I have a confession to make. When I sent the manuscript for Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero (Dittmer 2013) to its publisher, I fell off the wagon. After reading superhero comics for the better part of a decade, documenting the adventures of flag-draped superheroes in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom from 1940 to the present, I quit. I’m not someone who believes that a big wall separates the superhero comics from the rest of the comics world, but after over a thousand superhero comics I was definitely ready to switch things up a bit. So I dabbled in all the great new stuff that I had missed when my reading time was occupied by my book project – some of which were discovered by reading this very website (Fransman 2012) and are highly relevant to this essay. And all the while my monthly delivery of Captain America arrived like clockwork, joining its predecessors on my office desk. Last week, I was finally shamed by the verticality of the stack (almost a year and a half’s worth!) into taking them home and giving them some attention. The comics included the end of Ed Brubaker’s eight year run on the title (a pretty remarkable achievement nowadays), during which he famously brought Bucky back from the dead and walked Captain America through the Civil War crossover that made headlines around the world (e.g., Gustines 2007). One might expect a triumphant victory lap for Brubaker’s swansong on the title. Nevertheless, the end of Brubaker’s run seemed fixated on decline and the limits to power. In this essay I hope to briefly trace the ‘Powerless’ storyline (Brubaker and Davis 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2012,d, 2012e), as well as the events leading up to and following from that storyline, before contextualizing it all with a tiny, painless dose of political theory. I will then argue that the trope of ‘Powerless’ (in which, not surprisingly, Captain America’s body loses its superpowers) is a relatively common one over the history of the character. While this is to a certain extent true of many superheroes, in the context of Captain America the plot device is freighted with the baggage of the nationalist superhero genre.
Comics Forum Articles Nominated for 2012 Hooded Utilitarian Awards
Five articles from the Comics Forum website have been nominated for Hooded Utilitarian’s Best Online Comics Criticism 2012 award. The nominated pieces are:
A Note on the Woman who Gave Birth to Rabbits One Hundred Years Before Töpffer by Laurence Grove
Alan Moore’s Lost Treasures: ‘The Hasty Smear of My Smile…’ by Marc Sobel
Image [&] Narrative #5: Graphic Poetry: An (im)possible form? by Steven Surdiacourt
A fragmentary past: Karasik and Mazzucchelli’s City of Glass by Nicolas Labarre
Visual authentication strategies in autobiographical comics by Elisabeth El Refaie
Congratulations to all our writers for being nominated, and many thanks to the team at Hooded Utilitarian for the mentions!
IH
News Review: December 2012
Americas
Brazil
Research
Revista Universitária do Audiovisual (RUA) released a collection of articles devoted to comics and animation, on subjects ranging from page as symbolic space, comics canon and autobiography. Link (16/12/2012, Portuguese, GS)
United States
Business
The Beat reports that longtime editor Karen Berger has stepped down from DC’s Vertigo imprint. Link (03/12/2012, English, HMS)
Joey Esposito of IGN announces that Batgirl writer Gail Simone has been fired from her post on the series. Link (09/12/2012, English, HMS)
The Beat confirms that Batgirl writer Gail Simone has been rehired to write Batgirl after public outcry and pressure on DC to keep Simone on the title. Link (21/12/2012, English, HMS)
Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly announces that Karen Berger’s successor at Vertigo has been named as Shelley Bond. Link (19/12/2012, English, HMS)
Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. presents sales figures on the top 100 comics for November 2012. Link (English, HMS)
Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. presents sales figures on the top 100 graphic novels for November 2012. Link (English, HMS)
The Beat reports on Robert Kirkman’s (The Walking Dead) assertion that digital comics media has not cannibalised print comic sales. Link (19/12/2012, English, HMS)
The Beat reports that Devil’s Due Entertainment, after a period of financial instability and the loss of its top titles, is back in business with new publications and goal. Link (19/12/2012, English, HMS)
The Beat reports on the Eisner Award judges named for 2013. Link (12/12/2012, English, HMS)
Culture
Wizard World announces the addition of Comic Cons in St. Louis from the 22nd-14th March, and Nashville from the 18th-20th October, to its 2013 schedule. Link (English, HMS)
Matthew Katz of DNAinfo.com in New York reports that a special one-day exhibit will celebrate the 75th anniversary of Superman on the 27th January 2013 at the Center for Jewish History in New York. The exhibit will include a panel hosted by Larry Tye, author of Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero. Link (21/12/2012, English, HMS)
Law and Politics
Betsy Gomez of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund announces the CBLDF’s new advisory board for 2013, including Dennis Kitchen and Neil Gaimain. Link (11/12/2012, English, HMS)
Research
Michigan State University announces its 2013 Comics Forum to be held from the 1st-2nd March 2013 and issues a call for abstracts for individual presentations as well as panels and roundtable discussions. 250 word abstracts in PDF format should be submitted by the 31st January 2013, to Ben Chabala at michstatecomicsforum@gmail.com. Link (English, HMS)
Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter interviews critic Marc Sobel about his upcoming books from Fantagraphics, The Love and Rockets Companion and The Love and Rockets Reader, as well as the work of the Hernandez Brothers. Link (26/12/2012, English, HMS)
Technology
The Beat reports on the launch of Symbolia, a tablet app for graphic non-fiction journalism, edited by Erin Polgreen. Link (03/12/2012, English, HMS)
Asia
Japan
Obituaries
The Beat reflects on the death of Barefoot Gen‘s Keiji Nakazawa on the 19th December 2012, and his impact on comics. Link (26/12/2012, English, HMS)
Research
The evolution of BL aesthetics in BL (Boys’ Love) Manga, a talk by Dr. Nishihara Mari and .Dr. Nagata Natsuki, will take place on the 19th January 2013. You can follow this talk on this Ustream channel link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sunnyfunny99. Link (06/01/2013, Japanese, JBS)
Malaysia
Culture
The 11th edition of Comic Fiesta, touted the largest ACG (Animation Comics Games) gathering in Malaysia, was held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on the 22nd and 23rd December. Link (English, LCT)
The Philippines
Research
The Fine Arts Programme of the Ateneo de Manila University organised Panel by Panel: A Dialogue on Comics in Southeast Asia on the 10th December. Speakers included Lim Cheng Tju (Liquid City 2), Otto Fong (Sir Fong’s Adventures in Science), Mark Tores (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and Carlo Vergara (Zsazsa Zaturnnah). Link (English, LCT)
Europe
Austria
Culture
Comics convention Vienna Comix (formerly “Comicbörse”) is held with guest Joscha Sauer. Link (02/12/2012, German, MdlI)
Belgium
Culture/Law
A Brussels court has refused to remove Tintin in the Congo from sale after ruling that the album is not racist under Belgian law. Link (05/12/12, French, LTa)
Croatia
Business
The Ministry of Culture has announced a list of state literary grant winners. The grant (from 21000 to 42000 kunas, which is around 2800 to 5600 euros) has been awarded to 53 literary projects that should be made in 2013, including one comic book project. Alem Ćurin will thus receive 2800 euros to create his comic book Whether You Sail Or Not (original title: Vesl`o ti ne vesl`o). Link (20/12/2012, Croatian, LO)
Culture
The Croatian comic book collective Komikaze will be presented at the Angoulême International Comics Festival that will take place from 31st January to 3rd February in France. Link (26/11/2012, French, LO).
Denmark
Research
The Nordic Network for Comics Research has its 5th newletter out describing the network’s activities. Link (03/12/2012, English, RPC)
Finland
Research
Finland gets another PhD in comics as Mervi Miettinen successfully defended her thesis. Link (15/12/2012, Finnish, RPC)
France
Business
Satirical publication Charlie Hebdo must pay 40000 euros in damages, and print an apology, to cartoonist Siné for unfair dismissal. Link (09/12/2012, French, LTa)
December’s large bande dessinée auction at the Maison Millon raised 1.2 million euros. Link 1 (14/12/2012, French, LTa), Link 2 (11/12/2012, French, LTa)
Cultura replaces FNAC as the sponsor of the Angoulême bande dessinée festival. Link (03/12/2012, French, LTa)
The ACBD (association des critiques et journalistes de bande dessinée) has published its yearly report, the “Rapport Ratier” on the state of the comics market in France, including bandes dessinées, but also comics and manga. The report indicates that while the number of titles is still growing, the number of top-sellers – 50,000 copies and above – appear to be eroding. The market is still dominated by four massive publishers, amounting to nearly half of the production in the sector. Link (27/12/2012, French, NL)
Culture
Before the Angoulême festival, the Critique/ACBD grand prize has been awarded to Alan Guibert for L’enfance d’Alan. The book is a follow up to La guerre d’Alan/Alan’s war, the three impressive volumes Guibert had written and drawn about the life of his American friend Alan Ingram Cope during the Second World War. Link (09/12/2012, French, NL)
Quino, creator of Mafalda, has been made an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the France’s culture ministry. Link 1 (01/12/2012, French, LTa), Link 2 (01/12/2012, French, LTa)
Jacques Tardi has turned down an official distinction from the French government, “la légion d’honneur”. Tardi was apparently not aware that his name had been included in this year’s list – ministries establish a list of deserving citizens – and he willfully turned down the honor, mentioning his desire to remain free from any political influence. Such a refusal is not without precedent, and was indeed a badge of honor for some of the influential writers and intellectuals of the 20th century, who similarly refused to be coopted by the institution. Link (02/01/2013, English, NL)
Law
Charlie-Hebdo has been the focus of much controversy, publishing a special issue on “The life of Mohammed” on the 2nd January 2013, which is described as a historically informed approach to the subject albeit with a humorous graphical treatment. The media coverage mostly chose to emphasise the free speech angle, while relying on the authors’ statements regarding their intents. Link (02/01/2013, French, NL)
Two Muslim organisations are suing Charlie Hebdo for provocation and incitement to racial hatred, after the magazine published cartoons of Mohammed in September 2012. Link (07/12/2012, French, LTa)
Research
Noted comics theorist Thierry Groensteen has conducted a series of interviews with prolific author Joann Sfar. Entretiens avec Joann Sfar. Groensteen explains in his introduction that the book brings together the many autobiographical and artistic clues heretofore scattered in Sfar’s comics and graphic diaries. The book is to be published on the 4th January. Link (10/12/2012, French, NL)
Germany
Business
After a hiatus of 16 years, venerable adult comics magazine U-Comix will be published again from May 2013. Link (***Adult Content. 13/12/2012, German, MdlI)
Culture
Comicfestival München 2013 is announced to take place from the 29th May to the 2nd June. Link (16/12/2012, German, MdlI)
Research
The yearbook Deutsche Comicforschung 2013 is published (ed. Eckart Sackmann). Link (01/12/2012, German, MdlI)
Andreas Veits and Jonas Engelmann have been awarded the Roland Faelske-Preis for research in comics and animation. Link (13/12/2012, German, MdlI)
Ireland
Culture
Bryan Coyle’s and Lee Robson’s Babble graphic novel has once more been delayed. Link (English, SC)
Sweden
Culture
Comics artist Joanna Helgren receives the newpaper Expressen’s youth culture prize. Link (17/12/2012, Swedish, RPC)
Research
The Swedish Foundation Riksbankens Jubileumsfond awards comics scholar Michael Scholtz funding for the project “Entertainment or Propaganda. Comic Strips in Sweden during World War II” (1.251.000 Skr/£167.685). Link (English, RPC)
UK
Culture
Comicbookmovie.com have announced that Mark Millar’s Kapow! Comic Convention won’t return to London until 2014. Link (21/12/2012, English, WG)
On the 31st December, BBC1 Scotland aired a documentary, “Just Dandy”, looking at The Dandy comic book. Link (English, WG)
Downthetubes offers a photo review of 75 Years of the Dandy at the University of Dundee, running until the 12th January, 2013. Link (09/12/2012, English, WG).
Obituary
The Guardian has posted an obituary for Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds, et al.) who died on the 26th December. Many of his creations were adapted into comic books. Link (26/12/2012, English, WG).
Research
The calls for presentations of the second global conference on The Graphic Novel has been posted online. 300 word abstracts are expected on the 22nd March, and the conference will take place at Mansfield College, Oxford, between the 23rd & 25th September, 2013. Link (English, WG)
Oceania
Australia
Research
The conference, “Women’s Manga in Asia: Glocalizing Different Cultures and Identities”, will take place from the 23rd-25th January, in the Department of Japanese Studies, at the University of Sydney. Link (English, JBS)
* * *
News Editor: Will Grady (comicsforumnews@hotmail.co.uk)
Correspondents: Rikke Platz Cortsen (RPC, Scandinavia), Shelley Culbertson (SC, Ireland), William Grady (WG, UK), Martin de la Iglesia (Austria & Germany, MdlI), Nicolas Labarre (NL, France), Hannah Means-Shannon (HMS, North America & Japan), Luka Ostojic (LO, Croatia), Greice Schneider (GS, Brazil), Lise Tannahill (LTa, France & Belgium), Lim Cheng Tju (LCT, Malaysia & The Philippines).
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.
Image [&] Narrative #8: Tying ends together: surface and storyworld in comics by Steven Surdiacourt
The twin concepts ‘sujet’ and ‘fabula’, ‘story’ and ‘discourse’, ‘histoire’ and ‘récit’ have become anchors of our understanding of storytelling. More than that, the interaction between a ‘what’ and a ‘how’ has commonly been recognised as the conceptual core that defines any narrative, independently of its medial form. Seymour Chatman (1990: 9), for instance, has defended the idea that “what makes Narrative unique among the text-types is its ‘chrono-logic’, its doubly temporal logic.” In recent narrative theory, the validity of this distinction is nevertheless regularly questioned (see, for instance, Pier 2003), sometimes resulting in the rejection of the concepts as dated relics of a structuralist narratology. I will not linger over the general details of this criticism here, but rather focus on the applicability of the introduced concepts to graphic narratives.
Responding to Chatman’s reflections on the fundamental character of the ‘chrono-logic’, Martin Schüwer (2008) writes in Wie Comics erzählen that the distinction between story and discourse can be quite problematic for comics. The main reason for this, he argues, is the “inextricability of the material form and the content of the drawing in comics” (Schüwer 2008, 23 [my translation]), the impossibility of separating the signified from the signifier. For Schüwer, this inextricably raises questions such as: “Should we consider the caricatural style of Charles M. Schulz’ Peanuts as a mere feature of the discourse and imagine that Charly [sic] Brown and Lucy actually look quite differently in the recounted world?” (Schüwer 2008: 23 [my translation]). Since the story/discourse dichotomy seems unable to account for certain essential aspects of the medium, Schüwer decides to restrict its use to the analysis of the (double) temporal structure of comics.
To substantiate his argumentation, Schüwer refers to Jens Balzer’s (2002) essay ‘Der Horizont bei Herriman. Zeit und Zeichen zwischen Zeitzeichen und Zeichenzeit’. Analysing a remarkable Sunday page of Krazy Kat, Balzer (whose train of thought is not always easy to follow) sets out to demonstrate the inseparability of signifier and signified in graphic narratives. The page Balzer discusses, depicts yet another day in Coconio County, presenting the obligatory love-triangle constituted by Ignatz Mouse, the brick and Krazy Kat. Yet in this particular story the main protagonist seems to be the horizon line. Balzer focusses on the shifting functions of this line throughout the story. It appears firstly as the conventional representation of the horizon and activates as such a three-dimensional interpretation of the space, it appears also as the horizontal demarcation of a two-dimensional space through which Krazy tickles Igantz’s feet and, finally, as a wire that can be cut or ‘hewed’ and used to tie down Krazy. What is more, the introduction of every new ‘perspective’ does not simply trigger a retrospective revision of the nature of the line. The new function is rather added to the already established one(s) so that, in the end, the horizon line takes on it various shapes simultaneously in the different panels of this minimal story. In spite of the obvious semiotic instability of the line (and its fourteenfold (re-)appearance on the segmented page), the text insists on the identity (or oneness) of the line. In the first four panels, the line is referred to as “the same”, “a continuation” or an “immutable filiform demarcation.” The text, arguably, refers to the graphic surface of the story, where the line remains a line, an identical (or at least similar) graphic mark on the page, despite its multiple functions.
George Herriman’s notoriously unstable world might not be the most reliable base for a general reflection on the narrative organisation of comics, but I do think that this particular strip provides an interesting starting point for the exploration of the mechanisms of graphic representation. What is at stake here, I would suggest, is not the distinction between story and discourse. Schüwer’s problem is not so much caused by the postulation of two different narrative dimensions (which seems to go against his view of the relation between signified and signified) but by his understanding of the relation between those levels. His argument is based on a traditional (read: structuralist) conception in which the story provides the raw material for a particular narrative representation (or discourse) and thus logically precedes this representation (which is, in turn, understood as a distortion of the original story.) Richard Walsh (2007: 52-68) has convincingly challenged this view and has argued instead that the story is not an objective reality that exists independently of a particular narrative representation, but is an interpretative construction by the reader based on the discourse, the only textual reality to which (s)he has access. In his view, the discourse or sujet logically precedes the story and the story or fabula functions as “an interpretative exercise in establishing representational coherence only as a means to the end of this perceptibility” (Walsh 2007: 67) or, in other words, as “the reader’s working version” (Walsh 2007: 68). The story or fabula is then “how we understand sujet per se, and how we understand its contingency (potentially, its unreliability), not in relation to facts or sources, and usually not in comparison with other versions, but with respect to its own disposition of values.” (Walsh 2007: 67). If the story is “a distillate” (Walsh 2007: 66) of the discourse, Schüwer’s question about the appearance of Charlie Brown and Lucy obviously loses its pertinence. The constructivist view of the story also dissipates Balzer’s concern that the uncertain status of the line would be fitted in a linear logic by a narrative approach, that its interesting complexity would be reduced. Since the story, as Walsh emphasizes, is a construction based on the proper disposition of the discourse (and not on a comparison with some external reality), the uncertain status of the line would count as an ‘event’ (albeit a not so common one) in the story. And Balzer’s own effort to describe what is going on in the discussed Sunday page is in itself already a (public) act of interpretative construction.
While the endorsement of this different view on the relation between story and discourse accords with the intuition that the most readers have no difficulty to articulate what is happing in a particular comic (even in a complex one), it doesn’t help to explain the particularity of the discussed Krazy Kat story. Caran d’Ache’s Lettre de Napoléon à Murat (available here) offers a similar but less complex example which helps to grasp said particularity. It presents an even more minimal story in which both Napoleon and General Joachim Murat briefly figure (Napoleon appears in the first five panels, Murat in the very last one). The main part of the text is, however, devoted to the depiction of the adventures of an anonymous courier, carrying a letter from Napoleon to Murat. The journey of the courier (which is quite stirring) reaches its climax in a series of three panels near the end of the text, in which his horse is brutally dismembered by an explosion and, all is well that ends well (at least for the moment), neatly tied back together. What is remarkable about this passage is the temporary breach in the iconic regime of the story: the peculiar revival of the horse is only possible because of its graphic rendering in a style that is known as fil de fer or iron wire. Said otherwise, the two halves of the horse can only be knotted together because the horse is from the beginning on a line or a wire. (Just try to imagine a cinematic equivalent of the described scene.) In these particular panels the continuity of the story seems determined more by a logic of the line than by a pre-determined logic of action. As in the Krazy Kat example, where the line ceases to be a stable spatio-temporal coordinate determining the space in which the action could take place, the line partly liberates itself from its figurative function and brings into play its materiality.
This short lapse does not seem to cause any significant problems for the understanding of the story, it doesn’t even seem to interrupt the narrative continuity. But it does challenge the accepted Platonic notion of mimesis and demands a more complex understanding of the act of reading graphic narratives. The acceptance of a definition of mimesis in dual terms (such as the one advance by Aristotle (see Halliwell 151-176)), as the metaphorical act of seeing a represented world in a crafted object (Halliwell 2002: 189-193) allows for a better understanding of the role of the medial surface in the construction and experience of graphic narratives. It entails a view of the readerly experience not as the unearthing of a virtual narrative by the penetration of its medial surface, as Chatman (1978: 27) phrased it, but as a form of reading in and with the graphic surface, in which the “appreciation of both medium and ‘object’ of the material artifact [sic] and the imagined world that it represents, coalesce in a complex state of awareness.” (Halliwell 2002: 181-182).
Works Cited
Jens Balzer (2002) “Der Horizont bei Herriman. Zeit und Zeichen zwischen Zeitzeichen und Zeichenzeit.” In: Michael Hein et al. (eds.) Ästhetik des Comic. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, pp. 143-152.
Seymour Chatman (1978) Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithace: Cornell University Press.
Seymour Chatman (1990) Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative Fiction in Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Stephen Halliwell (2002) The Aesthetics of Mimesis. Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
John Pier (2003) “On the Semiotic Parameters of Narrative. A Critique of Story and Discourse.” In: Tom Kindt & Harald Müller (eds.) What is Narratology? Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 78-83.
Martin Schüwer (2008) Wie Comics erzählen. Grundriss einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie der grafischen Literatur. WVT: Trier.
Richard Walsh (2007) The Rhetoric of Fictionality. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Steven Surdiacourt is a doctoral fellow of FWO-Flanders at the University of Leuven (Belgium). His PhD research is devoted to the description of storytelling in graphic narratives. He is a member of the editorial board of Image [&] Narrative.
Read more editions of our Image [&] Narrative column here.
Navigating the Post-9/11 Mental Space Architecture and Expressionism in In the Shadow of No Towers by Aletta Verwoerd
On September 11, 2001, Art Spiegelman, son of Auschwitz survivors and renowned author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus (1992), found himself on a “ringside seat” to the attacks on the WTC (Spiegelman, 2004: p. 2). This was it; the moment his parents had anticipated when they taught him “to always keep [his] bags packed” (Spiegelman, 2004 [1]). Personal life and world history collided once again on Ground Zero and, after years of writing and illustrating for The New Yorker – though never combining the two disciplines – the cartoonist returned to the medium that he considers to be ultimately his own: comix.[2]
Spiegelman’s second opus In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) contains ten large-scale cardboard pages, each with an eclectic collection of images and frames: comic figures from the dawn of the twentieth century feature prominently in the autobiographical story that is further built on references to popular culture, including the author’s familiar ‘disguise’ as a mouse. Produced in the two years right after the attacks, the shape of the towers is frequently mirrored in both single panels and in page structures. All together, the book provides a nearly surreal report of life in lower Manhattan; the neighbourhood in which the absence of the Twin Towers was ultimately present. Further, in order to do justice to “oversized skyscrapers and outsized events” (Spiegelman, 2004) the templates are extraordinary in size; each of them designed to precisely fill a full newsprint page, in colour.
Comics Forum 