addressing Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers. Eric Berlatsky looked at homosociality, misogyny and triangular desire in early Superman comics. Other writers who considered specific works included Barbara Uhlig, who looked at Lorenzo Mattotti and Jorge Zentner’s Caboto, and Gwen Athene Tarbox, who talked about the graphic novels of Bastien Vivès. Hannah Miodrag discussed The Long and Unlearned Life of Roland Gethers by Shane Simmon, and Fabrice Leroy talked about Joann Sfar’s Pascin. Most recently, Philip Smith has looked at the use of hybrid languages in Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese.

September 2012 saw the start of a month long series dedicated to the short works of Alan Moore. Edited by Maggie Gray, who also introduced and concluded the collection, Rummaging Around in Alan Moore’s Shorts included articles by Lance Parkin, Daniel L. Werneck, K. A. Laity, and two articles by Marc Sobel. José Alaniz also wrote an article for the series, and later in the year presented a fantastic talk on Death and the Superhero at the Henry Moore Institute in the second of our ‘Comics Forum presents…’ talks.

A number of our guest-authored articles were nominated for 2012′s Hooded Utilitarian Award for Best Online Comics Criticism; a thank you to HU for the nod. The final list of articles can be found here.

Coming Soon

Over the next year we’ll be looking to continue expanding our offerings on the website and presenting articles by top writers on the medium. We’ll soon be making available MP3s of the two events in the ‘Comics Forum presents…’ series so far and launching permanent pages for each of these events. Later in the year we have the 2013 conference to look forward to, and members of the Comics Forum team will also be hosting a table at the Thought Bubble sequential art festival as we did in 2012. This was great fun last year; thanks to everyone who came over to see us for a chat! I will also be speaking on comics scholarship and Comics Forum at Laydeez do Comics Leeds on the 20th of May (next Monday). The event takes place at Wharf Chambers in Leeds from 1830-2130; do come along if you can.

A massive vote of thanks to all our readers, authors and guests. We really appreciate your support for Comics Forum and it’s only thanks to you that the conference and the website are able to continue and develop. Suggestions and comments are always welcome either through the comments section on website posts or by email to comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk. I would also like to extend my personal thanks to the whole Comics Forum team, who have been generous enough to give a lot of time and effort over the years to make sure the conference and website run smoothly.

Here’s to another wonderful year.

Ian Hague

Director, Comics Forum

It is in light of this concept that I wish to explore Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese (2006). I will argue that the text employs a hybrid literary form and language in its exploration of Asian-American identities. The following analysis will separate the two, first examining the literary form, and then the use of language in the text.

American Born Chinese tells three stories which ultimately resolve as one: that of the story of the Monkey King, a reinvention of the first seven chapters from the 16th Century Chinese text Journey to the West; the story of Jin, a young American born Chinese student in love with a Caucasian schoolmate; and Danny, a Caucasian high-schooler whose life is ruined by visits from his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee, a synthesis of racist stereotypes in the style of, amongst other sources (see Chaney; 2011), Jack Cole’s Wun Cloo (reprinted in Spiegelman and Kidd, 2001). After his romance fails, Jin has a fight with his best friend, Wei-Chen and transforms, overnight, into Danny. By becoming Danny he amputates his Chinese self but, like a phantom limb, he continues to feel the presence of his racial background in the form of Chin-Kee. Eventually Danny loses his temper and hits Chin-Kee, who reveals himself to be the Monkey King. Danny becomes Jin again and resolves to mend his relationship with Wei-Chen. Each story revolves around the themes of exclusion due to minority status, transformation through violence, and eventual empowerment through self-acceptance.

Form

Gene Yang employs a distinctly American form in American Born Chinese. Graphic narratives have existed in various cultures for centuries, but the comic book form adopted by Yang is one described by Gopnik as ‘an American invention of the same vintage as contract bridge or the NFL’ (Gopnik; 1987, 30).[2] It uses thought balloons, broken lines around speech bubbles to indicate whispering, and a high instance of type 2 (action to action) panel transitions (see McCloud; 1994, 60-93), all of which are conventions of American comics. Yang follows in the footsteps of, to cite the most obvious example, Art Spiegelman in using the comic book as a means to explicitly ask what it means to be a racial minority in America, and how one should respond to family and cultural history. Further to this, Yang has rewritten the story of the Monkey King as a Christian story, complete with a creator being and a wise men journeying toward a star (see Dong; 2011, 235 and Vizzini; 2007, online).

China does have its own tradition of comic books called man hua shu (漫画书).[3] The conventions of comic books were imported by English colonisers in the late 19th Century, but Chinese comics have since developed their own conventions distinct from their European, Japanese and American equivalents. Man hua shu have been used to tell a variety of stories, including pictorial versions of Chinese classic literature. The Journey to the West and the Monkey King is a specific sub-genre of man hua shu (see Yang in Morton; 2010, online). By choosing to tell a story from classical Chinese mythology (perhaps the best known classical Chinese story in America) in a comic book format Yang has used an American form in a manner not dissimilar from the Chinese tradition.

Further to the use of English, American Born Chinese uses the visual language of comic books. American comics have their own language and require a specific visual literacy to decode, but the form can be used to offer an accessibility and directness unavailable to other literary forms. In comics which are written, like American Born Chinese, to be accessible to younger audiences, simple images are used in such a manner as to concretise the meaning of the words.[4] Crawford and Weiner contend:

Graphic novels can dramatically help improve reading development for students struggling with language acquisition, including special-needs students, as the illustrations provide contextual clues to the meaning of the written narrative. They can provide autistic students with clues to emotional context that they might miss when reading traditional text.[5]

(Crawford and Weiner; 2013, online).

It is no coincidence that the initials of Yang’s book spell ABC: the English-speaking child’s first introduction to written language. As a multi-lingual text which may be read by children, the visual elements of American Born Chinese can serve to counter any potential semantic misunderstandings. The comic book language used, because it employs a visual language which compliments meaning, is yi jie.[6]

Language

Mirroring the comic book form used to tell a classical Chinese story, the language of American Born Chinese is American English with occasional inflections of Chinese. By using English primarily, Yang deploys a language which, Lu Xun argued, holds greater syntactical precision relative to the language of Chinese literature. He supplements this with traditional Chinese script and an awareness of Chinese grammar, creating a hybrid language befitting of the book’s title.

The characters in the Monkey King’s narrative speak English for conversation, and Chinese to create magical effects (specifically the characters雲， 大， 小， 多, and 變). The use of written Chinese is mirrored by Jin’s level of Chinese literacy. He speaks Chinese well but struggles to read it (when a waitress asks Jin what he would like to order he points to something on the menu. She replies ‘That says “Cash only” (Yang; 2006, 226). Chinese is thus presented as Jin, the second-generation immigrant, sees it; an impenetrable, mystical, historical, and fundamentally Othered, language. It is the language of ancient wisdom and culture rather than the modern world. This is reinforced by the choice of traditional characters (the written language of Chinese poetry) rather than simplified Chinese used in mainland China today. Jin has no means to represent modern China or the postmemory of the Cultural Revolution, just a myriad of imagined Chinas drawn primarily from the American cultural imagination.[7] Jin is only Chinese in relation to the non-Chinese characters; the Other who his classmates imagine him to be is equally alien to him.

The intrusion of Chinese characters also serves to inform the reader that the story of the Monkey King has been translated from Chinese. Rather than translating the words from Chinese into English, the Otherworldly characters have been retained. This use of Chinese corresponds with Lu Xun’s concept of ying yi in that it retains the flavour of the original text through the process of translation, rather than rendering it entirely in the systems of the target language.

Ying yi is further explored in the use of English by Wei-Chen. Wei-Chen speaks in a Chinese-cadenced English, and, in moments of tension, Mandarin (indicated by ‘less than’ and ‘more than’ parentheses). His first question to Jin in English is ‘you– you- Chinese person?’ (Yang; 2006, 37). Later, as his English fluency improves, Wei-Chen confuses verb tenses and omits articles. He tells Jin ‘I find out in a sneaky way. Like ninja’ (Yang; 2007, 174). Unlike Jin, Wei-Chen is more comfortable speaking Mandarin than English, representing a partial assimilation into English-speaking American culture. He is also comfortable with the stereotyped associations of his Asian identity such as subterfuge and ninjas. His Chinese-inflected English is never a barrier to his being understood, however, nor is it used explicitly as a means to exclude him. His English is an alternative, equally valid, means of communication.

Wei-Chen’s language, it transpires, is part of his cover. When he returns to speak with his father the Monkey King, he uses technically ‘correct’ English. At the end of the text, when he meets with Jin once more, Wei-Chen only speaks in Mandarin. He appears dressed in a manner more typical of Taiwanese taike (台客), and drives a car decorated with Chinese characters. He is no longer interested, if he ever was interested, in performing a non-Asian identity. His presence, like the Chinese characters spoken by the Monkey King, is ying yi; he transplants fragments of unassimilated and authenticated Asian language and identity into an English language text.

Chin-Kee’s English, rather than adding syntactic clarity to the English language, serves to call attention to the damage that racist cartoons can do. His language is more inflected with Chinese grammar than Wei-Chen’s, in addition to which he speaks with a heavy accent and refers to himself in the third person. At one point he announces, for example, ‘Now Chin-Kee go to riblaly [library] to find Amellican girl to bind feet and bear Chin-Kee’s children’ (Yang; 2007, 120). Despite his technically incorrect grammar, Chin-Kee knows specialised English words such as humerus (Yang; 2007, 112). His speech is written with the /r/ /l/ pronunciation error is more typical of Japanese-speakers who are learning English as a second language (see Aoyama et al. 2004), a linguistic feature which has been ascribed to many Asian groups in racist caricatures.

A parallel might be drawn between Chin-Kee’s speech and the play The Corrected Poems of Minah Jambu (2001) by Singaporean playwright Alfian Bin Sa’at. Alfian experimented with deliberately bad translation as a means to create a conflicted reaction in an audience. The oulipeme in the play’s title (‘corrected’ instead of ‘collected’) refers both to the stereotyped /r/ /l/ confusion of Asian English speakers, as spoken by Chin-Kee, and the ironic ‘improvement’ which supposedly comes from translation into English. In the play a Malaysian poet reads her works in poorly-translated English, eliciting first laughter, and then sympathy and guilt from the audience. Alfian contends that ‘[b]ad and ineffective translation is a strategy with the potential to empower the audience member into examining cultural incompatibilities and political incongruities’ (Alfian; 2006, 283). Bad translation makes a reader or audience member aware of the gaps in equivalence between languages and the ways in which those gaps can be used to humiliate the non-native speaker. Like Minah Jambu, Chin-Kee is designed make the reader uncomfortable, and to invite them to examine the humiliation which non-fluent English speakers are subject to.

Conclusion

In American Born Chinese Yang has created a multi-lingual text which draws upon the distinctly American format and visual language of the comic book, and elements of Chinese written language and grammar. The combination of these elements can be understood through Lu Xun’s concept of ying yi and yi jie as creating a form which offers both the visual beauty of the traditional Chinese written form, an awareness of multiple Englishes, and an accessible gateway into Chinese literature.

The Chinese-cadenced English in American Born Chinese is not only ying yi. It serves to distinguish degrees of integration. Jin speaks English and struggles with written Chinese, Wei-Chen’s English authenticates his Asian identity, but serves as a barrier to complete integration, Chin-Kee’s pronunciation challenges, reductio ad absurdum, the Chinese male as imagined by racist American cartoons, and the Monkey King’s magical Chinese words invoke a mystical China which is perhaps no more authentic than the racist imagining of China which Chin-Kee comes from. By presenting a range of Asian-American languages and identities, Yang presents not one, but a multitude of Asian-American experiences.

Bibliography

Alfian Sa’at and Lindsay, J ‘Out of Synch: On Bad Translation as Performance’ Lindsay, J ed. Between Tongues: Translation And/Of/In Performance in Asia (NUS Press 2007) pp.272-283

Aoyama, Katsura; Flege, James Emil; Guion, Susan; Akahane-Yamada, Reiko; Yamada, Tsuneo, ‘Perceived phonetic dissimilarity and L2 speech learning: the case of Japanese /r/ and English /l/ and /r/’ Journal of Phonetics 32 (2004) pp.233–250

Boatright, Michael D. ‘Graphic journeys: graphic novels’ representations of immigrant experiences’ Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 53:6. 2010. pp.468-76

Canadian Council on Learning ‘More than just funny books: Comics and prose literacy for boys’ (2013) Lessons in Learning. online
http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Reports/LessonsinLearning/LinL20100721Comics.html

Crawford, Philip and Weiner, Stephen ‘Using Graphic Novels with Children and Teens: A Guide for Teachers and Librarians’ (2013) Scholastic.com. online
http://www.scholastic.com/graphix/Scholastic_BoneDiscussion.pdf

Dong, Lan: ‘Reimagining the Monkey King in Comics: Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese’ in Mickenberg, Julia L.and Vallone, Lynne ed., The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Literature. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2011) pp.231-251

Gopnik, Adam ‘Comics and Catastrophe’ New Republic (1987) pp. 29-34

Hammond, Heidi. ‘Graphic Novels and Multi-modal Literature: A High School Study with American Born Chinese’ Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. 50:4 2012. pp.22-32

Hirsch, Marianne Family Frames: photography, narrative and, postmemory (Harvard University Press; 1997)

Libowitz, Richard ‘Holocaust Studies’ in Modern Judaism 10.3 (1990) pp.271-281

Luo, Xuanmin ‘Translation as Violence: On Lu Xun’s Idea of Yi Jie’ Amerascia, Volume 33.3 (2007) pp.41- 54 (USA)

McCloud, Scott Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (HarperCollins 1994)

Morton, Paul ‘The Millions Interview: Gene Luen’ The Millions Yang (2010)
http://www.themillions.com/2010/07/the-millions-interview-gene-luen-yang.html

Spiegelman, Art The Complete Maus (Penguin Books 2003)

- Breakdowns (Pantheon 2008)

Spiegelman, Art and Kidd, Chip Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to their Limits (DC Comics 2001)

Venuti, Lawrence The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (Routledge 1995)

Vizzini, Ned ‘High Anxiety’ in New York Times (2007)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/review/Vizzini-t.html?_r=2

Wong, Wendy Siuyi Hong Kong Comics: A History of Manhua (Princeton Architectural Press 2001)

Yang, Gene Luen American Born Chinese (First Second 2006)

Philip Smith is currently in the final stages of completing his PhD thesis with Loughborough University. He is the author of several academic and non-academic publications.

The author offers his sincere thanks Professor Luo Xuanmin for providing some of the material which this essay was based on. He also wishes to thank his brother Zhe Zhang for providing the term taike.

[1] – The concept of ying yi closely mirrors Venuti’s concept of foreignization.

[2] – The American comic book medium has its own codes and visual language (which are distinct from the codes and visual language used in comic books from other cultures), but the form itself has origins which predate America.

[3] – For a history of man hua shu, see Wong (2001).

[4] – For a discussion of the use of American Born Chinese in the classroom, see Boatright (2010), and Hammond (2012).

[5] – The Canadian Council on Learning’s website summarises the results of many studies which examine the positive role comic books can play in developing literacy (CCL; 2013, online).

[6] – This argument does not necessarily hold true for other genres of comic books or, indeed, for all children’s comics. In many comic books, words and images are used in combinations which create, to name just two examples, dramatic irony or jarring juxtapositions. For an example of the latter, consider Spiegelman’s ‘Little Signs of Passon’ in the volume Breakdowns (2008). Spiegelman combines images of a man leaving a pornographic theatre and tripping over a tin of paint with a quote from Jack Woodford on sexual tension in romance fiction.

[7] – Hirsh defines postmemory as follows: ‘[p]ostmemory characterizes the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic events that can be neither understood not recreated’ (Hirsch; 1997, 22). Hirsh coined the term to describe the relationship between the second-generation Holocaust survivor and their parent’s experiences, but it might usefully be mobilised to describe other forms of cultural trauma such as the Great Chinese Famine during 1958-1961.

Canada

Culture

Calgary Comic Expo took place between the 26th and 28th April. As seen from the CTV story, the emphasis in this expo is moving from comics to other forms of entertainment. Link (26/04/2013, English, PW)

Research

Damon Herd has designed the poster for the upcoming conference, Comics & the Multimodal World, taking place at Douglas College in June. Link (03/04/2013, English, WG)

Camosun College in Victoria, British Columbia, hosted its first comics conference. Link 1 (English, PW)

The complete program for the conference, New Narrative VI: Seeing is believing! Voir c’est croire!, has been published online. The event will take place on the 10th May at the University of Toronto. This coincides with the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (11th-12th May). Link (English, WG)

United States 

Business

Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. reports on their 100 best-selling comics for March 2013. Link (English, EG & MB)

Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. reports on their 100 best-selling graphic novels for March 2013. Link (English, EG & MB)

Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources reports that parent company AOL has shut down the three time Eisner Award nominated blog, ComicsAlliance, as of the 26th April. Link (29/04/2013, English, EG & MB)

Culture

Comic-Con International has announced the 2013 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Nominees, including the categories of Best Comics-Related Book and Best Educational/Academic Work. Link (16/04/2013, English, EG)

The Comics Beat hosts a transcript of a 2013 Diamond Retailer Summit speech from Image Comics publisher, Eric Stephenson. Stephenson talks about “the way forward” for comic shops and promises major announcements during a one-day Image-hosted event in San Francisco on the 2nd July. Link (25/04/2013, English, EG)

Chicago Tribune reporter Christopher Borrelli reports on the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo. Link (28/04/2013, English, EG)

The comic book genre takes the stage in the production “Adventures of a Comic Book Artist” between the 2nd and 5th May, at the Children’s Theater at The Phipps Center for the Arts, in Hudson, Wisconsin. Link (English, MB)

Free Comic Book Day takes place across the United States on the 4th May. The event is annually held on the first Saturday of May, with most comic book retailers participating. Location finder and details of national/global events are included on the website. Link (English, MB)

The Big Wow Comic Fest is being held at the San Jose Convention Center on the 18th and 19th May. A Creature Features Show has been added to this year’s con experience. Link (English, MB)

Denver Comic Con (DCC) will be held between the 31st May and the 2nd June, at the Colorado Convention Center. Link (English, MB)

Boston Comic Con will be held in a new location this year: Seaport World Trade Center. The event takes place between the 3rd and 4th August, and single and weekend tickets are available. Link (English, MB)

Law

The adult manga magazine Comic Megastore has been suspended pending a police investigation for obscenity. Also under investigation is the magazine, Nyan 2 Club, which collects reader submitted erotica. Link (25/04/2013, English, MB)

Research

There is a call for papers for a collection entitled The Ages of Iron Man: Essays on the Armored Avenger in Changing Times. Essays should focus on Iron Man’s comic book adventures and should look at a single period of comic book history. Abstracts are due on the 15th July. Link (15/04/2013, English, EG & MB)

Columbus College of Art and Design, located in Ohio, released a call for papers in conjunction with their 2013 Celebration of Comics Symposium. Bone creator Jeff Smith will be the keynote guest at the symposium. Link (23/04/2013, English, EG)

ImageTexT (Volume 6, Issue 3), has recently been published. It focuses upon Shakespeare and visual rhetoric. Link (English, EG & MB)

There is a call for papers for a collection entitled “Spyfi & Superspies: A Collection of Essays Analyzing the Cultural Response to the James Bond Phenomenon”. The editor seeks submissions that explore and analyse the influence of the James Bond franchise on popular culture (including comic books). Abstracts are due on the 1st June. Link (30/04/2013, English, MB)

Technology

Apple has a program patent which can link a person’s in-game choices to populate a post-game comic book that could be published on the cloud, and then downloaded to various devices. It is still in its conceptual stage, and it is uncertain whether the product will be marketed in the future. Link (23/04/2013, English, MB)

Asia

Indonesia

Research

The 5th International Scholarly Conference will be held at Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), and is co-organised by Kyoto Seika University International Manga Research Center (IMRC), Goethe Institut, and Lim Cheng-Tju. The conference takes place between the 14th and 16th June, with a pre-event on the 13th June. Link (English, JBS)

Japan

Culture

On the 5th May, manga artist and illustrator Katsuya Terada will hold a live drawing event at the Kyoto International Manga Museum. Link (Japanese, JBS)

On the 25th May, Yoshihoro Ikegawa, producer of Koro Koro Comics Archives, and Nobuhiko Saito, manga editor and researcher, will talk on manga as a satisfying hobby, at the Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library. Link (Japanese, JBS)

Philippines

Culture

Summer Komikon 2013 took place on the 13th April in Pasig City. According to the organisers, there were more attendees this year based on ticket sales, up by 250 from last year’s 2000. There were also more exhibitors and new artists taking up tables to sell their own comics. The Summer Komikon (in April each year) is starting to eclipse the main Komikon event in November. There is talk of getting a bigger venue for next year. Link (English, LCT)

Europe 

Belgium

Research

The conference, The Cultural Standing of Comics: Ambiguities and Changes, took place between the 2nd and 3rd May, at the Université catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve. Link (French, WG)

Croatia

Culture

The comic book and street art festival Ohoho! took place in Zagreb from the 18th to the 20th April. Underground writers and illustrators from Croatia, and the surrounding region, exhibited their work. Photos from the festival are available through the link. Link (20/04/2013, Croatian, LO)

On the 23rd April, World Book and Copyright Day saw a talk organised in Booksa, the book club in Zagreb. The participants discussed Croatian self-published comic books from the 1990s. Link (22/04/2013, Croatian, LO)

Denmark

Culture

The nominations for the Ping prize have been revealed. Link (16/04/2013, Danish, RPC)

Danish magazine nummer9 reports on the accusations of racism in Danish cartoonist Jakob Martin Strid’s Mustafas kiosk, which is no longer published in Sweden. Link (19/04/2013, Danish, RPC)

Research

The sixth newsletter for NNCORE (Nordic Network for Comics Research) about conferences and workshops has been published this month. Link (English, RPC)

France

Business

Zep’s  Une histoire d’hommes will be the first album published by Ecole de Loisirs’ new BD publishing division Rue de Sèvres, in September 2013. Link (30/04/2013, French, LTa)

Eight of the major French publishers attempted to reproduce America’s Free Comic Book Day, on the 5th and 6th April; each offering a complete album, to be distributed by booksellers. Though some major publishers stayed out of this first attempt, and the operation was not exempt from criticism, it appears to have been successful. Its impact on sales is of course impossible to gauge at this point. Link (12/04/2013, French, NL)

Culture

The Musée des Arts Décos in Paris is hosting a Winshluss exhibit from the 17th April to the 13th November. Winschluss received the Grand Prize in Angoulême in 2008 for his wordless album, Pinocchio. He also co-directed Persepolis with Marjane Satrapi. The exhibit features original art, but also toys, posters and dioramas created or selected by the artist. Link (French/English, NL)

Spirou, an emblematic character created by Rob Vel in April 1938, is now 75. He is still one of the most recognisable characters and brands in the French-speaking comics market, and on the 21st April, Dupuis (which publishes Spirou magazine as well as the character’s albums) organised a grand celebration in Brussels’ Atomium. The commemoration also gave Dupuis the opportunity to formally present Spirou.Z, its online magazine. Link (24/04/2013, French, NL)

Law

Digital BD platform Iznéo has removed 40% of their catalogue (2800 albums) from the Apple Store after Apple judged it “pornographic”. Affected series include Blake & Mortimer, Largo Winch, and XIII. Link (04/04/2013, French, LTa)

Rachida Dati, the former French minister of Justice, lost a case in which she argued that an album focusing on the identity of her child’s father – a much discussed mystery in 2009, when she was still a major political player – was libelous and should be banned from distribution. The court ruled on the 24th April that the album did not violate Dati’s right to privacy, especially since the former minister has been using her child’s image in the media herself over the last four years. Link (24/04/2013, French, NL)

Additional reportage, on the build up towards the verdict on the Rachida Dati case, can be accessed here. Link (23/04/2013, French, LTa)

Obituaries

Fred passed away on the 2nd April, aged 82. He was undoubtedly one of the most idiosyncratic and respected cartoonist in French bande dessinée. He made his name working in Hara-Kiri, where he created one of his masterpieces, Le Petit Cirque, a series of cruel and disturbing tales washed in gray tones. However, his most famous creation, Philemon, was not created in Hara-Kiri but in Pilote, in 1965. Philemon is a charming surreal series, in which the titular character wanders between worlds, visiting the letters of the words “Océan Atlantique”, to be found on most maps. The last Philémon album, Au train où vont les choses, was published last February. Link (03/04/2013, French, NL)

Finland

Culture

The Finnish Central Arts Council has appointed national arts councils for a two-year term. Appointments for the National Council for Media Art, Comics and Illustrations included comics artists Johanna Rojola, Ville Tietäväinen and Riitta Uusitalo. Link (25/04/2013, English, RPC)

Research

The program for the NNCORE (Nordic Network for Comics Research) in Helsinki has been published. Link (English, RPC)

Germany

Ireland

Culture

An audio recording from the comics panel at the Dundalk Book Festival has been posted online. Link (29/04/2013, English, SC)

Italy

Obituary

Roberto Giammanco passed away on the 16th April. He published widely on mass communication, including some research into comic books. Link (Italian, WG)

Norway

Business

The Norwegian media statistic say Norwegians read less comics. Link (16/04/2013, Norwegian, RPC)

Spain

Culture

Barcelona International Comics Festival took place between the 11th and 14th April. Guy Delisle, Liniers, Florent Chavouet, Gilbert Shelton, and Kevin Eastman, were just some present at the event. Highlights included the exhibition devoted to Josep Maria Berenguer (editor of La Cúpula); the round table discussion on criticism and analysis of comics today; and Jaume Vidal’s discussion with Florent Chavouet, Guy Delisle, and Liniers, about their portrayals of different cultures and realities. The Ateneum also offered parallel activities, like the interesting presentation by Vicent Sanchís about censorship on comics during Francoism. Link (Spanish, EC)

GRAF took place in Barcelona, on the 13th April. This encounter between artists, readers and publishers focused on independent creation, self-publishing, crowd funding, and the relation between comics and other arts. The event had a very dynamic, vibrant and inspiring atmosphere, hosting various round tables, discussions and exhibitions. Link (Spanish, EC)

Famous cinema and art critic Carlos Díaz Maroto discussed the origins of comics in relation to the origins of cinema at the National Library in Madrid on the 18th April. Link (Spanish, EC)

“Love in the time of hipsters” took place in Madrid on the 25th April. Exploring the latest and most controversial video clips, comics, and animated pieces, Elisa G. McCausland spoke about different manifestations of love in comics at La Casa Encendida. Link (Spanish, EC)

Sweden

Culture

The Stockholm International Comics Festival took place between the 26th and 28th April. Link (Swedish, RPC)

The nominations for the Urhund prize have been revealed. Link (27/04/2013, Swedish, RPC)

UK                 

Culture

Downthetubes provide a photo review of the University of Dundee’s Dundee Comics Expo 2013, which took place on the 30th March. Link (05/04/2013, English, WG)

Research

The call for papers for Transitions 4 has been published. Like previous years, the event will be a one-day symposium promoting new research and multi-disciplinary academic study of comics. Abstracts are due by the 30th July, for the event on the 2nd November, at Birkbeck, University of London. Link (English, WG)

Oceania

Australia

Obituary

Jim Shepherd, managing director of Frew Publications – the Australian publisher of The Phantom – passed away on the 15th April. Link (16/04/2013, English, WG)

*                    *                    *

News Editor: Will Grady (comicsforumnews@hotmail.co.uk)

Correspondents: Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto (JBS, Japan), Michele Brittany (MB, North America), Esther Claudio (EC, Spain), Shelley Culbertson (SC, Ireland), Rikke Platz Cortsen (RPC, Scandinavia), Eric Garneau (EG, North America), William Grady (WG, UK), Martin de la Iglesia (MdlI, Germany), Nicolas Labarre (NL, France), Luka Ostojic (LO, Croatia), Lise Tannahill (LTa, France), Lim Cheng Tju (LCT, Singapore), Peter Wilkins (PW, Canada).

Click here for News Review correspondent biographies.

Suggestions for articles to be included in the News Review can be sent to Will Grady at the email address above.

I should explain that I came to comics scholarship as a non-specialist. I’d read comics as a boy, like most of my generation. Victor was my comic of choice, which I later rationalised in terms of its more progressive social politics, though at the time I’m sure it was just the war and adventure stories that appealed. But I wasn’t that interested in comics from the perspective of adult nostalgia (not that there’s anything wrong with nostalgia!). I am a cultural historian, mostly specialising in the history of British cinema and television, and I became interested in comics initially because there were so many parallels with my other research interests. The emergence of British Second World War comics in the 1950s, for example, coincided with the golden age of the British war movie, while it has been well documented that the new wave of ‘violent’ boys’ comics in the 1970s, such as Battle, Action and 2000AD, turned to popular films and television series for inspiration.

Comics research is a smaller field than film, or even television (sometimes seen as the poor relation of film), and its contours and intellectual history are less well defined. This can be both a positive and a negative. It’s positive in the sense that a great deal of comics research is interdisciplinary in its methods and approaches, which can create the right conditions for constructive and meaningful dialogue. But the downside is that the questions that scholars sometimes then ask are drawn from their own subjects and aren’t always directly about comics themselves.

For example, much of the pioneering academic research into comics came from a sociological perspective. What came to be known as the “media effects” debate was really part of a wider dialogue on the problem (both real and perceived) of juvenile delinquency and how much of the blame could be laid at the door of popular culture. In this sense comics became just another object of intellectual disdain and moral panic – following on from nineteenth-century penny dreadfuls and gangster films in the 1930s, anticipating video nasties, gangsta rap and violent video games – and much of the debate was little more than polemic. There are exceptions, of course, and Martin Barker’s book A Haunt of Fears (1985) remains a landmark in this regard, a pioneering study of the discourses and rhetorical strategies employed by the campaigners against so-called “horror comics” in the 1950s, and, I would suggest, the foundational text of comics research in the UK.

Otherwise it seems to me that there are, broadly speaking, two main academic approaches to comics studies. One, evidenced by much of the work on French bande dessinée and by some of the work starting to emerge on important comic creators such as Alan Moore, is what I shall term the cultural theory approach. The language here is that of semiotics, structuralism, poststructuralism and postmodernism. I have to confess that I find myself out of sympathy with much of this work, not because I am necessarily allergic to theory, but more on the grounds that the emphasis on signifying codes and structural processes too often seems to deny space either for any creative agency on the part of the writer or artist, or any sense that the readers of comics are individuals rather than an undifferentiated mass. Barthes wrote about the death of the author, but none of his poststructuralist brethren seem to have had any interest in doing the empirical legwork necessary to investigate the responses of actual as opposed to theoretically constructed readers of the text. (I know that in writing this paragraph I have probably offended many of the readers of this forum and shall brace myself for the backlash!)

The other main approach – which, I should emphasise, in view of the previous paragraph, is also not without its intellectual problems – is what I call the cultural history approach. The emphasis here is on understanding comics as products of the culture in which they are published and consumed. This is an approach that informs much of the work on American comics, such as Bradford Wright’s Comic Book Nation (2001), and which provided my own methodology for British Comics. I said this approach is not without its problems. One of the most fundamental is that unlike, say, film history, where methodologies have been developed for investigating the composition and even cultural tastes of cinema audiences of the past, there is as yet no easy way of discovering what readers actually thought of their comics. The letters pages, yes, and these can be revealing of the actual views of actual readers, rather than theoretical readers ‘constructed’ by the text, though we cannot assume that the small sample of letters published in comics are representative of the editors’ postbags, that they have not been significantly abridged, or even that they have not been fabricated in the publishers’ office. (An exception here are adult comics such as Warrior, which regularly published three pages of small-type comments from readers: Dez Skinn seems to have taken a perverse delight in providing space for readers to state exactly what was wrong with the comic!). But we haven’t yet had any equivalent for comics of Annette Kuhn’s research into the memories of cinema-goers in the 1930s (An Everyday Magic, 2002) or the ‘Going to the Show’ project into early cinema-going undertaken by the University of North Carolina. In the case of British comics, moreover, even such basic information as sales and circulation figures are elusive: there are few reliable sources before the 1970s and those that exist have to be interpreted with caution.

One consequence of the absence of many archival sources for comics is that the cultural historian has to fall back on analysis of the comics themselves. This is no bad thing, you may think, as surely it’s the comics that matter, right? But even here there are methodological issues to address. How should we ‘read’ comics historically? How far should we assume, for example, that the Cold War allegory that to modern adult eyes seems so patently obvious in the Eagle‘s flagship strip ‘Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future’ was understood by a ten-year-old reader in the 1950s? I feel justified in identifying and discussing ‘Dan Dare’ as a Cold War narrative, but I hesitate to claim that it was widely understood that way at the time. (I did find evidence that adults understood Eagle in this way: and the fact that adults read Eagle is interesting in itself for all sorts of reasons.) Another methodological problem is whether we should read comic strips in the same way as prose fiction or as visual texts more akin to films. This question is particularly significant for British comics, as so many comics, including School Friend, Hotspur and Wizard, started out as prose story papers before transforming into picture-strip papers. There is no straightforward answer to this question and I cannot claim to have solved it. What I found was that, rather like films, some strips seem to be more driven by narrative, whereas others create meaning through pictures as well as words. Frank Hampson’s ‘Dan Dare’ strips, for example, often employed a device similar to deep-focus cinematography, where there is all sort of incidental detail in the foreground but the real action in the frame takes place in the background.

So where does comics scholarship stand today? There are good, largely authoritative studies of major comic-producing nations – the United States, France, Japan, Britain – and informative studies of genres such as the superhero comic and manga. And there is evidence that key writers and artists (though mostly, interestingly enough, writers) are being taken seriously as creative auteurs. I look forward to the day when there as many critical and scholarly studies of Alan Moore as there are of Orson Welles, and when Garth Ennis’s War Stories are afforded the same currency as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan when it comes to the realisation of war in popular culture.

Overall, though, comics scholarship is still in its infancy. There are still many gaps in our historical knowledge: most histories, including my own, are sketched in broad brush strokes, with the contours remaining to be shaded and filled in. Some genres, including science fiction and the superhero mythos, have been the subject of meaningful analysis, but where are the corresponding studies of, say, the sports story or the school story? (There is a body of critical literature on the school story in prose fiction, but hardly anything on its picture-strip equivalent.) My own book exhibits a bias (of which I was very much aware) towards boys’ comics over girls’ comics – partly because I lack the cultural competence to decode them, and partly because Mel Gibson’s work in this field is pre-eminent. Above all, however, I feel that the major challenge for the next generation of comics researchers will be to get to grips with the questions of readership and reception. Who read comics, how did they respond to them, and what were the cultural and aesthetic decisions they made in doing so? My own research, for example, suggested to me that British children made qualitative decisions in their comic reading based on genre and nationality. British children in the 1960s and 1970s were avid readers of superhero comics, but they preferred American titles whereas British imitations such as Captain Britain did not last the course. Conclusion: that British readers associated superheroes with America and chose their comics on that basis. But when it came to war comics, British boys showed little interest in Sergeant Rock or GI Joe: war, especially the Second World War, was to them a British genre, hence the preference for Commando, Warlord and Battle. If nothing else, that’s one in the eye for the old Frankfurt School notion that the consumers of popular culture are passive and undiscriminating. Quite the contrary, in fact: children are often among the most discerning of consumers.

No researcher ever gets the last word on a subject. Occasionally – very occasionally – someone gets to have the first word. Comics scholarship is still a field up for grabs. I can’t claim to have been there at the beginning, but I am proud that I have been able to make a small contribution to the infancy of the subject. Soon comics scholarship will start to experience its growing pains as genuine and important methodological and intellectual debates turn into theoretical and ideological rifts (well, at least that’s what happened to film studies in the 1970s!) But after that the field will mature into adulthood, and being a comics historian will no longer be regarded as an eccentric indulgence. I think the process is going to be fun to watch.

James Chapman is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester and is the author of British Comics: A Cultural History (Reaktion, 2011) as well as books on the James Bond films (Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films, I. B. Tauris, 1999, 2nd edn 2007) and Doctor Who (Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who – A Cultural History, I. B. Tauris, 2006, 2nd edn forthcoming September 2013).

Email: jrc28@le.ac.uk

Fig 1, ™ and © DC Comics.

The Superman “shield” most familiar to contemporary readers is a pentagon. Emblazoned on his chest, it is a recognizable symbol of the “first superhero” whose emergence in Action Comics in 1938 gave birth to the genre most associated with the history of American comics. Interestingly, however, the symbol has little resemblance to that which first appeared on Superman’s chest in his debut. In those early days, Superman, created, by Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (artist), had a simple triangle on his chest, with a sinuous “S” in its center. The shift in insignia is largely insignificant, but the original shape is reflective of the ways in which those early stories revolve around a “love triangle” that is both familiar and unconventional. [1]

Fig 2, ™ and © DC Comics.

In those stories, Superman is not the stoic, conservative, and nearly omnipotent being he became over the course of subsequent decades. Instead, he is a daring, carefree, wisecracking daredevil who is something of a New Deal semi-Socialist, fighting big business and corrupt capitalism in his role as “champion of the oppressed.” In this, Superman supposedly evens the scales, by becoming the symbolic “power of the people.” Opposing himself to unfair power, however, he also ironically becomes that which he opposes. More than balancing the scales, he becomes irresistible, forcing others to accede to his will, even as he represents the powerless whose will is subjugated.

Fig 3, ™ and © DC Comics.

Something of the same dynamic appears in Superman’s “private,” or romantic, dealings with Lois Lane. There, reflecting his insignia, Superman is involved in a “love triangle.” At two vertices of this triangle are the two identities of Superman, the superhero himself and his timid/weakling alter ego, Clark Kent. The third is occupied by Lois, the intrepid reporter for the newspaper at which Kent also works. Kent is in love with Lois (or claims to be) and perpetually wishes, at the very least, to take her on a date, while Lois, of course, falls for Superman, the ‘he-man’ that appears to be everything Clark is not. Just as Lois rebuffs all of Clark’s advances, however, Superman rejects hers, taking a kind of perverse pleasure in revenge for her mistreatment of his “other self” and laughing at her behind her back.

Fig 4, ™ and © DC Comics.

The early Superman’s private life is then built on an unrelieved sexual tension, with Superman preferring to punish Lois rather than bed her and/or wed her. In this, the “Man of Steel” is able to retain his phallic hardness indefinitely, a model of potency that can never be deflated even temporarily, as it might be through its satisfaction. At the same time, while conventional sexual pleasure is never part of these stories, there is a kind of “perverse” pleasure achieved through Superman’s perpetual scorning of Lois (and Lois’ of Clark). Sexuality is here a kind of sadomasochistic game of teasing and scorn, the elements of which were keenly satirized by Harvey Kurtzman’s ‘Superduperman’ in MAD in 1953, some 15 years after Siegel and Shuster’s initial stories.

Fig 5, © EC Publications, Inc.

In Les Daniels’ history of the Golden-Age Superman, he notes that ‘from today’s perspective, it’s easy to denounce Lois as the misogynist fantasy of a disappointed male’ (20), an idea he introduces only briefly in order to skim over its ramifications and proceed on to other things. While it is not my purpose here to critique Superman’s creators for misogyny, I would like to look at Daniels’ brief comment a bit more closely. To do so, it is worth revisiting Siegel’s account of the origins of the Superman/Clark/Lois triangle.

…As a high school student, I thought that some day I might become a

reporter, and I had crushes on several attractive girls who either didn’t know I existed or didn’t care I existed…It occurred to me: What if I was real terrific? What if I had something special going for me like jumping over buildings or throwing cars around or something like that? Then maybe they would notice me. That night when all the thoughts were coming to me, the concept came to me that Superman could have a dual identity, and that in one of his identities he could be meek and mild, as I was, and wear glasses, the way I do. The heroine, …a girl reporter, would think he was some sort of a worm, yet she would be crazy about the Superman character…and a big inside joke was that the fellow she was crazy about was also the fellow whom she loathed…

It is one of the most clichéd and most reiterated claims about superheroes that they are simply a fulfillment of “power fantasies,” allowing adolescent readers to live out their previously frustrated desires, especially of being attractive, powerful, and popular. In the same interview, Siegel says as much, calling Superman a version of ‘wish-fulfillment,’ not only for himself, but for those readers who were ‘similarly frustrated.’

Fig 6, ™ and © DC Comics.

This is, perhaps, where charges of misogyny could be leveled, since one would think that the “natural” wish that the scorned, ignored, or rejected straight male would want fulfilled would be the acceptance of the beautiful woman, and ultimately, a consummation of his frustrated desires. This never happens in these stories, however (though Lois will occasionally steal a kiss from Superman, he is sure to stop matters there). Instead, the “wish” that seems to be granted is the assertion of power over women, in which they become a toy to be played with, mocked, and manipulated, as “revenge” for failing to notice the “super” qualities hidden underneath the modest, weak, and introverted exterior (qualities which, of course, may not exist for Superman’s real-life readers and counterparts). In the wishes “fulfilled” by Superman, it appears that love, companionship, acceptance, and even heteronormative sexual fulfillment are never that which the creators and readers really desire. Rather, what they want is simply “power,” and “power” is equivalent to “power over women.”

Rather than positioning this as a kind of simplistic accusation against the creators themselves, both now deceased, or even against the readers who consumed their stories, we can perhaps see how the scenario is not unique or idiosyncratic, but is in some ways typical of patriarchal societies, revealing important facets about how they (still, to some degree) function. As feminist/queer theorist Eve Sedgwick has discussed, stories that revolve around love triangles are not only common, but can be used to uncover the structures and psychologies behind both misogyny and homophobia. Following René Girard’s study of ‘erotic triangles’ in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Sedgwick notes that stories about “love triangles” (and particularly love triangles involving two men and one woman) are rarely ultimately concerned with the “relationship” between either man and the woman involved, but are more often preoccupied with the “homosocial desire” between the two men. In this, Sedgwick also constructs her argument around Gayle Rubin’s well-known claim in ‘The Traffic in Women,’ that the important relationships in patriarchal society are historically “between men,” as it is within those relationships that power is typically acquired and/or transacted. Women are traded (often in marriage) as a means of sealing social bonds between men, with the resultant male offspring inheriting the power gained through the union of the two patriarchs. Marriage as an institution, in this view, evolves not out of heterosexual “love” or even heterosexual desire but out of the ways in which clans, tribes, families, or societies secure what Sedgwick calls “homosocial” bonds. While it is obviously the case that women are no longer legally identified as commodities or traded between men, these attitudes remain present in our society and are worth interrogating. Rubin, for instance, notes that the practice of a father “giving away” his daughter at a wedding is a relic of these practices that is still often uncritically practiced.

Sedgwick’s rereading of Rubin (itself something of a rereading of Claude Levi-Strauss’ account of kinship structures) then focuses on the ways in which the ‘traffic in women’ is not only a model by which women are “objectified” as commodities to be traded, but by which same-sex male desire is expressed, ‘triangulated’ through women. That is, the woman in the “middle” of a love triangle serves as the transient repository for the “desires” the men actually feel for each other (social, economic, and/or sexual) (Between 21). This desire is “homosocial” (not strictly “homosexual”) because it does not necessarily involve any explicitly expressed sexual desire. At the same time, Sedgwick argues that the supposed distinction between homosexual and homosocial desire is not as solid as societies pretend. Rather, it is part of a fluid ‘continuum’ wherein social/economic bonds slide into, or blur into, sexual ones (Between 3-5). For her (and for Rubin), the institution of marriage, and the role of reproduction in sealing social and economic bonds leads not only to the objectification of women, but also to homophobia, since the line between the homosocial and the homosexual must be, and is, heavily policed. If the ‘traffic in women’ is so important to the sealing of bonds “between men,” then it is dangerous for such triangulation of desire to be circumvented in favor of a direct homosexual connection. Homophobia is then a logical result of a patriarchal/homosocial society wherein power is sealed through the trade in women as commodities. Rubin argues that, ‘The suppression of the homosexual component of human sexuality, and by corollary the repression of homosexuals, is…a product of the same system whose rules and relations oppress women’ (Rubin 180). For Sedgwick, then, homoeroticism is a repressed but constant presence in patriarchal societies because it both facilitates homosocial bonds and threatens them. The lingering homophobia in our own culture (and certainly that present in the 1930’s-1940’s America of these Superman comics), then, can also be seen as a signifier of the still powerful structures of patriarchy and misogyny.

Fig 7, ™ and © DC Comics.

The claim that there is a “latent” homoeroticism in superhero comics is hardly a new one, going back at least as far as Fredric Wertham’s homophobic attacks in Seduction of the Innocent (1954). Certainly, the frequently aired claim that the “secret identity” is a metaphor for a “closeted” homosexuality is useful and worth examining more fully as long as it is not deployed in a pejorative fashion, as Wertham does. In the context of Siegel and Shuster’s Superman, some version of homoeroticism is easily observed, as these comics linger on the idealized male body (often half-nude) with some frequency, despite their principally male, and presumed straight, audience. Joe Shuster’s personal fascination with bodybuilding culture (see Jones 69-70) is evident in these homoerotic stories, as is the whole genre’s interest in idealized masculinity, or the ‘beauty of the male human body’ (Jones 75). Still, as Sedgwick might suggest, in Superman this “desire” never veers into the explicitly sexual (how could it in the homophobic America of the ‘30s and ‘40s?), instead “repressing” it in favor of a homosocial bond triangulated through a woman. In this, it is possible, along with Sedgwick, to see the (barely) concealed homoeroticism as that which facilitates misogyny and the objectification of women, as well as homophobia itself.

Fig 8, ™ and © DC Comics.

The strange Clark/Lois/Superman love triangle can be understood in this context despite the fact that the two men involved are actually one. As in Sedgwick’s model, in this triangle, it is less important for sexual desire (whether hetero- or homo-) to be satisfied, than it is for male power to be (re)asserted, with Lois becoming the ‘object of exchange’ (Between 26) between the “two” men. Within these stories, it seems, Lois’ desire for Superman must never be realized simply because the desire is so obviously hers, an assertion of female agency that patriarchal society must subjugate, control, and redirect for its own purposes.

Fig 9, ™ and © DC Comics.

On some level, certainly, Lois represents the shift in American gender roles in the wake of women’s suffrage post-1920. Lois is a strong-willed woman, operating with a job in the public sphere, often beating Kent to stories and even acting against the will of her superiors at the newspaper in pursuit of her professional advancement. At the same time, Lois is continually placed in the role of a submissive dependent, “saved” by Superman from innumerable toughs, bad guys, and natural disasters, indicating, perhaps, that her assertion of “subjectivity” is overstated, allowed by male patriarchal society only insofar as it is a result of its protection. Similarly, her agency in the private arena of love and sexuality is depicted, literally, as a joke, secretly laughed at by Kent (and therefore by Superman) as simply the game he/they play(s). Far from a queen on the chessboard of these comics, she is a pawn manipulated by the two men who are actually one. In all of this, the early Superman stories both acknowledge and illustrate the shifting position of women in American society and attempt to recuperate male power by suggesting that newfound female agency is carried out only as a result of (Super)man’s largesse and power, not in spite of it.

Fig 10, ™ and © DC Comics.

One of the earliest Superman stories, in Action Comics #4, depicts a reflection of Sedgwick’s scenario in an only slightly displaced context. A mediocre football player, Tommy Burke, is dumped by his girlfriend, Mary (who looks quite a bit like Lois), for never living up to his promise of stardom. Meanwhile, Superman, in order to foil the plans of some gangsters, steps into Tommy’s shoes on the football field (Tommy, drugged by Superman, is kept out of the way for the duration). After playing most of one game as Tommy (becoming the star the real Tommy never was, and thereby foiling the gangsters’ efforts), Superman quickly allows Tommy to resume his real identity, his recent stardom predictably delivering Mary back into his arms. As in the typical Clark/Lois/Superman triangle, two men play one, though in this case, the ‘traffic in women’ is literally completed, with one version of Tommy (Superman) delivering Mary into the hands of another, sealing the short-lived homosocial bond between them (Tommy happily “forgives” Superman for knocking him out and replacing him). Mary, of course, believes that she has “chosen” to return to Tommy, but, in fact, she is manipulated into doing so, the object of a transaction “between men.”

Fig 11, ™ and © DC Comics.

Of course, in this case, there are literally two men (although, through Superman’s disguise, they are indistinguishable), while in the more consistent triangle in Superman, two of the men are actually one. For this reason, it might be easy to say that there is nothing “homoerotic” or “homosocial” about the Clark/Superman/Lois triangle. Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and legions of adolescents in similar circumstances don’t “desire” Superman, but rather desire “to be” him. In the welding of Clark Kent to Superman, this desire is achieved, though, of course, the realization of this desire is always simply a matter of fantasy. Despite Joe Shuster’s weightlifting and bodybuilding, he never can actually become Superman, just as any “real life” Clark Kent cannot. In this way, Superman is always both a realized desire and a frustrated one.

Likewise, the desire for power here may be read as a sexual, or erotic, desire. In Epistemology of the Closet Sedgwick makes the case that the desire ‘to be’ someone is not so easily removed from the simple desire ‘for’ someone. In fact, she states this, (perhaps not so) coincidentally, through a reading of Nietzsche’s work, particularly in Thus Spake Zarathustra, wherein Nietzsche expresses a desire ‘to be’ Zarathustra, ‘to be’ the übermensch, and thus ‘to be’ Superman. Segwick configures this explicitly as a homoerotic/homosocial desire by Nietzsche ‘for’ Zarathustra (for the übermensch, for Superman), which is then occluded or repressed by the language of ‘identity’ instead of desire (162). The results, as discussed in Between Men, are homophobia and misogyny. The desire to “transcend man” or to be the “super man” is also and always the desire for the superman, argues Sedgwick, as well as the desire to have power, which is itself the desire for power over women.

Indeed, the melding of two points of the love triangle into one accomplished by the “dual identity” of Superman and Clark speaks to a kind of desire for omnipotence that goes beyond a simple reflection of the workings of ordinary patriarchy. Rather, a desire is expressed to occupy both sides of a typical patriarchal transaction, as Clark and Superman, the “ideal man,” can be both the “seller” of women and their “buyer,” never having to make a “deal” or transaction with another man in order to consolidate power. Instead Clark/Superman, despite his left-leaning beginnings, simply makes deals with himself in a kind of monopoly capitalism where Lois (and women more broadly conceived) are the commodities not so much traded between tribes, families, or companies as circulated within the various subsidiaries of the single company.

In Men of Tomorrow, Gerard Jones describes a story Jerry Siegel submitted in 1940, after marrying his first wife, Bella, wherein Superman would be made vulnerable by a ‘K-metal’ (later to be used a Kryptonite) and would reveal his secret identity to Lois, dissolving the long-lived triangle and allowing her to become a ‘confederate’ in his battle against crime (qtd. in Jones 182). Lois makes explicit her movement away from the role of pawn, victim, and commodity in the story, when she declares, ‘Then it’s settled! We’re to be—partners!…Yes partners!’ (qtd. Jones 182). Even by this early date, however, Siegel was losing artistic control over his creation, and his editors rejected the proposal, insisting that Lois’ deception and the triangle established in the comics’ earliest days were essential to the Superman concept. Female agency and some measure of equality is literally proposed by Siegel, but is summarily rejected by those (men) who see the fantasy of male power as inextricable from the deception of women and female disempowerment.

While there have been shifts in the portrayal of Lois in the comics over the years (including a period wherein she was the protagonist in her own comic, and another where she is actually married to Superman), superhero stories both in comics and in broader media continue to follow the DC editors’ lead, in many cases. Christopher Nolan’s 2005 Batman film, The Dark Knight, for instance, revolves around a love triangle between Bruce Wayne/Batman, Harvey Dent/Two-Face, and Rachel Dawes. Eventually kidnapped and killed, despite having a prominent role in two films as Bruce Wayne’s best friend and potential paramour, Rachel is eventually reduced to the female “object” that facilitates the homosocial connection between Wayne and Dent. Similarly, 2011’s X-Men: First-Class revolves around a love triangle that positions Raven/Mystique between Professor X and Magneto, serving as the “object” that helps define the relationship that is clearly most important in the film, the homosocial competition/friendship between the two men. 2012’s The Avengers, while without a typical love triangle, depicts a transparently homosocial environment, wherein all the important heroes (and characters) are men, with the lone superheroine playing the role of objectified window-dressing, despite her occasional assertions of physical prowess.

While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with stories about relationships between men, of course, these films retain the basic structure Sedgwick identifies as facilitating both misogyny and homophobia. These female characters, though occasionally strong in their own right, function in their stories as mere conduits for the “important” relationships between men, and those relationships themselves are part of the process of defining power and wish-fulfillment. Likewise, in accordance with Sedgwick’s claims about the link between misogyny and homophobia, the relationships between men in these films are never allowed to veer into the realm of the frankly homosexual.

Seventy-five years after Superman’s introduction in Action, it remains rare to see depictions of (super)power that are not tied into misogynist conceptions of “power over women,” while simultaneously channeling male homosocial desire away from the homosexual. This type of “power” is itself linked to the “love triangle” plot structure hardly original to early Superman comics, but essential to them. Identifying this tie, whether in the genre’s origins, or its more current examples, is necessary, if it is to be broken and re-envisioned. While we live in a world stumbling slowly toward gender equality and the acceptance of non-heteronormative sexual orientations, our heroes, and their stories, should reflect such progress, rather than mirroring their troubling, and triangular, origins. While the early issues of Action are hardly intended as serious social commentary and retain a certain naïve charm that contemporary superhero comics are often lacking, they also stand as an example of the ways in which American culture then, and even now, configure (male) power as the power to trade in women, an example it is best not to follow.

Works Cited

Daniels, Les. Superman: The Golden Age. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999.

Jones, Gerard. Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. New York: Basic Books, 2004.

Kurtzman, Harvey and Wallace Wood. ‘Superduperman.’ Mad for Decades. New York: Metro Books, 2007. Reprint from MAD #4, April-May 1953. 1-8.

Rubin, Gayle. ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes Toward a Political Economy of Sex.’ Toward an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna Reiter. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975. 157-210.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.

___. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990.

Siegel, Jerry and Joe Shuster. Superman Chronicles, Volume 1. New York: DC Comics, 2006. Reprints Superman stories from Action Comics #1-13, Superman #1, and New York World’s Fair #1, dated June 1938-July 1939. All images of Superman from this text.

___. ‘“Jerry and I Did A Comic Book Together…”: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster Interviewed.’ 20th Century Danny Boy. 3 August 2012. Reprint from Nemo: The Classic Comics Library 2 (August 1983).
http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2012/08/jerry-and-i-did-comic-book-together.html
.

Eric Berlatsky is Associate Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University. He is also the author of The Real, The True, and The Told: Postmodern Historical Narrative And The Ethics of Representation (The Ohio State University Press, 2011) and the editor of Alan Moore: Conversations (University Press of Mississippi, 2012). The Real, The True, and The Told explores the intersections of postmodern theory, narrative theory, historiographic theory, and contemporary fiction (and comics). Articles on similar topics in The Journal of Narrative Theory, Cultural Critique, and Virginia Woolf: Across the Generations preceded the book. Alan Moore: Conversations is a collection of interviews with the co-creator of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, and Lost Girls. Berlatsky is at work on a critical volume devoted to Moore’s work and has an article forthcoming on pop music and the writings of Hanif Kureishi. He has also published articles on sexual perversion in Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot (in Twentieth-Century Literature), narrative frames (in Narrative), and race in Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy (in The Arizona Quarterly). He teaches twentieth century British literature, literary theory, postcolonial literature, postmodern literature, and comics.

[1] – In a probably irrelevant coincidence, Siegel and Shuster were themselves involved in a love triangle, with their own “Lois.” Joanne Carter (born Jolan Kovacs) was the teenage girl who served as Joe Shuster’s model for Lois Lane, leading to a brief romance and a lengthy correspondence. Upon being reunited with Carter at a party she attended with Shuster in 1947, Siegel was smitten and ‘Joe stepped aside’ (Jones 248), leading to her eventual marriage to Jerry. See Jones (248-49) and the Nemo interview listed below, in which Joanne participated.

Brazil

Culture

The first issue of Antílope, an independent magazine on comics, and comics criticism, has just been published. Link (Portuguese, GS)

United States 

Business

Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. report on their 100 best selling comics for February 2013. Link (25/03/2013, English, HMS)

Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. report on their 100 best selling graphic novels for February 2013. Link (25/03/2013, English, HMS)

The Comics Beat reports that Monkeybrain Comics will be venturing into print format with IDW and Image. Link (27/02/2013, English, HMS)

Brooks Barnes of the New York Times discusses Marvel’s display of commitment to digital formats by releasing hundreds of first issues for free on Comixology. Link (10/03/2013, English, HMS)

Jeet Heer conducts an interview with Walter Biggins, who is about to quit his role as acquisitions editor for the University of Mississippi Press. Biggins has been behind a number of notable comics related academic texts from the Press. Link (18/03/2013, English, WG)

Culture

The Comics Beat’s Heidi MacDonald reports that the Small Press Expo has revealed its 2013 poster and the Expo’s invited guests. Link (04/03/2013, English, HMS)

The first ever Slate Cartoonist Studio Prize winners have been announced, including Chris Ware. The finalists in the 2013 Spectrum Fantastic Art Awards have also been announced, with video content of finalists and their artwork. Link (04/03/2013, English, HMS)

Publisher’s Weekly’s Calvin Reid interviews the Society of Illustrators on its role in giving the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art a new location and a redesigned festival in April in New York. Link (12/03/2013, English, HMS)

The Soho Gallery for Digital Art in New York, in conjunction with former Marvel editor and writer Danny Fingeroth, will host a Comic Book Round Table discussion entitled “The Man of Steel vs. Orson Scott Card”  to address the recent controversy over Card’s openly anti-gay politics and the industry. Panellists will include David Gerrold, Joseph Phillip Illige, Paul Kupperberg, Jeff Trexler, Danny Fingeroth, and Adam Dekraker.  The event will be held on the 10th April. Link (English, HMS)

Alex Lockwood of PhD Comics takes us to the Comic Arts Conference to explore the academic side of Comic-Con. Link (English, WG)

Education

Betsy Gomez at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund updates reports that Persepolis has been reputedly banned in a Chicago School. Link (15/03/2013, English, HMS)

Law & Politics

Betsy Gomez at The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund announces that the CBDLF will defend Persepolis by sending a letter of condemnation. Link (15/03/2013, English, HMS)

Research

The Third Triennial Academic Conference at the Festival of Cartoon Art announces a call for papers. The conference will be held at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University on the 14th and 15th November. 250-500 word abstracts and a one-page CV are due by the 1st July. Link (English, HMS)

There is a call for papers for a collection entitled Contemporary Uses of Fairy Tales. The editor seeks submissions focusing upon comic texts Lost Girls and Fables amongst other things. Abstracts are due by the 19th June. Link (19/03/2013, English, WG)

Technology

Bruce Lidl at The Comics Beat discusses the emergence of new digital devices and upgraded technology on smart phones and tablets in the wake of Marvel’s new digital initiative. Link (22/03/2013, English, HMS)

Asia

Japan

Culture

Manga artists Katsuya Terada, Tadahiro Uesugi, and Daisuke Tsutsumi talk about the SKETCHTRAVEL project at the Kyoto International Manga Museum, on the 20th April. Link (English, JBS)

Singapore

The first 24 Hour Comics Day in Singapore was held in 2010. After three editions, an exhibition of the works was held at the Jurong Regional Library, after which it will travel to two other public libraries to reach out to the community. The exhibition is from the 19th March to the 31st July. Link (14/03/2013, English, LCT)

Europe 

Belgium

Culture

Belgian author François Schuiten donates 80% of his original work to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Roi Baudoin Foundation. The BNF will receive the originals of the Cités obscures series. The Belgian Centre for Bande Dessinée (CBBD) and the Angoulême Bande Dessinée Museum will also receive works. Link (26/03/2013, French, LTa)

Recyclart’s exhibition “Don’t Shoot! We Are Not Armed!” displays a variety of South African underground comics artwork. Link (27/03/2013, English, MR)

Obituary

Belgian bande dessinée writer Didier Comès, author of Silence and Le Dieu vivant, has died at the age of 71. Link 1 (07/03/2013, French, LTa), Link 2 (07/03/2013, French, LTa)

Croatia

 Culture

Comic book illustrator and film animator, Borivoj Dovniković Bordo, held a talk on the 19th March at the book club, Booksa. The artist, who has already won several lifetime achievement awards, talked about his career in Yugoslavia, Croatia, and abroad.  Link (19/03/2013, Croatian)

Denmark

Culture

Danish comics celebrate their 100th birthday. Link (04/03/2013, Danish, RPC)

France

Business

Publisher Dupuis has bought out Marsu Productions, which was founded by Spirou author André Franquin. Dupuis will take control of Marsu’s catalogue, including Spirou and 150 other titles. Link 1 (26/03/2013, French, LTa), Link 2 (26/03/2013, English, LTa)

Germany

Culture

“Chicks on Comics”, is an exhibition by female comic artists, taking place in Berlin at Alpha Nova Kulturwerkstatt & Galerie Futura from the 15th March to the 26th April. Link (18/03/2013, German, MdlI)

Research

The ComFor weblog has published a series of posts on unreliable narration in comics. Link (24/03/2013, German, MdlI)

Greece

Culture

The dates and full program of Comicdom Con Athens 2013 have been announced. The event takes place between the 19th and the 21st April. Link (English, LTs)

Asterix visits the Archeological Museum of Kisamos. Link (Greek, LTs)

The exhibition “Comics and Crisis” sees Greek, Spanish, and Argentinian comic artists display works inspired by the current crisis. Link (Spanish, LTs)

“Food, Glorious Food! Bost and the Press” is an exhibition focused on Bost’s satirical cartoons featured in the press and periodicals, from the end of the 1950s until 1980. It will take place between the 5th April and the 19th May. Link (English, LTs)

Education

“Writing with the Incredible Mr. Escher” is an educational program for children aged between 7 and 11 focusing on comics and storytelling. The program ends on the 14th April. Link (English, LTs)

Research

Discussion panels on the digital age, art, and comics and crisis, took place at the Cervantes Institute in Athens on the 20th March. Link 1, Link 2 (Spanish, LTs)

Norway

Culture

Norway gets a new comics festival for children and young adults. Seriefest will take place between the 26th and 28th April. Link (14/03/2013, Norwegian, RPC)

Romania

Culture

Romania hosted its first Comic Con. The ”East European Comic Con” took place in Bucharest between the 30th and 31st March. It featured the work of local cartoonists, as well as gaming, illustration, and cosplay competitions. Link (Romanian, MP)

 Serbia

Culture

Serbian artists made an event in honor of the departed comic book artist Jean Giraud (a.k.a Moebius). On the 21st March (the first anniversary of Moebius’ death), a 24-hour drawing competition took place in the French Institute in Belgrade. This was a part of the exposition “To Be Continued… – Three Generations of Contemporary Serbian Comics.” Link (22/03/2013, Croatian, LO)

Spain

Culture

XVIII Granada Comic Festival took place between the 8th and the 12th March. Quino, famous creator of popular Mafalda, was the special guest, among other national and international artists. Link (Spanish, EC)

The 31st International Comic Convention will take place in Barcelona, from the 11th to the 14th April. The most important event on comics in Spain will host artists such as Gilbert Shelton and Guy Delisle. Exhibitions are thematic, such as one on 75 years of Superman, and others devoted to the work of award winning and recognised national artists. Link (Spanish, EC)

There is a comics and architecture exhibition, featuring Max Vento’s work alongside other artists work that is related to architecture. The exhibition will be open until the 30th April. Link (07/03/2013, Spanish, EC)

“Homage-Exhibition: A Century of Comics” is a retrospective of comics from the Valencian community (1913-2013). Valencia has been at the core of comic creation for the last century. Even during the difficult times of Francoism, Valencian artists managed to keep the quality of their works and combine them with entertainment, and mass production working conditions. This is a homage to their careers and a display of their wonderful past and present works. Link (Spanish, EC)

Jobs

“Fundación Botín” Arts Grant has one grant available for national and international artists, with comics creators included. The grant will last 9 months and applications are due by the 23rd April. Link (Spanish, EC)

UK                 

Culture

The special guests for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival (18th-20th October) have been announced. Link (English, WG)

Obituary

The Guardian reports on the death of Colin Andrew, who drew strips for Dr Who Magazine, and Eagle, amongst other things. Link (24/03/2013, English, WG)

Research

There is a call for papers for a collection upon the various works of Neil Gaiman, entitled “Magic and Dreams and Good Madness: Sociology and Neil Gaiman.” 500 word abstracts, along with a short biography, are due on the 1st June. Link (13/03/2013, English, WG)

There is a call for papers entitled “Time Travel in the Media”. Amongst other mediums, the editors seek submissions looking at time travel in comics and graphic novels. 500 word abstracts are due on the 16th June. Link (12/03/2013, English, WG)

There is a call for papers for a collection focusing upon Josh Whedon’s Firefly. Amongst other things, the editors seek submissions focusing upon the comic book series. 300-500 word abstracts are due on the 1st May. Link (20/03/2013, English, WG)

Registration is now open for the International Graphic Novel and International Bande Dessinée Society Conference, taking place in Glasgow/Dundee (24th-28th June). Link (English, WG) 

Registration is now open for Ethics Under Cover, Comics, Medicine and Society: 4th International Conference on Comics and Medicine, taking place in Brighton (5th-7th July). Link (English, WG)

*                    *                    *

News Editor: Will Grady (comicsforumnews@hotmail.co.uk)

Correspondents: Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto (JBS, Japan), Esther Claudio (EC, Spain), Rikke Platz Cortsen (RPC, Scandinavia), William Grady (WG, UK), Martin de la Iglesia (MdlI, Germany), Nicolas Labarre (NL, France), Mihaela Precup (MP, Romania), Hannah Means-Shannon (HMS, North America), Luka Ostojic (LO, Croatia), Moray Rhoda (MR, South Africa), Greice Schneider (GS, Brazil), Lida Tsene (LTs, Greece), Lise Tannahill (LTa, France), Lim Cheng Tju (LCT, Singapore).

Click here for News Review correspondent biographies.

Suggestions for articles to be included in the News Review can be sent to Will Grady at the email address above.