by Sarah McNicol
Comics are, of course, found in many cultures, from Japanese manga and Chinese manhua to South and Central American historietas, and Filipino komiks that draw on traditional folklore as well as elements of mainstream US comics. Moreover, it has been argued that comic books “have always been attuned to the experiences of immigrant Others” (Davis-McElligatt, 2010: 137). Graphic narratives have long played a crucial role in representing and constructing immigrant subjects and the immigrant experience. Today, several of the most widely known graphic novels address issues of migration including Chris Ware’s (2001) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Shaun Tan’s wordless graphic novel (2007) The Arrival. The latter is often said to depict a universal story of migration, telling “not an immigrant’s story, but the immigrant’s story” (Yang, 2007). Nevertheless, it is explicitly the story of a man’s migration as he leaves his wife and daughter behind to make a better life in a new land. At the end of his struggles, the man reunites with his family who, it would appear, settle seamlessly into their new life without experiencing any of the hardships he has endured. Discussing literature more broadly, Pavlenko (2001: 220) argues, “immigrant women’s stories were continuously ignored by the literary establishment” despite the fact that female migrant life writing often explores different themes from those of traditional male autobiographies.
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Tags: autobiography, Bangladesh, charity projects, digital comics, Gender, graphic lives, migration, UK, Women
This paper looks at a few experiments on comics-storytelling in digital comics. The paper starts with introducing aspects from media psychology and research on technical documentation to look into the narrative and graphic structure of comics and touches on the characteristics of digital media before focusing on specific examples in more detail.
It can be said that a lot of digital and analogue comics constantly experiment on formal and narrative options. This is most obvious where elements of other narrative media get included (see Dittmar 2012 for a more thorough discussion of digital comics). The growing spectrum of forms offers more and more areas to use comics for: not only fictional but also non-fictional issues are communicated increasingly often in comics. For instance, maintenance manuals and assembly instructions for all kinds of artefacts are provided in sequential images more and more (see Schwender 2007, also: Jüngst 2010) – they are much easier to read than descriptive texts, as no translation of text into visual information is done, but the artefact in question and its parts are depicted and can be recognised easily.
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Tags: digital comics, interactivity, multimedia, storytelling
Manga [1] does not easily attract scholarly interest as comics. In the name of manga, the critical focus is usually less on sequential art but rather a certain illustration style or character design, and closely related, fannish engagement in transformative or derivative creations (dōjinshi), up to and including cosplay. In many cases, scholars turn to manga as an entry point for research on girls’ (shōjo) culture and female consumers, gender and sexuality, the subcultures of fujoshi (self-designated “rotten girls” engaged in Boys’ Love, or yaoi)[2] and otaku (geeks). Attempts at elucidating the peculiar role of the comics medium in that regard—for example, by focusing not only on “shōjo” but also “manga” when discussing shōjo manga [3] —remain a distinct minority whenever sociological and anthropological concerns prevail. Be it “fan culture,” “subculture” or “scene,” user communities are given preference over media specificity, texts and individual readings, at least outside of Japan. This applies especially to Japanese Studies, which is still the field yielding most manga research abroad. Here, manga is taken to represent, if not national culture in general, then Japanese popular culture, in the main understood as a youth culture with significant global impact and economic effects. Consequently, the utilization of manga as mere object appears to matter more than methodological diligence.[4] Whether subjected to symptomatic readings of social issues or to sophisticated critical theory, media-specific contexts and manga-related expertise tend to be neglected. This is as much due to specific institutional requirements as it is indicative of a lack within the institution, that is, the absence of a respective field of research and criticism.
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Tags: aesthetics, Alison Bechdel, bande dessinée, Belgium, Benoît Peeters, Boys’ Love, caricature, children readers, CJ Suzuki, comics industry, digital comics, ehon, fandom, formalism, François Schuiten, France, Franco-Belgian Comics, Frederick Schodt, Fujimoto Yukari, Gakushūin University, gekiga, Gender, graphic narratives, Hergé, historiography, humour, Ishiko Junzō, Itō Gō, Japan, Japan Society for Studies in Cartoons and Comics, Japanese manga, jaqueline berndt, Jessica Sugimoto-Bauwens, Kitazawa Rakuten, kodomo manga, komikku, Kyoto International Manga Museum, Kyoto Seika University, manga, manga criticism, manga hyōgenron, manga studies, manhua, manhwa, Meiji University, Miyamoto Hirohito, Murakami Tomohiko, museum, Natsume Fusanosuke, Nicholas Theisen, Nihon manga gakkai, Odagiri Hiroshi, Ono Kōsei, Osamu Tezuka, Paco Roca, ronald stewart, Saitō Chiho, satirical cartooning, Scott McCloud, Shimizu Isao, Takekuma Kentarō, Takemiya Keiko, Takeuchi Osamu, Tezuka, Tezuka Osamu, The Adventures of Tintin, Thierry Groensteen, Tintin, Translations, transmediality, USA, yaoi, Yonezawa Yoshihiro Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures
We are pleased to be able to offer Daniel Merlin Goodbrey’s presentation ‘Digital Comics: New Mutations & Innovations’ for download in PDF format. This paper was presented on the 18th of November 2011 as part of Comics Forum 2011. Many thanks to Daniel for making this available!
Click here to download the presentation.
Abstract: The medium of comics sits on the cusp of the digital future promised to comic creators at the turn of the century. Explorations of the infinite canvas and the many strange mutations of the hypercomic have been given a new relevance and audience by the recent advances in portable display and mobile media. Now, with a decade of experimental digital work behind us, the wider world is at last beginning to catch up to these odd outliers of the form.
As the comics industry moves to catch up with the frontier, newer and stranger ideas must be entertained. The hunt for weirder, more wonderful mutations must be renewed with new vigour and new purpose. This talk considers the different directions potential explorers of the medium might next pursue. It examines the possibilities of new forms such as locative, sonic, game, spatial and AR comics. In doing so it aims to map some of the many trails leading out into the new decade of experimental comics that lies before us.
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey is a senior lecturer in Interaction Design at The University of Hertfordshire in England. A prolific and innovative comic creator, Goodbrey has gained international recognition as a leading expert in the field of experimental digital comics. His hypercomic work received the International Clickburg Webcomic Award in Holland in 2006 while his work in print was awarded with the Isotope Award for Excellence In Comics in San Francisco in 2005. An archive of his work can be found here.
Comics Forum 2011 was supported by Thought Bubble, the University of Chichester, the Henry Moore Institute, Dr Mel Gibson, Routledge, Arts Council England, Intellect and Molakoe Graphic Design.
Tags: digital comics
Comics Forum 