COMICS

COMICS
Br.
CULTURE
 COMICS
&.
.CULTURE

Analytical and Theoretical

Approaches to Comics

Edited by
Anne Magnussen
Hans-Christian Christiansen

Mu seum Tu scul anum Press .$ Uni ve rsity of Copenhagen

Comics and CII/lUre

o Museum Tusculanum Press & me authors, 2000

Cover design by Tine Fuglsang Nielsen
Set and printed in Denmark by AKA-Print, Aarhus

ISBN 87 7289 580 2

Published with the support of

The Danish Research Council for the Humanities
Unibank-fonden

Museum Tusculanum Press

University of Copenhagen
Njalsgade 92
DK-2300 Copenhagen
Denmark
CONTENTS

Introduction
Ha ns-Chrisl1'an Chn'Sliansen & AlIne Magnussell 7

Why are Comics Still in Search of Cultural Legitimization?

Th ierry Groensteen 29

The Crisis in Modern American and British Comics,

and the Possibilities of the Internet as a Solution
Roger Sabin 43

America 's First Comics? Techniques, Contents, and Functions

of Sequential Text-Image Pairing in the Classic Maya Period
J esper Nielsen & Sel'Cll Wichmalln 59

Modular Structure and Imageffext Sequences:

Comics and Interactive M edia
George L egrady 79

The Importance of Being 'P ublished',

A Comparative Study of Different Comics Formats
Pascal LefCvre 91

Comics and Film: A Narrative Perspective •

Ham -C hrislian CJzristiansen 107

"Cutting Up" Again Part 11: Lacan on Barks on Lacan

Donald Ault 123
Popaganda: Superhero Comics and Propaganda in World War Two
Chris Murray 141

From Ahab to Peg-Leg Pete: A Comic Cetology

M. Thomas Inge 157

Weird Signs. Comics as Means of Parody

Ole Frahm 177

The Semiotics of C. S. Peirce as a Theoretical Framework

for the Understanding of Comics
Anne Magllussen 193

What if the Apocalypse Never Happens:

Evolutionary Narratives in Contemporary Comics
Abraham Kawa 209

ZOOOAD and HoUywood:The Special Relationship

between a British Comic and America n Film
James How 225

Contribucors 243

The illustrations that accompany the articles are divided into 'figures' and
'plates'. The black and white figures are placed within the text whereas the co-
lour plates are adioined separatclv between pp. 48 and 49.
Introduction

Hans-Christian Christiansen and Anne Magnussen

The present anthology is based on talks given at the conference, Comics

& Culture, held at the University of Copenhagen, 24-26 September
1998. The overall objective of [he, anthology is identical to the aim of
the conference, namely, [0 contribute to the theoretical debate about
comics in the cultural context of the 20th century. The 13 articles ex-
hibit a great variety of theoretical approaches as well as subject matter.
The theoretical frameworks draw on general media theory, culcurai and
sociological studies, semiotics, posrsr(ucturalism and literary theory.
The subject matter includes general discussions of the aesthetics of
comics, comics in relationship to other media, comics in society and
ana lyses of specific comics or comics genres.
This variety reflects the general state of today's comics research, a
field which is difficult to categorise according to a limited number of
theoretical schools or institutions. The articles therefore provide a gen-
eral introduction to the research field, and they can be viewed as a sample
of ways in which comics can be approached from an academic angle.
This introduction will give an account of the history of comics research
and the 13 articles will be introduced where appropriate.

In a historical perspective, the lack of well-defined theoretical schools is

partly due to a lack of interest in the field as such. One reason is that
comics are not considered as belonging to the 'fine arts'. As a conse-
quence, no generally-acknowledged critical institutions have been estab-
lished, and there has been only little interest in aesthetic appraisal of
comics. Whereas ~lm, at an early stage, was subject to aesthetic consid-
eration and gained the possibility of being included in the group of estab-
lished art forms, comics have only sporadically been subject to this ap-
proach .
, In his article W'hy are Comics still in Search of Cultural Legitimizazion?
(p. 29) , Thierry Groensteen answers the question of his title br suggest-
ing that the academic prejudice against comics is based on four 'original
sins'. These are; the fact that comics are 'hybrids' consisting of images
as well as text; the grouping of comics as panl- or sub-literature; the
8 HANS-CHRISTIAN CHRlSTIANSEN AND ANNE MAGNUSSEN

historical relationship between comics and caricature; and the consid-

eration of comics as 'children's litera ture'. Groensteen offers an histori-
cal account of the reasons behind, and the development of, these four
points and presents a bleak image of the history of comics in academia.
This does nor mean, though, that comics theory is a fi eld en tirely
without a h istory of research . The field has contributed with an insight
into a complex form of graphic expression which has been of great im-
portance in the development of the iconography of modem culture.
There may even be signs of better times to come for comics research.
This is due to many factors, where two of the most important are di-
rectly connected to the comics' Status as a 'popular cultural product'. l
The postmodern perspective has challenged art as an institution and
renders the possib ili ty of 'anything' to be considered art. This perspec-
tive has opened the way for a series of analyses in wh ich comics are
considered not only as 'mass culture', but also as aesthetically interest-
ing texts, capable of engendering meaning on a variety of levels.
Ironically, another possible sign of better times for comics research
could be the diminishing importance of comics as popular cultural nar-
ratives, due to competition from new media . The Internet and other
computer-related products have conquered an important part of the
traditional comics audience of children and teenagers. Since the 1980s,
sales figures in Europe as well as in the USA have stagnated, and there
has been a movement away from perceiving comics as a mass medium
towards seeing comics as a cult phenomenon andlor an art form. These
changes are negative for the financial future of the comics industry, but
if they lead to a general change in the comics' cultural status, a change
in academic interest could follow as well.
Another re lated point of view is the one according to which the In-
ternet and 'net-comics' will take over the market for prim comics and
eventually lead to the complete disappearance of the latter. Roger Sabin
addresses the question in his articl e, The Crisis ill Modern American and
British Conties, a.nd the Possibilities of lhe lncemel as a SoLution (p. 43).
From a comparison of the two media, Sabin concludes that because of a
series of aesthetic as well as physical differences between the two med ia,
there is no reason to believe that net-comics will be the next historical

I. FollolVingJim Collins (1 991 , p. 180) the term 'popular (;UILUre' is chosen to desig-
nate phenomena, which are not considered part of me 'high arts' of the Modcmist/
posUl1odernist era, and which are circulated mostly through other channels than
the high arts. 'PopuJ:lr' was preferred to 'mass' in an effort to avoid tlle negative
INTRODUCTION 9

step, wholly eliminating the market for print comics. Furthermore, Sabin
calls attention to the fact that the comics crisis is economic in nature,
and not artistic, which indicates that print comics are still vigorous.
Whether future years will witness an increasing academ ic interest in
comics or not, there are at least a few positive notes in the context of
this anthology. For one, it was possible to gather a considerable group
of comics researchers, including a nu mber of Ph.D. students (comics
researchers of the future), to the conference behind this anthology.
Another positive sign is the fact that the Danish Research Council for
the Humanities has given its fina ncial support to the publication of
this anthology, expressing as one of their explicit reasons, the wish to
support the field of comics research.
Below, we will first discuss the definition of the term 'comics', and
then present a short introduction to the history of comics research, and
comics theory in particular. The introduction is structured according to
four major theoretica l perspectives: a structuralist perspective including
the analogy between film and comics, a psychoanalytic perspective, a
critical/Marxist perspective, and a postmodern and poststructuralist per-
spective. Focus will be on the general featu res of each perspective as well
as on the most important andlor representative texts and researchers
connected to them.

An important factor when considering comics research is the pro-

nounced geographical distinction between the Franco-Belgian and the
Anglo-American research traditions. The distinction should not be un-
derstood in the sense that the above four gen.eral perspectives can be di-
vided up between the two traditions, although the structuralist perspec-
tive, for example, was founded, and had its greatest force, in France and
Belgium . Both traditions have, at different times, to different degrees
and in a variety of forms, been inspired by these general theoretical ap-
proaches. The peculiar thing is that the two traditions hardly inspire
each other, and a.dialogue between them has been almost non-existent.
In practice this means that cross-references in books and articles have
been few, a fact that has led to a very limited interchange of ideas and
theoretical development between the Franco-Belgian and the Anglo-
American traditions.
Another problem arises when trying to assign the four perspectives
to specific historical periods of time. In the case of the structuralist per- .
spective, for instance, it peaked in comics research in the 1970s and the
beginning of the 1980s. But studies published as late as in the 1990s
10 HANS-CHRISTIAN CHRISTIANSEN AND ANNE MAGNUSSEN

draw on the ideas behind the structuralist approach although combin-

ing them, in the majority of cases, with other theoretical frameworks.
These two factors of geography and time frame need to be taken into
account when reading the introduction to comics research history.

Definitions of the term 'comics'

An ongoing feature in the history of comics research, as well as in the
articles in this anthology, is the question of how to define the term
'comics'. On the one hand, it seems somewhat strange that the defini-
tion of the actua l phenomenon studied within the field of comics re-
search is a recurring matter of dispute, embracing rather different, and
in some cases incompatible, definitions. On the other hand, it is an ob-
vious, and necessary, question to consider and it is becoming even
more relevant with the emergence of new, interactive media.
Most researchers agree on a series of formal characteristics, such as
the sequence of panels, as part of a definition. Others include content
and/or function as parameters. For some researchers, part of the defini-
tion of comics relates to production and market besides a series of for-
mal characteristics. According to such a definition, comics were 'born'
with the mass production of American newspaper comic strips in 1896.
To others, the definition should only include formal characteristics, a
definition which, in its most extreme form, would designate the Bayeux
tapestry and vessels from the classic Mayan period as comics.
One of the researchers who has treated the question in various con-
texts and from different angles is Thierry Groensteen, who also refers to
the question in his article. Together with Benoit Peeters, he has studied
the question of when comics as a medium can be said to have emerged .
Recently, one of the most disputed definitions of comics has been that
suggested by Scott McCloud (1993), which contains a minimum offor-
mal characteristics and no aspects of content or function. To many, this
definition seems to include far too many phenomena which, from a
pragmatic perspective, are not considered to be comics (in this anthology:
Sabin and Magnussen). It includes such historical phenomena as the
Bayeux tapestry mentioned above, but it also comes to include pheno-
mena relating to the new interactive media and the Internet. The latter
have engendered a new series of questions regarding a delimitation of
what comics are, and comics researchers will no doubt continue the
discussions in the future. This apparently never-ending discussion of a
common definition of comics can be viewed as problematic, as it ques-
rNTRODUCTrON II

tions the boundaries of the subject studied in 'comics research'. On the

other hand, it creates a high level of consciousness regarding the subject
matter, and its existence acknowledges the fact that the m eans of com -
munication change and develop over time, according to their substance
as well as to the way in which th ey are perceived.
In this anthology, two articles specifically analyse phenomena that
would divide the waters concerning a definition of comics among re-
searchers. In the aI;ticle,
aJ;"ticle, America's First Comics? Techniques, Contents, and
Functions oJ Sequential Text-Image Pairing in the Classic Maya Period (p.
59), Jesper Nielsen and Soren Wichmann study a series of vessels
from the classic Maya period on which text and images are integrated
into story-like messages. Nielsen and Wichmann conclude that even
though a series of formal characteristics converge, the content as well as
the function of the vessels differs considerably from the content and
function of comics of the 20th century. Whereas Nielsen and Wichmann
are concerned with phenomena of the past, George Legrady, in his ar-
ticle Modular Structure and Image/Text Sequences: Comics alld Interactive
Media (p. 79), relates comics' narrative style to modular information
structures and uses this theoretical investigation as an evaluative and
p ractical model for an interactive CD-ROM. In this sense, he introduces
some of the possibilities and delimitations of new media in the discussion
of the definition of comics.
Pascal Lefevre in his article, The Importance oJ Being 'Published'. A
Comparative Study of Differellt Comics Formats (p. 91) presents another
angle on defining comics. Pascal Lefevre elaborates a classification of
the formats in which comics are published (album, strip etc.). H e argues
that the format is of great importance for the aesthetics and the content
of comics. The format guides the readers' expectations to the comics,
and more importantly, it is extremely influential in terms of the possi-
bilities and limitations put on the artists. Lefevre categorises a series of
the major formats and uses a FlemishF lemish comic as an example of the spe-
cific possibilities of the newspaper comic strip.

A structuralist perspective and the film analogy

Comics research was, at the outset, a primarily Franco-Belgian matter
in which the foundation of comics-related institutions played a crucial
role. One of these institutions was Club des Bande Dessinee 2 from 1962 . .

2. From 1964: Centr/! Liueral/l!"es d'Expression Graphique (CEtEG)

Cent!"/! d'Ewde des Liueral/lres
12 HANS-CHRISTIAN CHRlSTIANSEN AND ANNE MAGNUSSEN

It had as its primary objective the definition of the aesthetics of comics

and drew upon the co-operation of Francis Lacassio, Alain Resnais,
Pierre Couperie, Umberto Eea, Federico Fellini and Edgar Morin
among others. In 1964 came Societe d'Etudes et de Recherches des Liuera-
tures Dessinee (Socerlid) and , in 1990, Centre Nalional de la Bande Dessinee
(CNBDI). The appearance of the first of these institutions coincided
with a number of creative innovations in connection with the Fren ch
magazine Pi/ote (including comics by Jean Giraud, Fred, Gotlib, and
later, Jacques Tardi and Enki Bilal). A circle of'auteurs', as well as a fo-
cus on com ics as an adult medium, was thus established.
In 197 1, Francis Lacassin was appointed professor in the history
and aesthetics of com ics at the University of Paris Sorbonne. Over the
following years a series of university publications were published by e.g.
Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle (1972, 1977), Hunig (1974) and Alain Rey
( 1978), in which comics were studied from a scientific, primarily struc-
turalist, poim of view. Also the specia l issue of Communications (No 241
1976): La bande dessinnee et son discours helped to create a framework
for comics research based on a broad structuralist perspective.
Semiology and structuralism dominated, to a very large extent, the
ea rly comics research . This was due partly to the fact that semiology,
particularly in France and Italy, contributed greatly to the methodology
of general media research. Furthermore, comics represent an almost
complete catalogue of semiological problems and were, in that respect, an
appropriate subject of study for theoretical semiology. The structuralist
perspective can be divided into two main branches of which one is the
study of the comics narrative, often analysed as mythological systems,
and the other the study of comics as a graphic language system.
The study of comics narrative is based primarily on structural narra-
tology. Among others, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle (1972) and H iinig
(1974) have analysed narrative functions, sequences and actantial con-
stellations in comics. In continuation of the works of Levi-Strauss and
Roland Barthes, comics are, furthe rmore, analysed as mythological sys-
tems referring to archetypal values. This approach to comics methodol-
ogy has also been significant in Germany, as well as providing the point
of departure for the few Danish comics analyses.
Looking at comics as a language system was an obvious idea consid-
ering the linguistic character of sem iology. Hiinig (1974), for example,
described a comics sequence as a totality th at can be divided into 'syn-
tactemes' (panels/sentences), visual objects (characters/persons, i. e. the
'words' of the comics) and visual minimal units (e.g. mouth and eyes of
INTRODUCTION 13

the characters). Other examples are Koch (197 1) who analysed the
minimal differentiating units in comics - 'representemes'- such as lines
and shadows, and KJoepfer (I977) and Oomen (1975) who ana lysed
systems of phonemes and paradigms. This type of research is represen-
tative of the early semiology of images and the endeavour to build a
'grammar' of comics.
The idea of creating a grammar of comics seems also to underlie twO
popular studies of.American origin. One is Will Eisner's Sequential Art
( 1986) in which Eisner analyses comics as a sequential language based
on a codification of gestures and facial expressions. The other is Scon
McCloud's extremely influential Understanding Comics~ The Invisible Art
(1993). Contrary to the structuralist approach, some of McCloud's key
ideas include a focus on the reader's participation in the creation of
meaning. In this sense, McCloud's book is not structuralist. The reason
for mentioning it in the context of structuralism is because of tile simi-
larity with the early structuralist studies concerning the idea that the
comics' form of expression can be described according to a limited
number of parameters. Taking his point of departure in general reflec-
tions on language, perception and culture, McCloud describes the formal
apparatus in comics, and presents a grammar of comics based on six
basic elements: drawing style, spacing of panels (closure), time, gestures,
image-text relations and use of colour. The conclusions drawn from
such a grammar are useful and inspiring, especially because they are
based on very specific problems regarding the creation and understanding
of comics. The ideas of identification based on style and the idea of closure
in particular, have inspired comics artists as well as comics researchers.

The significance of McCloud's book is primarily rooted in the excellent

presentation and communication of the sub ject matter, bu t also in that
Understanding Comics has evolved into a common point of reference in
comics research . This is obvious in the present anthology in which there
are references to Understanding Comics in many of the articles as a point
of departure for discussion and criticism. Because of the central posi-
tioning of Understanding Comics in the theoretical d iscussions of comics
McCloud's book has been subject to critical evaluation from different
angles in the last couple of years. One example of this is the special issue
on McCloud of the magazine Comics Journal (No. 211, April.l999). In
this issue a series of American comics researchers criticise McCloud's
views on closure, identification and art. The criticism is primarily cen-
tred on the lack of theoretical foundation in Understanding Comics.
14 HANS-CHRISTIAN CHRlSTIANSEN AND ANNE MAGNUSSEN

In relation to a theoretical development McCloud does not refer to

the existing academic insight into the different elem ents he analyses,
even though many of the ideas have been presented by other, mostly
Franco-Belgian, researchers. Understanding Comics is composed without
reference to any specific perceptual and semiotic theories, but is built
on a general view on meaning production. McLuhan's Understanding
Media is thus onc of the few theoretical works mentioned in the biblio-
graphy. McCloud's comics theory is founded on McLuhan's idea, that
comics constitute a 'cold' medium which leaves the reader to give
meaning to the form of expression. The idea though, that the reader
creates the text, either entirely or partly, is not new in comics research.
Michei Bodmer (1985) and Richard Watts (1989) argue, for example,
that the way in which the reader infers by creating hypotheses between
differeD( elem ents in comics, is the most important factor in the creation
of meaning.
The mental process with which the comics reader transforms the
simp le line drawings into faces and figurines, is furthermore described
by Philippe Marion ( 1993), by Thierry Groensteen (1990a), and by
T6pffer as early as in 1845. Relating to the writings ofT6pffer, Gom-
brich (1982) refers to what he chooses to call 'the law ofT6pffer' which
states that any configuration that the reader would interpret as a face is
induced with life and personality. Under the heading of ' The psychoan-
alytical perspective' below, we refer to an idea by Marion along similar
lines. According to Marioo comics have the possibility of intensification
through simplification which makes some comics seem more dynamic
than others.

Parallel to a structuralist approach to comics, the narrative potential of

comics has often been described according to the narrative tcchniques
of the film (editing, camera movement, change in perspective etc).
Manuel Kolp has created the most thorough classification of the com-
mon characteristics of film and comics in h is Le /angage cinemata-
graphique ell bande dessinee (1992). Kolp holds that without the 7 th art
(film), there would not have been a 9'h art (com ics). The analogy be-
tween the twO media has given rise to the common belief that the tech-
niques and elements of expression used in comics have been developed
in, and rightfully belong to, other media. This anitudc has led to a gen-
eral depreciation of comics as an inferior, more static version of film as
expressed in th e words of Rene Clair: "Comics; film without move-
ment" (quoted in Grocnsteen 1990b, 16). It is important to notice,
INTRODUCrION 15

though, that co mics existed before fi lm, and that tile cinematogr,aph ic
language (close up, point of view, dynamic editing of camera angles)
was established in comics long before Porter and Griffith developed the
narrative fil m . Tom Gunning ( 1986) goes as far as to stipul ate that
comics were a more significant source of insp iration in the development
of the early fil m narrative than theatre.
A key article regarding the opposition to the film analogy is Thierry
Groenste,e n's "D u .7e au ge art" (1990b). Groensteen presents and
analyses the aesthetic and narrative differences between the two m edia
in an effort to delineate the aesthetic value of comics. Using twO aspects
from cinematographic language (form and substance) as a point of de-
parture, Hans-C hristian Christianscn argues along similar line;; ·in
his articl e, Comics and FIlm: A Narrative Perspeaive (p. 107) . Christiansen
concl udes that even though there are obvious analogies between comics
and film, there are even more intriguing differences which undermines
som e of th e postulates abo.u t cin ematic influence on comics.

The questioning of the comics-film analogy can be seen as part of a

genera l tendency towards a questioning of all fo r mal systems of expla-
nation concerning the comics form of express ion. In this regard, twO
feat ures have gained increased interest. One is a focus on the specific
aesthetic characteristics of comics parallel to the development in gener-
al semiology of images. The other feature is a focus on the reader's sig-
nificance in the creation of meaning. The articles of Roland Barthes on
popular culture have greatly inspired especially Franco-Belgian ·comics
research, and the movement detectable in Barthes' articles, from struc-
turalism (e.g. Elements of Semiology ( 1967)) to a focus on the reader
(The Pleasure of the Text (1975)) is similar in comics research. A signi-
ficant part of Franco-Belgian comics research from the 1980s and on-
wards can be ascribed to so-called posrstruc turalism and will be treated
under this heading below.

Psychoanalysis and Enunciation

The terminology of psychoanalysis is often used in stud ies of comics,
especially regarding comics' attraction to children, but the number of
theoretical works with an explicit psychoanalytical focus is rather limit-
ed. At its outset, psychoanalytical analysis of comics was a Franco-Bel-
gian phen om enon like the structura list perspect ive . Tisseron represents
a psycho-biographical approach with his Tinxin chez le psychoanlysle
16 HANS-CHRlSTJAN CH RISTJANSEN AND ANNE MAGNUSSEN

( 1985), in which the characters in H erge's comics are interpreted as ex-

ternalisations of different aspects of the artist 's personality. But the
principal perspective in the psychoanalytical approach is the hypothesis
of comics reading as a reaccivarion of an original act, namely the child 's
separation from the mother. This is the starting point in the studies of
Tisseron (1987) and Covin (1976).
Serge Tisseron (1987) observes a parallel between the reading of
comics and Freud's description of how the child becomes accustomed
to the separation ' from its mother. The fascination of comics lies, ac-
cording to Tisseron, in the way in which figurines and objects, almost
by magic it seems, come into existence through simple lines. And, Tis-
seron argues, this fa scination is connected to the primary separation in
that it "annuls the effec ts of the separation" (Ti sseron 1987, 50, editors'
translation) and therefore is satisfying. Philippe M arion (1993), who
discusses the specific enu nciation in comics, further develops this rela-
tionship between reader at:ld comic. Through the 'graphic trace' in
comics, the reader identifies with the absent enunciator and the comics'
graphic expression is turned into a "privileged intermediary between act
and thought" (Marion 1993, 20, editors' translation). According (0
Marion, this basic continuity of the graphic act is essential to the un-
derstanding of the way in which comics communicate.
Martin Barker ( 1989), among others, objects to a strong connection
between childhood and comics, and he points to the problems in seeing
the instincts of adults as identical to the original experie nces an d child-
hood instincts. Marion is aware of the problem s concerning an 'infanti-
Iisation ' of the readers. H e tones down the psychoanalytical perspective
fo r the benefit of an instance of enunciation that is founded on the
comics having an index-effect pointing to the comics artist. A proximity
to the absent artist is triggered through the graphic trace, creatin'g an
effect of presence through absence. Contrary to a similar subject of
enunciation in photography, comics produce a unique "effect of brevity"
(Marion 1993, 20, editors' translation), which creates an illusion of
spontaneity and 'unfin ishedness'. It is entirely up to the reader to com-
plete this 'unfinishedness' and in this way awaken the apparently lifeless
drawings. This would be !.he reason why comics drawn with very fine
lines, as H erge's /igne ciaire, seem especially dynamic in the imagin ation
and exemplifies the phenomenon Mation refers to as 'intensification
through simpl ification' mentioned above.
In his article, "Cutting Up" Again Part 1I. Lacan on Barks on Lacan
(p. 123) Donald Ault does n ot enter into d iscu ssion with the French
INTRODUCTION 17

psychoanalytical works mentioned above, but it can be seen as a paral-

lel suggestion for a psychoanalytically based explanation of (some)
com ics' fa scination. Ault argues that the registers of the Im aginary, the
Rea l and the Sym bolic of Jacques Lacan are id ea l for the description of
the comics page consisting of text and images, and frag mented by the
gaps between panels as a mosaic mirror. In an an alysis of Carl Barks'
Donald Duck, Ault uses these concep ts as well as the poststructuralist
concept of the un.s table signifier, to explain why Barks ' comics are
unique and fasc inating to readers.

Conservatism, the Marxist perspective and Cultural Studies .

In USA and Britain, comics have never enjoyed the same cultural rec-
ognition as in France and Belgium . A series of pronounced negative
views of comics have been presented from various perspectives. One is
a conservative view on popular culture in general , motivated by the
wish to maintain the existing hierarchies and values of the ' fine ar ts',
and another is a critical/Marxist view on comics, which considers com-
ics as a means of indoctrinating children with the ruling ideologies of
society.
Very few actual analyses or theoretical ideas eman ate from the con-
servative perspective as comics are not regard ed as worthwhile objects
for serious academic work, and the criticism is thus stated on a general
leveJ.l Contrary to this, there are a considerable number of comics
analyses from the critical/Marx ist perspective. The primary focus here
has been on comics as 'popular culture', based on the premise that pop-
ular culture reflects the ideology of the ruling cl asses. The notorious
ideolog ical critical analysis of comics is D orfman and Mattelart's H ow
la Read Donald Duck ( 1975). The two authors argue th at even the most
apparently innocent com ics present the child with the principal conven-
tions of society. Their analysis has been questioned by M artin Barker
( 1989) who argues that D orfman and Mattelart confer meaning to that
which is not present in the comics. They conclude, for example, that the
absence of parentS points to a suppression of sexuality, and the absence
of the representation of a working life means that the comics camou-
flage production. According to Barker, Dorfm an and Mattelart also
overlook the humour that places the individual motives in bigger, ab-
surd themes.

3. Expressed by e.g. Dwighl McDonatd, ER. Lewis :md Ortega y Gasset.

18 HANS-CHRlSTIAN CHRlSTIANSEN AND ANNE MAGNUSSEN

It can be argued that a conservative criticism underlies the studies of

Richard Hoggarr, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall , as well as other
studies associated with British Cultural Studies. With the setting-up of
the department for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham
( 1964), rhe concept of culture was extended to cover human behaviour
and activity in its broadest sense and demanded that popular culture be
taken seriously. This has been very important in regard to research into
popu lar culture, incl uding comics, and the integration of the field at the
universities. But the growing interest in popular culture from a political
and ideological perspective did nor lead to a similar interest in the aes-
ti:-etics of popular culture. Richard Hoggart, one of the initiators of
Cultura l Studies in Birmingham, was thus deeply concerned with the
visualisation of culture represented by, for example, comics, and his
fear of the new cu lture of images is not far from the criticism presemed
in Wertham's Seduction of the innocent (1954).1 In The Uses of Literacy
(1963) Hoggart points out how comics represent "a passive visual tak-
ing-on of bad mass-art geared to a very low mental age" (I963, 20 I)
and in his conclusions he refers to Wertham 's book as "the most thor-
ough analysis of American com ic books" (1963, 369). To some extent,
this view was the general view at the Birmingham Cultural Studies, but
it was not the only one. The Birmingham School also represented an
opening towards other readings of popular cultural texts, exemplified
by analyses of subcu ltures and the introduction of a subtler concept of
ideology and power through the studies of Gramsci and Althusser.
The New Left in USA had its roots in the Frankfurt School, as did
the Cultural Studies in Birmingham. At its outset, The New Left had,
therefore, a focus on the negative effects of popular culture. Since the
1980s though, the original deterministic school of culture criticism has
changed into an involvement in popu lar cuhure with more dynamic
models of the social subject based on the writings of e.g. Foucault,
Michel de Certeau and Bourdieu. From this forum emerges a distinct
theoretical movement that focuses on the ways in which popu lar culture
is parr of the formation of political consciousness through themes,
genres and patterns of perception (see e.g. Lazere (Ed.) 1987).

4 \XI'enham's book was onc of [he corner stOnt:s in the American crusade against
comics in the 1950s, which ineluded the formation of pressure groups, special
hearings in the Senate and considerable self-censorship in the comics industry.
Wertham was a psychiatrist and Seductioll of the fllI/oeml was presenled as scientific
INTRODUCTION 19

As an example of new developments of the ideological critical per-

spective on comics, C h r is M u rray introduces contemporary post-
structuralist theory in his analysis of the ideological funct ion of Ameri-
can superhero comics in his article, Popagallda: Superhero Comics and
Propagallda ill Wbrld War TfJ.J() (p. 14 1). In a comparative study of super-
hero comics covers and war posters from the 1940s. Murray argues that
the boundary between popular and official texts is unstable, in that
both types of texts enter into the same circulation of myths in society.
In relation to the critical/Marxist perspective, Umberto Eco 's essays
on comics should be mentioned. The essays h ave been extremely influ-
ential in the understanding of the specificity of the comic's narrative
form. as well as being of great importance for the integra tion of popular
cu lture at the universities. On a general level, Apocaliuici e Integ rali
( 1965) questions the pred ominant conception of popular culture at the
time when it was published . At the same time though. Eco's comments
on the ideology of popu lar culture were a continuation of (he Marxist
premise, according to which popular culture reflects the ideology of the
ruling classes.
In If mondo di Charlie B rown (1965) Eco d iscusses the ideology of
comics and one of his conclusions is that the deficiencies assigned to
the capita list economy in Donald Duck & Co. are harmless to contem-
porary capitalism. In the comics the defi ciencies are ascribed to the
capitalism of the beginning of the century (similar to the universe of
Dickens). and are therefore not 'dangerous' for contemporary capital-
ism. The scenario of comics' ideology seems sombre when reading the
essays of Eco: Comics reflect the implied pedagogy of the system and
functions as hidden indoctrination with dominating myths and values.
However. Eco opens for the possibility of singular comics having the
potentia l of rising above th is scenario. Looking to traditional aesthetic
ideas of the art genius and the outstanding work of an, Eco 'rescues'
specific comics as Charles Schultz' Peanuts and H erriman's Krazy Kal
from popular culture by considering them 'an'.
In relation to this rather traditiona l approach to comics and popular
cultural ideology, his third essay about comics in Apocaliuici e Integral1~
It milO di Superman (1965) is more interesting. In this essay Eco is open
to the aesthetic pleasure of popular culture's redundant messages, and
he discusses the iterative schemata of comics in a broader perspective of
reception theory. He also concludes that the messages of popular cul-
ture are less dangerous as we are aware of their ideological content. In
the essays of Eco, there is thus a movement (paralle! lo the changes in
20 HANS-CHRISTIAN CHRlSTIANSEN AND ANNE MAGNUSSEN

the cultural studies) from hegemony/ideology towards a more dynamic

reception perspective and the postmodern approach. which will be dis-
cussed be low.
A valuable point in Eeo's A pocalittici e Integrati is his pointing our of
one of the major schisms in the approach to comics and popu lar culture
in genera l. Eec differentiates between twO intellectual approaches to
popular culture: the 'apoca lyptic' and the ' integrated '. The 'apoca lyptic'
intellectuals reject popular culture as anti-culture. and see no aes thetic
potential in these cultura l forms. Eeo distances himself from this ap-
proach, of which Adorno and Horkheimer are representatives, because
they do not analyse the texlS, but take their stand on general. negatively
defined categories as 'mass' and 'fetish '. The 'integrated' in tellectuals
are researchers who do see a positive potential in popular culture and
who produce texts that ca n be said to form parr of that sam e popu lar
culture they describe. McLuhan's Undemanding Media is an example of
such a text. In another context ( 1972) Eco points Out that the integrated
approach is n ot exactly positive for comics research:

"The phenomenon of comics is further complicated by the mis-

sionary zeal shown by many of their defenders. The student is of-
ten tempted to break through the barriers of public and academic
indifference by championing his interest in comics with the ag-
gressive attitudes of the fan. He will often be carried away into
exaggera ted statements of fa ith. if only to overcome a certa in em-
barrassment he may still feel himself... " (Eco 1972. 11 8)

A group of Amer ican researchers in the academic environment of

Bowling Green State University represented to some degree this ap-
proach. Tn the wake of the student rebellions of the 1960s, this em, iron-
ment took on the character of a counterculture. Partly as a reaction
aga inst the conservative and Marxist perspectives. the environment de-
veloped an approach to popular culture inspired by the writings of
McLuhan and Susan Somag, having the Journai of Popular Culture as
their m edium. Popular cultural texts s·.1ch as cartoons and comics pre-
sented themselves to analyses of intentional and thematic m eaning, and
for literary methods of analysis in general. But the tesults can be de-
scribed more as a celebration of popular cu lture than as methodological
and theoretical new thinking.
Apan from studies focus ing on theory and/or methodology. there is,
in American research, a tradition for primarily historical studies of
INTRODUCTI ON 21

comics. M. Thomas Inge is one of the most important researchers in

this fie ld, and his Comics as Culture (1990) is a representative example.
In M.Thomas Inge's article, From Ahab to Peg-Leg Pele:A Comic Cew/ogy
(p. 157) he discusses and compares the adaptations of Herman
Melville's Moby Dick, and traces the intertextual references {Q this nov-
el over time, up to very recently published comics.

The postm.odern and poststructuralist perspective

Poststruccuralism is often considered an extension of postmodernism,
as two cul ture theories and practice forms which underl ine the hetero-
geneity and the indeterminacy of contemporary culture. Bur the origins
of the twO differ in that posrstructuralism was a primarily European
phenomenon and postmodernism primarily American. Poststructural-
ism had its point of departure in the opposition to early structuralism
and is, to a high degree, associated with modernism and a depreciation
of popular culture, whereas postmodernism argues against the modernist
traditions in art and architecture. In comics research this geographical
distinction was valid up until the 1980s, but in today's research it is no
longer possible to make such a categorisation. The terms "poststructura-
list" and "postmodern" have furthermore come to embrace a wide
range of approaches to media and cu lture in general, which makes it
difficult to define the terms and to identify some comics studies as ei-
ther poststructuralist or postmodernist.
In the 1980s there was a weakening of the determinism and 'left pes-
simism' of culture criticism. Together with the establishment of post-
modernism as a cultural category, the analysis of popular culture was
disengaged from the Marxist line of criticism. Whereas the modernist
critical theory sees stable totalities in popular culture as conformity and
infantile needs for reassurance (Theodor Adorno) or conservativel
bourgeois norms (Barthes)J (he postmodern and poststructuralist theo-
ries draw a picture of popular cu l(ure and its users which is founded on
instability, oppositions and heterogeneity. The postmodern perspective
questions the structuralist approach, according to which an analysis
should lay open the underlying structures of mean ing in popu lar cultur-
al texts, structures that served to confirm the domin ating ideological
values. Poststructuralist and ethnographic ana lyses also go against the
idea of the passive reader and thereby opened for tbe idea of popular
cu lwre being polysemic. The writings of Martin Barker are examples of
the polysemic sensibility connected to the ethnographic and poststruc-
22 HANS·CHIUSTIAN CHRlSTIANSEN AND ANNE MAGNUSSEN

turalist perspectives . In various contexts Barker has consid ered a more

subtle relationship between ideology and effect on the readers. The essay,
" Deconstructing Donald" (In: Barker 1989) is written in direct opposition
to early structu ralism. 5 Barker stipulates that in com ics all interpreta-
ti ons arc possible, and he emphasises that a specific theory and m ethod
is needed for the study of the polysemy of comics. Barker suggests a
method based on a combination of Fou cault, Vladimir Propp and Vo-
losinov, in which ideology is connected to a dialogue and a cOntracI be-
tween reader and text.
OIe Frahm starts from this same idea of comics having a polysemic
and heterogeneous character in his article, ~ird Signs. Comics as M eans
of Parody (p. 177). Within a deconstructivist framework, and on the basis
of ideas by J udith Butler and G illes D eleuzc, Frahm analyses the idea
of repetition in three comics. H e concludes that comics arc parodies of
the referentialiry of signs in that a common object of reference is estab-
lished, but it is at the same time destabilised because of the heteroge-
neous signs. Signs are repeated in comics, but they are at the same time
always others. This ambiva lence of repetition is the reason for comics
seeming 'weird '.
In French and Belgian research, poststructuralism opened up fo r an
increased interest in the aesthetics of comics, and the anthology, Bande
Dessiuee, recit et modernite (Groensteen 1988) is a representative exam-
ple of European comics research 'after structuralism '. The focus is here
on the 'p oetic' dimension of comics and the artistic intentions involved.
In Bande Dessinee, licit et modernize the analogy with language is recog-
nised, but it is stated that comics have a specific visual mea ns of expres-
sion -style- whi ch the early comics semiology is unable to describe. An-
other important work in this context is Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle's
Apercus sur la mecanique des strips ( 1988). Using early posrsrructuralist
texts as his point of departure, Fresnau lt-Deruelle describes the mech-
anisms behind m eaning production in comics. According to this, the
creation of movemem in comics can be described as a parallel to the
supplementariry of Jacques D errida, whil e the single image in this
movement is related to Barches' description of the third meaning.
A special comment in this context should be given to Benoit Peeters'
Case, pfallche, reci! (1998). Benoit Peeters sta rts from a series of basic

5. It is also in opposition to Dorfmann and Matte1art's neo-freudian perspeclh-e,

according to which the strcngth of comics lies in the lransmis~ ion of cmQ(ional
INTRODUCTION 23

elements in the interpretation of comics, which is illustrated in the sub-

title, Comment lire line balUJe dessinee. 6 H e presents a series of greatly in-
spiring ideas concerning the construction of the panel, the interrela-
tions between panels, the understanding of different types of full pages
or tab leaux, text-image interaction etc. His examples are plenty and
taken from a variery of primarily French, Belgian and American comics.
In some ways, Case~planche~ !-ecil can be compared with Scon McCloud's
Underslallding Comics in that it is relatively easy to read , it presents very
inspiring ideas, and to a great extent focu ses on the reader-comics rela-
tionship. Benoit Peeters' book can be said, though, re be the more so-
phisticated of th e two, as his approach to comics is more subtle and less
reductive than McCloud's Urulersxanding Comics.
The increased interest in the reception and interpretation of comics
'after structuralism' is also the point of departure in the article by Anne
Magnussen, The Semiotics of C. S. Peirce as a Theoretical Fram ework for
rhe Understanding of Comics (p. 193). With the semiotics of me philosopher
C. S. Peirce as the theore tical framework, M agnussen questions the
disti nction between iconic and symbolic signs of Saussurean semiology.
She argues that in the interpretation of comics, the heterogeneous signs
interact in ways that can be described more precisely using the Peircean
notion of the sign. Thcre are only few references to Peircean semiotics
in the research on comics. Yet there seems to be an increased focu s on
the works of the Peirce in other areas of media research, which may
lead to a similar focus concerning comics.
Inspired by general postmodernist theory, American culture research
has created a tradition for analysis of popular culture which assumes a
lack of stability and logic in popular cultural meaning. The combina-
tion of sociological, ideological and cultural perspectives with an aes-
thetic sensibility (David Harvey and Fredric Jameson) is an example of
these new method ologies for ana lysis. From this field of research
evolves a series of analyses of American popular culture, and attention
should be drawn to the works of Jim Collins and his combination and
rethinking of the European structuralist tradition with American pOSt-
modernism. in his analyses of popular culture. In his artides1 , comics
and other popular cultural texts are subject to aesthetic analyses with a
focus on the specific dynamics between art and popular culture in rela-
tion to style and reception.

6. In the second edition from 1998, the subtitle is changed to Lire la ba"de dessillcc.
7. See for example Collins, Jim 1991a and 199 1b.
24 HANS-CHRISTIAN CHRISTIANSEN AND ANNE MAGN USSEN

Along similar lines, Abraham Kawa argues in his article, What if the
Apocalypse Never Happens: Evolutiollary narratives in Concemporary Comics
(p. 209), that American superhcro comics of the 1980s and 19905 repre-
sent postmodern society through recycling, recapitulating and recon-
textualising cultural themes and images. This perspective is interesting
in comparison with the superhero comics of the 1940$ analysed by
Chris Murray CP. 141). Whereas the comics of the 19405 represented a
rather simple ideological message in accordance with the official USA
in war time, the American superhcro comics of the 80's and 90's are ex-
tremely complex in form as well as in content, and reveal chaotic and
contradictory visions of society.
James How presents another example of this complexity, primarily
engendered through a network of inrertexts, of a specific comics maga-
zine, 2000AD in his article «2000AD" and Hollywood. The Special Rela-
r£onship between a Briu'sh Comic and American Film (p. 225). The British
magazine can be seen as a parody of Hollywood mainstream film, but
according to a posrmodern 'complicitous critique'. How analyses a series
of comics printed in 2000AD and relates them to Hollywood film from
different eras as well as to the political relationship between Britain and
USA.
Postmodernist theory entails, in some cases, a certain degree of cul-
tural pessimism which invokes the same fear of popular culture as the
one reflected by the Frankfurt School. The postmodern and poststruc-
turalist field has nevertheless generated a series of analyses that does
not assign popular culture with only one purpose or meaning, and
which does not create cultural hierarchies. On the contrary, the plurali-
ty and heterogeneity of contemporary culture has been underlined, and
this framework of ideas has been a more or less explicit inspiration for
all the articles in this anthology.

The history of comics research presents a movement from seeing com-

ics mainly as a popular cultural product to approaching comics from a
variety of angles, including that of an art form. Comics research has ex-
perienced a rethinking and combination of former theoretical perspec-
tives and has merged them with a more subtle view on the aesthetics of
comics as well as on comics' reception. Sensitivity regarding the aes-
thetics of comics has become an inevitable . and basic element in all
studies . Furthermore, it has introd uced the possibility of seeing comics
as a differentiated medium and not as one indivisible block of para-lit-
erature. The reception perspective has come a long way since the 'ef-
INTRODUCTION 25

fect' of reading comics was expressed in as simple terms as 'damaging

to children' and reception is now seen as a valid, and often central, per-
spective in comics studies. The definition of comics, also in relation to
other media, is an ongoing and fruitful discussion, which is furthermore
challenged by the emergence of new interactive media. These factors
create a great diversity of theoretical and m ethodological approaches
which can be experienced when reading the articles in this anthology.
As was mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, the articles can
be read as an introduction to the broad spectrum of comics research to-
day. They also represent a great potential for future comics research.

We would like to thank the contributors of articles for wishing tp be

part of this publication as well as everybody who participated in the
conference Comics & Culture in Copenhagen. We also thank the Ph.D.
Board of Study, the Department of Romance Languages, the D epartment
of Film and Media and the research project, 'The Visual Construction
of Reality' (all at the University of Copenhagen) for the finan cial sup-
port and goodwi ll concerning the Conference. Not least, we want to
thank the Danish Research Council for the Humanities and Unibank-
fon den for the financial support of this publication.
26 HANS-CHRlSTIAN CHRISTIANSEN AND ANNE MAGNUSSEN

References

Barker, Martin (I989), Comics: Ideology, Power and the Critics. Manchester
University Press
Barthes, Roland (1967). Elements of Semiology. London : Jonathan Cape
Barthes, Roland (1975). The Pleasure of the Text. New York: H ill & Wang
Bodmer, Michel (1985). Comics: Semiotics and Pmgmalillguistic Approaches 10 a
Mixed Medium. Licentiate paper at Zurichs Universitet.
Coilins, Jim (l991a). 'Batman: The Movie, Narrative: The Hyperconscious'.
t o: Pearson and Uricchio (eds.) The Many Lives oj the Batman. London:
BFI Publishing
Collins, Jim (l991b), 'Appropriating like I<.razy; From pop-art to meta-pop'.
In: Naremore, 1- and Brantlinger, P. (Eds.): Modemity alld Mass Culture.
Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press
Covin, Michel (I 976) . 'L'image derobee'. In: Commllnicmi(m, No. 24
Dorfman and Mattelart (1975) . How to Read DOl/aId Duck: Imperialist Ideology
in the Disney Comic. New York.
Eeo, Umberto (1965) . Apocaliuici e illregrazi: comunicazioni di lIIassa e teorie del-
la cuill/ra di massa. 2 nd edition, Milano.
Eeo, Umberto (1972). 'Epilogue' . In: Herdeg, W. & Pascal, D. (eds.): TheArr
of the Comic Strip. Zurich: T he Graphis Press
Eisner, Will ( 1992). COlllics & Sequemial Art. Florida: Poorhouse Press
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Fresnault-Deruelle, Pierre (1988). 'Apereus sur la mecanique narrative des
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I-I unig, W. (1974). Strukturen des Comic Strip. HildesheimlNew York.
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Inge, M . Thomas (1990). Comics as Culture. Jackson and London: University

Press of Mississippi
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 Why are Comics Still in Search of
Cultural Legitimization?

Thierry Groensreen

SAlthough comics have been in existence for over a century and a half,
Lthey are still suffering from a considerable lack of legitimacy.
To those who know and love it, the art that has given us RodoJphe
T6pffer and Wilhelm Busch, H erge and Tardi, Winsor McCay . and
George H erriman, Barks and Gottfredson, Franquin and Moebius, Se-
gar and Spiegeiman, Gotl ib and Bretecher, Crumb and Marroni, Hugo
Pratt and Alberto Breccia, not to mention The Spirit, Peanuts or As-
terix ... in short, comic art, has nothing left to prove . If its validity as an
an form appears self-evident, it is curious that the legitimizing authori-
ties (universiti es, museums, the media) still regularly charge it with be-
ing infamile, vulgar, or insignificant. This as if the whole of the genre
were to be lowered to the level of its most mediocre products - and its
most remarkable incarnations ignored. Comic art suffers from an ex-
traordinarily narrow image, given the richness and diversity of its mani-
festations. Furthermore, its globally bad reputation jeopardizes the ac-
knowledgement of its most talented creators . Comic art's continuing
inability to reap the symbolic benefits of its most accomplished achieve-
ments is particularly striking and merits elucidation. This is the subject
I would like to reflect upon today. Some of the poims I will make con-
cern the specific history and situation of French comics and cannot be '
applied to other national situations without som e adaptation.

I will start by evoking some of the paradoxes of the history afthe 9th art .
Modern (printed) comics appeared in the 1830s - in the ' form of
Rodolphe Topffer's pioneering work l - which makes them more or less
contemporary with the invention of photography. And yet, it was not until
the 1960s that the French language found a permanent name for this
mode of expression - that was, by then, over a hundred years old. During
this long period, comics were known, not as "handes dessinees" (literally

I. por further details, see Groensteen, Thierry and Peeters, Benoit ( 1994). Topffer :
{'invemiQII de la bande dcssillCC, Paris: Hennann. "Savoir : sur l'art".
30 THIERRY GROENSTEEN

'strips that have been drawn') but, successively or indiscriminately, as

"histoires en estampes", which is Topffer's own term (stories told in
prints), "histoires en images" (picture stories), "recits illustres" (illustrated
tales), "films dessines" (films made of drawings) and of course, comics.
Since coming into existen ce, comics have twice changed their read-
ership and their form. Readership first. During the 19th century comics
were intended for adults, only to be relegated, at the beginning of the
20th century, to the pages of the children's press. So it is in the illustrated
youth magazines that France first discovered the great American series
(Brick Bradford, Flash Gordon, Mandrake, Popeye and so m any others),
whereas on the other side of the Atlantic, they were originally published
in the daily newspapers . The re-conquest of the adult readership - be-
gun in the 1960s by France Soir, Alate, Hara-Kiri, Charlie hebdo, Chou-
chou, and Charlie mensuel, as well as by the innovating publisher Eric
Losfeld - is finall y accomplished in 1972 when Gotlib, Bretecher and
Mandryka launch I.:Echo des Savanes, the first "adults only" comics
magazine, so putting an end to an historical parenthesis of almost three
quarters of a century.
Concerning the form given to comics, after having originally ap-
peared in bookform (Topffer's, Cham's, D ore's and other fo unders' al-
bums), comics in the 1870s h ad become a press phenomenon. For m ore
or less a century, only the m ost popular works were given the honor of
being released as albums after pre-publication in the press. Tens of thou-
sands of other pages (often mediocre, but sometimes by undeniably tal-
ented artists) were to fall into oblivion after having been "consumed" in
the press. But in the 1970s, the production of albums suddenly increases
exponentially and in the next decade stabilizes at a very high level:
around 600 new albums are printed in French every year. At the same
time, the illustrated press goes into decline. many "historic" magazines
cease to exist (Tinrin, Pit Pi/ole, Charlie, M etal Hurlanr.. .). In this way, a
second loop is formed: after having won back its adult readership, comic
art operates a return to its original form, the book.
The history of comics that I have just roughly sketched, needs to be
written in more detail and is still widely misunderstood, even, in my
opinion, by self-proclaim ed "specialists" . By celebrating the so-called
Centenary of Comics in 1996, some of these have simply chosen to ignore
everything that was published between 1833 - when T opffer printed
Monsieur Jabol - and the release of the Yellow Kid. Over half a century of
French, English, German, Dutch, Spanish and even American comics
denied existence because they weren't mass-produced!
WHY ARE COMICS STILL IN SEARCH OF CULTURAL LEGITIMIZATION? 31

The fact that the birth of comics is still a subject of discussion and
disagreement shows just how retarded the study of the 9th art is. As a
cultural phenomenon and art form , comics (until the 1960s) were sur-
rounded by a quite deafening silence. They simply were not regarded as
such; there was a complete absence of critical, archivistic and academic
atte ntio~A fter the Essai de Physiognomonie in 1845, in which Topffer
proposes the foundations for a theory of comics, a hundred and ten
years passed befor~ another book in French appeared on the subject -
Le Petil Monde de Pif le chien by BarthtHemy Amengual, in 1955 . In this
long interval books on cinema and photography were published by the
dozen!
However, when comics turned to a readership of teenagers and chil-
dren, they began to draw attention from one particular sector of society,
the educators. For decades, they held the monopoly of discourse on the
subject - a genre suspected of having a grea t influence on the morality
of young people. Because they were the first to comment on comics,
their ideas, of course, pervaded future thought on the matter. As late as
1964, the most widely read French dictionary, the Petit Larousse 11luslre,
gave the following phrase as an example of the use of the verb 'salir' (to
dirty, to soil): ces illustres salissem l'imagillation de nos enfancs... ('these
comics soil the imagina tion of our children').
You might say all this was a sort of double punishment for comics:
deprived of their adult audience, comics were confined to the ghetto of
youth magazines and reserved for children, but comics' massive intro-
duction into these magazines provoked the hostility of ed ucators, who
untiringly denounced them as "bad for children". Comics are thus
blacklisted for corrupting their already restricted audience .
In her study of the years 1919 to 1931, the art historian Annie Ren-
onciat declares that "as soon as they appeared, these publications
alarmed educationalists"2 and prints various quotes to illustrate this
prompt mobilization. As early as 1907, Marcel Braunschwig, author of
an essay on esthetic education, wrote: "At the present time, we are en-
gulfed by popular magazines for the use of children, against which it is
high time to undertake a vigorous campaign in the name of the com-
mon sense and good taste they offend with impunity" .3

2. Renonciat, Annie ( 1997). l.es livrcs d'el1jilllce et dc jeul1esse C/I Fral/CC dam Ics (IImics
vil/gt, thesis, 'History and Semiology of Text and Image', University of rari~ 7- .
Denis Didcrot.
3. Braunschwig, Mared (1907). J':ar/ et rcu/alll. Toulou~e: Edouard Privat, Paris:
Henri Didier. p. 327.
32 THIERRY GROENSTEEN

Paul Winskler, who published the Journal de Mickey, Robinson and

Hop-la, was to become the main target of these attacks in the second
half of n\e 1930s, bur before that the Offenstadt brothers' publications
were in the line of fire: L'Epalam (where the adventures of the famous
trio 'les Pieds NickeU$ were printed), FiJ/eue, L'Inlripide, Cri-Cri and
Uli. The general 'vulgarity' and 'insanity' of these popul ar and cheap
publications was constantly denounced and the characters that appeared
in them presented as bad examples. For Alphonse de Parvillez (working
for l'Union Morale, the Revue des Lectures and the Revue des Jeunes),
L'Espiegle Lili (Uti the Imp) is "the perfect handbook for rotten kids",
and Abbe Bethleem, a sort of conscience for the Revue des lectures Gournal
of Reading), denounces the use of "excessive caricature, filthy slang,
the language of prisons and sleazy bars ... "4 in I:Epatant.
The vague fears inspired by comics can be explained in part, by the
fact that they belong to a new culture that is on the rise. The sociologist
Irime Pennacchioni explains: "In France, a cultural "resistance" is
growing up against the barbarous invasion of nickelodeons, cinema,
tabloids (Paris Soir) ) radio (Radio-Cite), American funny characters.
This new C... ) mass culture reaches France in the thirties.'"
Opinions on upbringing and education, and society'S understanding
of children, were not the same between the two wars as they are today.
There was no talk of the rights of children but only of their protection.
There was an absence of teenage culturej even the age group was hardly
recognized in its specificity. Lastly, a concept inherited from the 19th
century meant that children were usually assimilated to the least edu-
cated strata of society - the lower classes, "people of primitive intelli-
gence, whose knowledge is sparse if not inexistant, in whom imagina-
tion is stronger than reason".6 For the educators of the first half of the
20th century, that which is popular is necessarily vulgar. Comics are
seen as intrinsically bad because they tend to take the place of 'real
books', an attitude which crystallizes a double confrontation : between
the writren word and the world of images, on the one hand; between
ed ucational literature and pure entertainment on the other.
Children's books and magazines had always been intended to edu-
cate and moralize; to suppOrt and complete the work of parents and

4. Quoted in Annie Renonciat, op. cit., supplement ·16.

S. Pennacchioni, Irene ( 1982). LA nOSlalgie m images. Paris: Librairie des Meridiens.
p. 121.
6. BaIsen, Andre ( 1920). l...es illumis pour etljallu. 'lburcoing, J. Duvivicr. Quoted in
Annie Renondal, op. cil., supplement 16.
WHY ARE COMICS STILL IN SEARCH OF CULTURAL LEGITIMIZATION? 33

teachers. But the illustrated press, comic albums and popular serialized
novels turn their backs on this mission; their so le aim is to amuse and
entertain. This was, not surprisingly, disturbing for specialists in educa-
tion. Their conviction was that children have feeble minds, and naturally
bad instincts that need rectifying. These specialists aimed their attacks
at the image. The more attractive it was, the more harmful it would be
to children.
The following quote is representative of many others and is taken
from a special issue of the communist magazine En/ance (childhood)
printed in 1954: "All the effects (of comics) are extremely excessive, in
verbal expression as in graphic representation. These flashy colors, wry
faces, twisted in hate or terror, this sensuality, these longing embraces,
everything speaks to the imagination in the most brutal manner, all is
suggestive and evocative ... "7
An anthology of what was written about comics between the begin-
ning of the century and the sixties would be extremely boring. From
the thirties on, the arguments are always the same, and are often singu-
larly lacking in perspicacity. It is rather surprising, for example, that the
aesthetics of comic art should be systematically condemned as a whole,
as if they were a single entity! From the point of view of morality, maga-
zines were frequently labeled either 'good' or 'bad', whereas no distinc-
tions were made on the artistic level between the different authors.
Among the American comics that were most popular in France were
works such as Flash Cordon, Terry and the Pirates, Popeye, Bringing up
Father, Tarzan, and Dick r,'acy, whose artists - who are all very different
from one another - are now placed among t~e most respected masters
of the 9th art. Blinded, no doubt by the urgency of their mission, the
censors of the period did not differentiate between these masters and
the more obscure drudges who worked for the same sort of magazines.
Comics as a whole were indiscriminately written off as aggressively
ugly.
From the thirties on, the speech balloon, which gradually replaced
text located under the image, was a central target for educators and for
those taking sides with the written word . The procedure was thought to
be of American origin, which would have sufficed. if not to disqualify it,
at least to make it an object of suspicion. Apparently. no-one remem-
bered that the balloon had been used in Medieval times, and,. more re-

7. En/al/ee, 5: Les jOllrnallx pOU/' ell/ants (1954). Paris: Presses Univcrsitaires de

France. p. 403.
34 THIERRY GROENSTEEN

cenriy, in 18th century European caricatures. It is true that, at that

time, balloons were particularly popular in England, and already held
in low esteem by the French.
As Annie Renonciat points out, "for the French, the balloon pre-
sents C... ) various disadvantages: first, they place the text inside the im-
age, thus imprisoning the verbal content within the visual system; then
-most importantly- they limit the text to simpl e dia logues and direct
enunciation, drastically reducing the amount of description and ' liter-
ary' expression."The same author goes on to say: " It also appears that
publishers -and even some authors- though t a child could not properly
understand a story in pictures without the help of words. This is con-
firmed by the presence of numerous redundancies in the captions to
their pictures ... "8
A work whose verbal content is confined to 'simple ' dialogues is
nothing scandalous in itself: it is the case of movies and the theatre. But
films and live shows present them aurally, wherea s in comics they must
be read. Because they are printed, comics seem to be more closely re-
lated to literature; furthermore, in addressing children, they are expect-
ed to make a contribution to their education by helping them learn to
read, encouraging them to love 'beautiful texts' and 'great authors'. The
imprisonment of verbal expression in the visual system - to use Annie
Rcnonciat's words - constitutes a symbolic revolution, a complete re-
versal of the commonly accepted hierarchy between semiotic systems.
The champions of a culture which postulates the supremacy of the
written word over all other form s of expression could only take this in-
version as an attack.
The two last complaints most frequently made against comics by edu-
cators concern their violence and escapism. This quote is from the com-
munist critic Georges Sadoul: "Everywhere, at every page, we found ex-
altation of brute force, assassination, violence, war, spying, banditism,
and, at the same time, escape into the most stupid irreality". 9
I will not talk in length about violence, which is not specific to comics.
The violence inherent in adveOlure stories has always been condemned
in the name of the protection of children - wherever it is found. The ar-
guments used against comics in the twenties, thirties and forties hardly
differ from those brandished against television, video games and mangas

8. us /ivl"es d'enjallce el db jtllllcsse ell Frallce dam les mlllees Villgl, op. cll., p. 484.
9. Sadoul, Georges ( 1938). ee qlle Jisem trOS en/aI/IS. La preJSe m/amine, SOli ew/u/irm,
SQII influence. Paris: Bureau d'Edition.
WHY ARE COMICS STILL IN SEARC H OF CULTURAL LEGITIMIZATION? 35

in more recent times. What has been, and still is, targeted by these cri-
tics is the corrupting power of the image, always capable of 'striking the
imaginati on'. An image, they believe, invites the spectator to pro ject
onto the characters represented and identify with them.
More interesting - to me- is the fact that the 'irreality' of comics was
for a long time considered intrinsically scupid. Animals that speak,
imaginary machines, time travel, supermen and other fantasies h ave
bee n blamed for cutting a child off from reality and m aking h im or her
lose all notion of it. Once again it is the power of the image that is
feared, especially its capacity to abuse the credulity of young readers.
L a Fontaine, Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne had not been victims of
such censorship of the imagination. But Tanan, king of the jungle; liv-
ing half- naked among th e animals was often singled our as one of the
most harmful incarna tions of this irrealism.
Previously blamed fo r all the sins of the world, comics would fina lly
ga in acceptance by educators. A book by Antoine Roux, for example,
was p ublished by Editions de l'Ecole in 1970 under the 'slogan':
"Comics can be educationa l". In time, some child specialists came to
rely on comics as the last stand against illiteracy and a teacher's best aid
in the teaching of rending (now threatened mainly by television).
From then on, the debate could fo cus on aesthetic and cultural
questions. Comics were no longer accused of h armfulness, but the stig-
ma of artistic m ediocrity would stick - and has been reactivated in the
context of the debate on the 'confusion of artistic values' supposedly
characteristic of the end of this century. To illustrate dlis, it wi ll suffice
to mention the title of a French television program presented in 1984
by Michel Polac in the series "Droit de reponse" (Right to reply): Asterix
versus the Mona Lisa.
Rath er than entering into the detail s of this conven tional debate over
"high" nnd " Iow" an , I would like to propose a more general explana-
tion of the fac t that comics appear to be condemned to artistic insign i-
ficance. It seems to me that com ic art suffers from a four-fold sym bolic
handicap. 1° It is a hybrid, the result of crossbreeding between text and
image; 2° Its story-telling ambition s seem to remain on the level of a
sub-literature; 3 D h has connections to a common and inferior branch
of visual art, that of caricature; 4° Even though they are now frequently
intended for adults, comics propose nothing other than a return to
childhood .
No doubt prejudice against comics cannot be reduced to these four
charges. But it seems to me that these four form a basis for all the others.
36 THIERRY GROENSTEEN

Even though they may not always be spelt out as such, they inform and
guide the opinions of the cultural referees who are invested with the
power to judge artistic meri t.
H owever, when examined one by one, the 9th art's fou r origi nal sins
quickly reveal the academic preconceptions they are based on. Let us
look at each onc in (urn.
Almost eight hundred years after the gold en age of illuminated
m an uscrip ts. the juxtaposition of text and image on a pr inted page con-
tinues to be seen by some as an unn atural alliance. I w ill n Ot go back to
the subject of the balloon and the fact that the image appears [Q 'swal-
low' the text . T he origins of the scandal go deeper, to the mix of text
and image itself.
H ere is the op inion of one of our 'great Fren ch writers', M onsieur
Pasca l Quignard: "Literature and the imagc arc incompatible. ( ... ) The
two forms of expression cannot be juxtaposed . T hey are never appre-
hended together .... ( .. .) When one is readable, the other is not seen .
When one is visible the other is not read. Wha tever the proximity im-
posed upon them, the two media remain pa rall el, and it m ust be sa id,
that these two worlds are, for eternity, impenetrable to one another.
( ... ) The reader and the spectator will never be the sa me man at the
sam e moment, leaning forward in the same ligh t to discover the same
page".IO
This objection, which comics readers' experience apparently refutes,
must be taken into consideration, as it is an integral par t of occidental
culture. "To show and to name; to represent and to describe; to repro-
duce and to articulate; to imita te and to signify; to look at and to read":
such, accord ing to M ichel Foucault, are " the oldest oppositions in our
alphabetica l civilization ".1I Forgetting that for the Ancien t Greeks a
single word, graphein, meant ' to write' and 'to paint', our alphabetical
culture qu ickly became logocentric, subordi nating visual forms of ex-
pression to language. Ph il osophers contin ua lly repeat that the image
tr icks and troubles us, acting on our senses and exciting our emotions,
and that reason is on the side of the word.
Yet, our culture is the on ly one that harbours this opposition and hier-
archy. T hey m ust therefore be relativized . T hey do not exist, for example,
in China and Japan, where the stroke of the brush unites writing and

10. Quignard, Puscal (1990). Vile Traire :slIr ks roppo/'ts que le ItxU el/'imugt /I'entre-
tielmellt ptls. Maeghl. Rep rinted in PelilS lrailts J, " Folio" 2976: er. p. 134- 135.
11. Foucault, Michel (1973). Ceci /I'est pas IIIII! pipe. Fata Morgana. p. 22.
WHY ARE COMICS STI.LL IN SEARCH 01' CU LTURAL LEGITI MIZATION? 37

drawing: caUigraphic signs and represen tative lines are executed by the
sam e hand with the same instrument .The painters of the F ar East often
insert whole poems in their im ages .
M oreover, it is virtually certain that western civilization itself is in
the process of changing its conception of the relation between text and
image. In the day of multimed ia, the age-old opposition is som ewhat
obsolete. M odern technological man, to whom the computer transm its
text, sound, still anp animated images, is subjected to an unprecedent-
ed range of sensory slim ul ations, and learns- from a very early age- to
coordin ate them .
But this theoretica l ob jection is often accompanied by an aesthetic
condemnation . If the marriage of text and image is not impossible, it
wou ld at least inevitab ly d istort and weaken both of them . To illustr ate
this attitude, I will quote the fo rmer curator of the Prints department of
the National Library of France. According to M ichel M elot, the comics
artist " p roduces illustrated literature m ore than narrative images. C ur-
rent output is d istressing poor, and so m onotonous, that I doubt a solu-
tion exists. There is nothing in it for either literature or images, and no
new, original genre em erges."l:l The sam e audlOr points out, further on,
that th e sin of comic art is that of schematization: "For the sake of read-
ability, comics ar tists are drawn into an involuntary regression which
explains the m ediocrity of most of their work" .
It is difficult to refut e the aesthetic argument with out showing that
the criteria for appreciation of drawing in com ics are not quite the sam e
as those used for art drawings. They are, unlike other drawings, narra-
tive and not illustrative, executed on a very sm all surface and destin ed
to be reproduced. Are H erge, Crumb and M oebius med iocre artists?
Most certa inly not, but artists whose excellen ce in their do main cannot
b e compared to that of Da Vinci, Rembrandt or Picasso in theirs.
The question is: why should two of the most respected forms of hu-
man expression, literature (the m odel fo r all narrative arts) and drawing
(the fou ndation of all fine arts), be dethroned and debased as soon as
they are side by side in a mixed media ... ? Some will an swer that comics
have taken from literature and d rawing their least noble parts: from the
former stereotyped plots and over-referenced genres, and fro m the lat-
ter caricature and schematization . Founded or not, these complaints
seem to be secondary to the fundam ental aesthetic questi on:- is it not

12. Melot, M ichd ( 1975). 11aill/lli I·it. Le pal/voir comiqllt des images. Fribourg~ Office
du Livre. p. 146.
38 THIERRY GROENSTEEN

the very fact of using text and image together that reputedly taints and
discredits both of them?
In effect, comic art, just like the cinema, which is also a hybrid
genre, goes against the " ideology of purity" that has dominated the
West's approach to aesthetics since Lessing. In art, our modernity has
never ceased preaching the deepening, by each discipline, of its own
specificity. Music, literature, painting have turned inwards to their own
domains. This means that they have eliminated or marginaiised melody,
subject, representation, narration and signification, in favar of working
on form and basic materials (sound, color ... etc.) in their search for
pure music, pure poetry, pure painting. It is conceivable that this ideo-
logy of purificarion has led contemporary art to a dead end. That how-
ever, is another story. I only wish to show the extent to which comics
(where text and drawings contribuce to the same narrative project) dis-
pute the validity of the dominant trend of thought and therefore could
not do otherwise than to provoke the disdain and contempt of the de-
fenders of official culture. Moreover, the ideology of purity has given
rise to an ever-increasing gulf between erudite culture and popular cul-
ture, the latter being naturally dedicated to fiction and entertainment,
In fact, the second sin attributed to comics is, precisely, their lack of
narrative ambition, Comics are supposed to be easy literature because
they are based on repetitions, and therefore more readable. They are also
constantly being assimilated with what is known as paraliterature. a badly
d efined set of popular genres that indudes adventure stories, historical
novels, fantasy and science-fiction, detective novels, erotica, etc ...
The first important French seminar on paraliterature took place in
Cerisy, in September 1967. The attendees (among whom were Francis
Lacassin and Evelyne SuBerot) treated comics as a "category" of
paraliterature on the same footing as spy novels or science 'fiction.]3
Thirty years later, this conception is still active. There exists in Belgium,
for instance, a 'Centre for Paraiitera[Ure, Comics and Cinema" (in
Chaudfontaine). The radio program Mauvais genres on France Culture
looks at detective novels, fantasy and ... comics. The Mande des Livres
(literary supplement of the daily newspaper Le Mande) has a column
which treats comics, science fiction and detective novels in turn .
This placing of comics on the same plane as the various genres of
paralitera[Ure needs examining. It is evident that comics cannot be con-
sidered a genre in that sense, as they englobe and traverse many different

13. Cr. flntreuims sur la pamlitteralUl-e ( 1970). Paris: Pion, p. 106 and 253.
WHY ARE COMICS STILL IN SEARCH OF CULTURAL LEGITIMIZATION? 39

genres: there arc science-fiction comics, sentimental, erotic or autobio-

graphical comics, detective stories and westerns in the form of comics ...
Comic art is an autonomous and original medium. The only things it
has in common with literature are: that it is printed and sold in book-
shops, and that it contains linguistic statemenrs. But why should it be
systematically lowered to the level of para- or sub-literature?
That it is, is mainly due to the fact that the comics market obeys the
rules of commerce . The saleability of the product seems to be more im-
portant than the intrinsic worth of the art. Comics, like paraliterature,
operate on a system of series, that orchestrates the conStant revival of
the same characters, who accumulate adventures ad libitum. The inter-
changeability of artists, who, one after the other, perpetuate the career
of the most popular heroes reinforces dle sentiment that comic art is an
industrial form of literature.
How can we d efend comic art against this accusation which disqual-
ifies it as an art? Remind the accusers that serialization has its nobility?
Evoke Little Nemo or the adventures ofTint in - a fine example of how
tremendous a series can be when handled by a creative genius? Encourage
a wider diffusion of works by true authors, of comics free of commercial
constraints and of avant-garde comic art? My opinion is, that here, once
again, defense of comics depends on recognition of the fact that they can-
not be judged by the same criteria as are generally applied to literature.
In his diary, the writer Renaud Camus made this comment: "Cer-
tain films would make poor books, even though they are good, or even
excellent film s. This superiority is due to the actors - that by definition,
we wouldn't have in the books."14 In the same vein, many comics would
make poor novels, though they are acceptable comics, and in this case,
the difference is due to the drawings. The reader of comics not only en-
joys a story-related pleasure bur also an art-related pleasure, an aesthetic
emotion founded on the appreciation of the exactness and expressivity
of a composition, pose or line. There also exists, in my opinion, a medium-
related pleasure. It cannot be reduced to the sum of the other twO, but is
related to the rhythmic organization in space and time of a multiplicity
of small images. Comic art is the art of details, and as such encourages
a fetishi stic relationship. 15
Comics' third symboli~ h~cjicap i ~ their_.r:c:::1atLo..!!§.hilU.'[itp QUJIlQ[,

14. Camus, Renaud (1996) . La guern de Transylval1ie. Paris: P.O.L. p. 45-46.

Is . For further details, see: Groensteen, Thicrry (1997). 'Plaisir de la bande dessim':e'.
In: geAI'I2.AngouU:me: CNBD. p. 14-21.
40 THIERRY GROENSTEEN

ca ricature and satire. Si nce Ancient Greece, hurnor has been regarded
as the opposite of h armony and of the sublime. It is not compatible
with beauty and constitutes an inferior genre, barely legitimate. Humor
is n egative, it depreciates, renders ugly; satire belittl es instead of glori-
fying. The F rench Roman ticists, mainly in the shape of Jules Cha mpfl-
eUfY, attempted to rehabilitate caricature, but academic prejudice was
never totally dispelled. Without going so far as to recall that for the Nazis,
"degenerate art" was the art that put caricature in the place of ideals, it
will suffice to note the rarity of studies on hurnor and comical effects -
at least in France - in order to verify that the seriousness of critics and
teachers excludes any playful or funny contribUlion to artistic creation.
Lastly, the fourth symboli c handicap is the link between comi cs and
childhood. Far fro m trying to combat or contradict this ob jection, I am
inclined to lay claim to it. I recalled earlier that be tween the start of the
20th century and the sixties, comics had been captured by dle children's
press. Most modern comm entators were not aware of the earlier histor y
of picture stories (in the 19th century) and genuinely thought they were
originally intended for children. They took the m for a variety of illus-
trated children 's books wh ich was belatedly trying to gain its autonomy
by taking advantage of a promising trend: pop-culture - or of what we
ca ll, in France, "contre-culture" (counter culture).
But these con siderations on the birth and growth of the m edium are
hardly relevant today. Comics still have a privileged relationship with
childhood because it is in ch ildhood that each of us d iscovered them
and learnt to love them. In a certain sense, we can agree with the soci-
ologist Irene Pennacchioni when she says that "pictures are for the ill it-
erate, as they correspond to 'n aive' pleasures from before learning to
read, before culture."1 6 Many adults, in particular th ose who occupy a
dominant position in the world of culture, take themselves very serious-
ly.. .. many adults have forgonen or rejected childhood pleasures in fa-
vor of more sophisticated, supposedly m ore noble, pleasures. Now,
comics have a way of giving rise to some strongly nostalgic emotions.
Psychoanalysts hav.e shown that our attitude to drawings has a certain
similarity to our relationship with our mother. Roland Barthes spoke
som ewhere of the "childhood passion for huts and tents: shut yourself
in and settle down".!' It is a reminiscence of this "existential dream"

16. Pcnnacchioni, Tren~ (1982). La IIQstalKie en images. op. cit., p. 122.

17. Barthes, Roland (1957). 'Nllutilus et bateau ivre'. In: Mythologies. Paris: Seuil.
"Points" 10, 1970, p. 80
WHY ARE COMICS STILL IN SEARCH OF CULTURAL LEGITIMIZATION? 41

that a reader experiences when he plunges into the world of small pic-
tures. One cannO[ avoid seeing th at so many of our paper heroes pro-
long the little boy's fantasies offreedom and omnipotence, and offer us
the ch ance to act them out ... vicariously.
Yes) why not admit it? AIJ of us here in Copenhagen, delivering our
clever papers, are probably doing nothing more than holding Out our
hands to the kids we used to be.

Translation: Shirley Smofderen

The Crisis in Modern American
and British Comics, and the Possibilities
of the Internet as a Solution

RogerSabin

In this paper, I intend to look briefly at the disastrous situation that the
comics industry finds itself in, followed by a consideration of aspects of
the net - and in particular the potential of so-called 'net comics'.The
reason I'm concentrating on the net is not so much because it is inter-
esting in itself - which it is - but because it illuminates so much about
the perception of comics in modern culture (something that has been
covered elsewhere in the conference - for example, in the paper byThi-
erry Groensteen). Finally, I want to conclude on the possibilities afthe
net as a 'saviour', if you like, afthe comics medium. I should point out
that the paper does represent work in progress, building on articles
elsewhere (in Speak) ebr), and that therefore I welcome feedback from
readers.
I think it is important to begin by stressing the distinction in Ameri-
can and British comics between 'alternative' and 'mainstream'. This is
something that is not so pronounced in Europe, but which is germane
to what I have to say because each aspect has taken to the net in slightly
different ways. In basic terms, by 'mainstream' we tend to mean super-
hero titles published by the major companies - people like Marvel, DC
Comics and Im age. This is the genre that has dominated comics since
the 1960s, and its readership today can be characterised as largely male
and aged between 8 and 28. The comics tend to be sold from news-
agenrs and from more specialist comics 'fan' shops (of which there are
approximately 400 in the UK and 4000 in the US).
By 'alternative', we tend to mean non-superhero titles, often with an
'underground' sensibili ty. These are comics, which are heirs to the great
underground explosion of the 1960s (Roberr Crumb et (1), al), and which
often feature sex, drugs, politics and rock and roll as a staple. They tend
to be published by smaller 'independent' publishers such as Fanragraph-
ics (in the US) and Knockabout (in [he UK). The readers of alternative '
comics do not necessarily read mainstream comics - in fact, there's very
little crossover - though they do get sold from the same specialist shops.
44 ROGERSABlN

So far as the curren t crisis in comics is concerned, it is wor th noting

that the dowmurn has hit both types of ride . If you fo llow the comics
trade press, then you'll know that headlines such as " Massive cutbacks
by three m ajor comics publishers" (Comics l lllernalional Jan, 1998) have
become commonplace. The 19905 have seen publishers coll apse, titles
get cancelled, and shops shut down . For th e mainstream, when Marvel
filed for bankruptcy twO yea rs ago, it was a symbolic moment - as if an
era had passed. And because the shops are closing down, it means that
me alternative com ics that piggybacked into the mainstream network
have also suffered very badly.
I don't wam to go into the reasons for th is crisis here - suffice to say
that histor ica lly speaking it's part of a process of decline that has been
going on since the 1940s. Different analysts have different explanations:
some have pointed to the damaging effects of the speculator market,
some to the declining quality of the comics themselves, some to problems
of marketing, som e to the rise of other m edia such as computer games,
and so on. Whatever the reason, in 1998 comi cs are in trouble.
Nevertheless, it's important to stress that this is a commercial crisis,
not an artistic one. In fa ct, in my opinion, crea tively speaking British
and American comics are going through something of a golden age at
the m om ent, with writers and artists exploring some very exciting new
areas. For reaso ns of space, I offer just two exa mples of the new gener-
ation. First, Chris Ware, whose A cme Novelly Librcuy (See plate 1) uses
an innovative, muted palette of colours to complement a graphic de-
sign-influenced approach to composition . Ware's stories are, at the
same time, disturbing and very fu nny. Second, j oe Sacco, who uses his
comics as a form of journalism, visiting trouble spots throughout the
world and commenting on what he sees (see figure I) . In a way, Sacco
is reviving dle 'graphic reporting' tradition of 19th century (pre-pho-
tography) magazines, but at the same time his is a very 1990s take on
the 'new journalism ' m ovement. Both creators illustrate well, I think,
the paradox of commercial crisis and artistic boom.
Bur, inevitably, it is the financial consequences of the downturn that
are taxing publishers' m inds, and panic in the industry is widespread .
In the light of this, possible solutions are being tested as a matter of ur-
gency, and the internet is being turned to as a possible 'life rafr'. Argu-
men ts surrounding the ne t have so far centred on 'net comics ', and can
be summed-up as fo llows: That we are in the midst of a technological
revolution and th at one day, people will read comics off the computer
T HE CRISIS IN MOl)ERN AMER1 CAN AND BRlTISH COM ICS 45

Fig. 1 loe Sacco. Palwint!. Copyright: Fantagraphics

46 ROGERSABIN

screen just as naturally as they would a printed publica lion today. And
that, as a corollary, print comics will become redundant as a result.
In some ways this sounds like something out of a rather good science
fiction comic. Yet, in reality comics are already everywhere on the net.
Every major publisher, for example, has a site. Plus there are small
press publishers and individual creators with sites, and many everyday
company sites that use comics as an advertising aid. In addition, many
search engines now offer comics as part of their service - Yahoo took
this path recently. And there's been a growth in companies selling soft-
ware packages for the purpose of making it easier to put comics on the
net . There have even been exhibitions celebrating net art, such as me
'Electronic Comics and Computer Art' exhibition at the Cartoon Art
Museum in San Francisco in 199 1.
But there are problems. Of course, nobody's saying that the net isn 't
an incredibly powerful tool. And there is, and will continue to bc, sig-
nificant comics crossover. But the problem with the current enthusiasm
for the idea of 'net comics' is the series of false assumptions that have
been made surrounding the nature of that crossover. Both mediums -
the net and comics - can share properties, it's true. But they have other
characteristics that make them unique, and which are not translatable.
So, False Assumption Number 1: That the definition of a comic is
highly malleable. Most people would agree that a comic is primarily a
print-based publication, relating a story in sequential pictures. It goes
without saying that to define a comic is a notoriously difficult exercise,
especia lly since me word can be used as an abbreviation of 'comic
book' or 'comic strip' (more common in America than the UK). In my
book Aduil Comics: An 111lroduclion (Routledge, 1993), I tentatively
tried to frame a definition based on fixing certain essentials ,that hold
true for most examples of the form - old and new, adult and juvenile.
An extract reads as follows: 'The fundam ental ingredient of a comic is
the 'comic scrip'. This is a narrative in the form of a sequence of pic-
tures - usually, but not always, with text. In length it can be anything
from a single image upwards, with some strips containing images in the
thousands. A 'comic' per se is a publication in booklet, tabloid, maga-
zine or book form that includes as a major feature the presence of onc
or more strips. Comics are usually published regularly (weekly, month-
ly, quarterly), and are generally cheap in' order to be accessible to the
widest possible audience.'!

I. Roger Sabin ( 1993) A dllfl Comics:AII [",rodIlClioll. London: Routledgc. p.S

THE CRISIS IN MODERN AMERICAN AND BRITISH COMICS 47

However, recently, new definitions have emerged, taking a ·much

looser approach predicated on aesthetics. The main proponent of this
view - but by no means the only one - is Scon McCloud, author of
1995's ground breaking Understanding Comics (which I'm sure readers
will be aware of - it was a sort of Baedeker Guide to the medium). In a
stimulating piece for the critical magazine The Comics Journal, he says:
"I'm inclined to think of comics as a kind of temporal map, a way of
substituting space for time, of mapping Ollt a temporal progression in
2-D or 3-D space. For instance, that old evolution chart showing the
little primate walking behind Neanderthal man who's walking behind
Cro-Magnon; I think of that as com ics, and yet the only thing that that
example has in common with The Sensational She-Hulk or whatever is
this idea of mapping time through space."2
This definition of 'mapping time through space' is ideal for com pu-
terised images, of course - and McCloud extends it into the electronic
real m. He uses it to mean not JUSt traditional comic strips transferred to
(or created for) the net, but also "com ics which can only exist in a digi-
ta l environment." He calls these 'digital comics', and speaks with en-
thusiasm, for example, about what can be done with 3-D modelling. As
he says: " If you get down to just that little scrap of DNA of a definition,
then you can grow som e really incredible things, just by going to a dif-
fe rent petri dish like digital media."3
But I want to take issu e with th is. For, if comics are 'mapping time
through space', then it follows that virtually anything made up of suc-
cessive images is a comic. The definition co-opts as predecessors such
historic 'communications' as Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Bayeux
Tapestry (which, indeed, McCloud does, in Understanding Comics). It
would also include illustrated books, like Alice £n W'onderland, as well as
McCloud's evolutionary chart, and any number of other more contem-
porary examples. As for the net and the idea of including different
kinds of digital storytell ing, there are also problems. For example, why
not extend the idea to include comics that the reader can imeract with,
or that have soundtracks, or that maybe include bits of animation or live
action sequences (as McCloud and other commentators have done).
So, you can see the difficulty. We can say instantly, therefore, that the
definition of'mapping time through space' is toO wide to be useful. But

2. 'Sl:ott MeCloud on tht: Digital rULure of Comics', an interview with Gary Gra th.
Com ics JOlfl"llul, # 188 Ouly 1996), p.76.
3. Ml:Cloud, Seo u. ibid. p.76.
48 ROGER SABI N

it's also suspect on a deeper, politica l, level. For it allows comics to be

associated with works of aft, and with mediums, that have a greater cul-
(Ural cachet. As we know all roo well, comics in the US and UK have a
histor y of being a despised art form , barred from serious critical discus-
sion and stereotyped as either kids' stuff or as a pastime for nerds.
H owever, examples such as Egyptia n hieroglyphics and the Bayeux
Tapestry h ave been elevated to the srams of works of art, and therefore
have altogether different cultural associations.
Similarly, the internet is currently the subject of intense attention,
and is being seen as an exc iting new artistic medium (which it is),
There are 'On-line' supplements in all the major newspapcrs, and TV
programmes, academic books, and so on devoted to its earnest consid-
eration. More than this, some commentators have developed theories
wh ich credit the net with spiritual qualities. Douglas Rushkoff, for ex-
ample, who has wrinen a best-selling book entitled Cybericr and who
writes about the net for The Guardian newspaper, has made a connec-
tion between cntering cyberspace - which he summarises as the <space
inside a computer' - and the trance state that people enter into when
they dance at a rave. He also postulates that cyberspacc is analogous to
using a psychedelic drug, because it transports the user to a new spiritual
plane. The three things - cyberspace, drugs and dancing are linked, he
argues, in rave culture. This may be a high ly questionable hypo thesis
(nonsense, in my opinion) , but it is fairly widespread in the US and VK
- especially in subcultural circles, and among people who arc r.he same
age as would typically read comics. In other words, McCloud's new
definition of <comics' gives them grand ancestors and <hip' successors,
and bestows upon them a spuriou s respectability - with all the ramifica-
tions that entails. 5
Some of these probl ems become clearer when we look at Scan Mc-
Cloud's own wcbsite. This is a site which has only gone oo-line very re-
cently (in June, 1998), but by looking at a few sample pages from it, we
can see exactly where he stands philosophically, and where the pitfalls
might be. On one of the introductory pages he lays out his stall, and
pond ers his earlier devotion to <flat , dead wood ', looking forward to thc
day when 'even the most dedicated Ludd ite may find reason to rejoice'.
A link then offcrs acccss to th ree different kinds of nct-comic. Figures 2

4. RUlIhkoli, Douglas (1994) Cy beria. London: HarperColIi ns

5. These:: rumificatio ns obviously eom\CCI with thc high culture/low culture debate,
and with associated theories surrounding postmodo:rnism .
Plate 1 Chris \'(l:lre. Acme N01Jt!/ty Library. Copyright: Fantagraphics
Phue 2 Davc M cKean and Neil Gaimnn. Signailo Noise. Copyright: Gollancz
P late 3 The "Regal Rabbit"Vesscl (KI398; from Kerr [989: 81). Copyright: Justin Kerr

P late 4 KS435 (from Kerr [997: 798). Copyright: Justin Kcrr

P late 5 Georgc Legrady, Slippery 7l'aces, Copyright: Gc:orgc Legrady
P late 6 George Legrady. Slippery 'Jl-aces. Copyright: George Legrad y
"
Pla te 7 Winsor McCay. Ullle Nemo ill Slumber/aI/d. New York Herald, September 23,
1906
 SU1'EIlMAN! BATMAN! BOY COMMANDOS! .5e

96
PAGES

Plate 8 Jack BurnJey. \.%dd's Fillest ComiCJ #9. Spring 1943. Copyright: DC Comics
Plate 9 J. H oward Miller. n:-e call dQ It. c 1946 . Reprinted in Heyman, 111erese Thau
( 1998), p . 106
 YES, OEAR Rf"'O£fttTHAT'S HOW THE STOftY ENOStANO THIS MAY BE
THE VEftY M...GAZINE THOSE (lftEATUftES WIl..l.. ' INO WH!N THEY L ... NO
ON THE !XPLOO£O F1It...... ENT OF EAlmtf- THE [NO

P late 11 Al Willi:unso n. The Alims. Weird Fantasy # 17. 1952

P late 12 Postmodern $uperbeings: The Miracle children. Miraclemolf:17,e Sum Origin
ojYoltllg Miroclemon. In: Mirocleman # 23. 1992. An by Mark Buckingham (Eclipse
Enterprises, Inc., story copyrighl 1993 Nt:il Gaiman, art copyright 1993 Mark Buck-
ingham.
P llIte 13 From Pop An back 10 Comics: an evolutionary pllrable. M ark Buck-
ingham. Mimciell/all: Notes from Ihe Undergroul/d. In: 'Miraclcman: TIle Golden
Age' collected edition (origin:1lly in ,'vl iracleman # (9). ]993 collected edition
(originally in ] 992). Art by Mark Buckingham (Eclipse Enterprises, Inc., story
copyright 1990 Ndl Gaiman, an copyright 1990 l'vlark Buckingham.
P late 14 A Jus[icc League fo r the Millennium. In: 'Justice League or America: Mid-
summer's Nigh[mare' (collected edi lion). 1996. Art by Kevin Maguire and John Dell.
Copyright 1996 DC Comics.
Plate IS Ron Smith. Judge Dredd (In 'Un-Ameri(;an G raffiti'). ZOOOAD, #206. 198 1.
Copyright: Egmont Fleetway Umited
Plate 16 lan Gibson. Robohuntcr (In 'The Slaying of S!adc') . 2000A D, #3 ! 2. 1983.
Copyright: Egmont FJccr.vay Limitcd
THE CRISIS IN MODERN AMERICAN AND BRITISH COMICS 49

ENI>
Fig. 2 Scot! McCloud. Carl Lives!. h1tp: llwww.~conmcc\oud.com/comicsJcarV3a102.html

P'RON1l-Se ME you ONE: 5EeR: WON'T

WON'T 1;);ttN/C; AND liurcT.
DJ(IV~. CAl<:l.

• (1// ENI>
Fig. 3 Scott McCloud. Carl Lives! http://www.scottmcc\oud.comlcomics/carIl3a104.hunl

and 3 illustrate part of one: by clicking on a number on the screen

(from 2 to 52), you add to the story. Figures 2 and 3 show two of the S I
possible versions. Figure 4 shows part of another option: here, you click
on a window, and me panel is revealed - ramer like an advent calendar.
Elsewhere on the site, which is still under construction, McCloud
promises snatches of sound, and segmen ts of animation.
What can we say about this site? First of all, it's very entertaining.
There's much fun to be had here, and I'd recommend readers to make
a visit. More seriously, credit is due to McCloud for 'putting his money
where his mouth is': where better to express your ideas about net comics
than on the net itself? (In a similar fashion, Understanding Comics, a
complex if flawed analysis, was a testament to McCloud's belief that
anything cou ld be expressed in comics form.) Yet, me doubts remain.
T he overall impression you get from exploring the site is that it is not
'comics', as it maintains, but more a form of arcade game: the down-
sides are that it's gimmicky and unsatisfying, and forces the user to ex-
plore me site at me pace of rq~computer itself. U ltimately, you can only
conclude that once a creator adds an interactive element, animation,
sound, etc, then the art form becomes something else. 'Comics' is not
the right word for it; perhaps 'multi-media art' is. So, I think we have to
think very carefully about definitions, and - to re-emphasise my argu-
ment - about the consequences and implications of those definitions.
To move on ... False Assumption Number 2: That because comics
work on the printed page, mey will autom atically work on the net. This
50 ROGER SABIN

,(
;.!
~·.....,.J~,. I
)

-,

Fig. 4 Scon McCloud. Nilll!ty Five. hnp:l/www.scottrnccloud.com/comicsl95195pl.hunJ

is wildly off-beam, and we need to get a few obvious home truths out of
the way first. Simplistically speaking, comics work because they arc
'convenient'. You can read them anywhere: they arc extremely portabl e,
and not 'fixed' to any particular place. A computer, however, is rarely any
of these things. For example, although it is feasible, we do not speak of
taking a computer with us on the bus. Similarly, a comic is immediate
in its communication; the net very often is not. With a standard modem,
it can take many minmcs to get on-line, and many minutes more to
move from link to link. When the traffic is bad, even this is impossible.
This 'time problem' can be particularly exasperating for comics artists
dipping their coes into digita l waters. The comments of Dave ,McKean,
one of the top artists in the world (he's worked on titles like Sandman,
Cages, etc), are indicative. He told me in an interview how his anempt
at creating a web site (,Club Salsa') went astray : "It was an experiment
for me, consisting of a series of images, and some animation," he said .
" It was serialised every twO weeks, but the downlaad time was so slow
that I'm not sure it worked. People just got very bored waiting for these
images to appear."6
By the same token, comics 'work' because they are cheap (the latest
DC titl es retail at around $2.50). They are within the range not juSt of

6. Oave McKean, interviewed May 1998. A longer version of this can be found on
the 'electronic book review' site ~I t hlrp:j/a1tx.com}ebr
THE CRISIS IN MODERN AMERICAN AND BRITISH COM ICS 51

kids, but of a high proportion of people on a low income, and this partly
explains why for much of their history they h ave been seen as a 'work-
ing class' art form. By contrast, computers are not cheap, and nor is
hooking up to the net. They are hardly 'working class', and when one
considers that 10% of the rural populations in the UK and US cannot
afford telephones, let alone computers, it puts things in perspective.
This ultimately means that comics are 'democratic', while the net is
not. For example, it. is indicative that one can find comics in every pan
of the world, while the net remains an irrelevance to 98% of it.7 (It's
also interesting that net comics boosterism comes mainly from Ameri-
ca, which is the country that dominates the net, and where local calls
are free.)
Of course, computer evangelists would challenge the arguments
about COSt and convenien ce by saying that things are getting cheaper,
faster, and smaller. They point to the effect that the miniaturisation of
the computer chip had on the development of calculators, watches, and
so forthj to the way the net is being revitalised by fibre-opticsj to the
p lans for the net to be linked to television; and on and on. 8 But the
point is that while we may well be on the brink of a 'new industrial re-
vol ution', there's still a long, long way to go, and there are an awful lot
of 'ifs' between here and cyber utopia. A flippant example makes the
point well : during the 1950s-60s space age, pundits were predicting
that within a few years we'd be living on other planets, and happily mining
their minerals. It didn't happen. So, in this sense, to debate about hy-
potheticals is no debate at all.
(I'd like to add, quickly, that there is another political point here,
tOo, because computers assume a level of literacy that essentially ex-
cludes huge sections of the community. Even to find the website of a
major publisher, you have to know how to spell it. Plus, if you hit a
wrong key, then the instructions to rectify the problem are in text -
which again depends on the user being literate to be understood. This is
why some commentators in America are saying that the use of compu-
ters discriminates against the under:-_educated non-white populations of

7. For an eloquent demolition of the net-as-democratic-Shungri-la myt h, set! Jon

StraLlon, 'Cyberspace and the Clobulisation of C u]t\lre'. In D. Porter (ed) /lIIcmct
ClfllUrt (Roulledge, 1997) . For a useful, if dated, sur vey of work on 'worldcomics'
see John Lent Comic Arl: An /lIlcrllollollolllibliogmphy (Drexel Hill, I?enn, USA;
John Lent, 1986).
8. Miniamrisation is a constant obsession of me computer fairs. See, for example, me
report on the PC Expo in New York, ' Hand Stands and Summer Assaults', by Jack
SchofieJd, 11lt Guardiall,June 26, 1997, p.ll .
52 ROGERSAB IN

the inner cities (see, for example, recent work by academic bell hooks).
Comics are much more accessible in this regard: of course, they assume
a level of literacy toO, but they are much more user-friendly, and can be
looked at without being read.)
So much for pragmatic objections. When we get down to the purely
aesthetic qualities of net comics, a whole new range of problems ap-
pears. 9 To begi n with, reading off a screen means a difference in the way
we actually ' see' comics. \X'hen reading the printed page, light reflects
off it into the eye; however, a computer screen is back-Iir, with the light
shining directly into the eye. This can be harmful, especially when com-
bined with the endemic problem of'screen flicker ' . The cartoonist Serh
(Palooka- Ville, I ,'s a Good LIfe If You Don't J.%aken, e tc), has spoken of
his misgivings in this respect: "I have tried to read comics ofT the
screen, but it's not a pleasant experience. It's comparable to reading
from microfiche . You can do it for a short period, but any longer and
you're likely to get a headache."tO (All the anists I interviewed for this
piece shared those sentiments.)
Also, there is a loss of certain sensual qualities. It's easy to forget that
we read - or rather ' use' - comics in a very physical way (we tend to
think of them as being two-dimensional, but in fact they exist in three
dimensions). They can be bent, rolled-up, roughly opened or whatever.
They can be held in different ways: cradled in your hand or gripped at
the edges. We know how far into a comic we've read because we can feel
how many pages are left. There are also smells: of dust, glue and paper.
Compared to this very sensual experience, clicking a mouse just isn't
the sam e.
This Question of tactility is magnified when it comes to actually cre-
ating comics. The old-fashioned, low-tech, tools - penci l, pen and ink -
have a satisfying Quality, which cannot easily be matched . Some soft-
ware manufacturers have tried . At the m oment, the most popular
method of creating a comic on the screen involves drawing onto a pad
or ' tablet' with an electronic pen. But, among other problems, this
means that the place where the artist is drawing is n ot where the art is

9. There i~ a growing literature on the aesthetics of comks. The best text so far in
English is Scmt McCloud's aforementioned U"dcrsumding Comics (HarperCollins,
1995), but watch out for a forthcoming, as yet unlitled, book on the same by
Joseph \'(Iitck, author of the acclaimed Comic Books as Hislory (University of Mis-
sissippi Press, 1989).
10. Interview with Seth by Rogcr Sabin for Speak magazine, Summer 1997. (This sec-
tion of the interview is slightly edited in the magazine version .)
THE CRISIS IN MODERN AMERICAN AND BRITISH COMICS 53

appearing i.e. on the screen. Plus, of course, the technology is very ex-
pensive. 11 Mark Landman, an artist who has long worked with elec-
tronic imagi ng, wrote in the cata logue to the San Francisco exhibition
mentioned earlier that it entailed "replacing about $20 worth of tradi-
tional tools with $ 10,000 worth of electronic ware". 12
Granted, we can get used to the tactil e qualities of computers in
time, and yes, it's easy to get sentimental about something like comics,
but again it demonstrates the distance we need to travel before net
comics can' be accepted. There is something comfortable about an art
form that has been around for so long, and something equally discon-
certing about new technology. Survey after survey has shown how tech-
nophobic the populations of America and Western Europe really are.
It's a fear borne out of computer crashes, hole-in-the-wall bank ma-
chines that don't work, and other everyday electronic dysfunctions . At-
titudes will undoubtedly change, but not in the short space of time the
hype merchants are p redicting .
Finally, to conclude our survey of aesthetic problems, there is the
question of how much is actually lost when comics are created for or
transferred to the net, because that transference often has to be
achieved bit-by-bit. In other words, typically the comic h as to be de-
constructed for it to be transmitted screen-by-screen. This has serious
consequences because comics traditionally have different layers of
structural 'integrity' . Even the simplest comics tend to use the page as.a
structural unit, for example, and panels are designed to relate not just
to each other, but to the page as a whole. This can become a very soph-
isticated arrangement in the hands of certain creators. All this is lost if a
comic is read a few panels at a time on-screen, or if you have to scroll
d ow n a page. Consider, for example, plate 2: a page from the graphic
novel Signal to Noise, by Dave M cK ean and Neil Gaiman, which uses a
different time scale for individual panels and the page per se. This is
exactly the kind of layout that would not translate well.
This also raises the question of the pace at which you read . Because
by scrolling up and down a page in order to see different panel s, you are
at the m ercy of your computer, and the fact of how fast it can scroll.
This, again, can be very frustrating. Reading a print comic, of cou rse,
you are in total control of the pace at which you read . As for designing a

11. Seon MeCloud is much more positive about digital rendering tools. See The Comics
.,!olll"/lal interview, ibid., pp.77-78 .
12 . Mark Landman, quoted in the catalogue to ' Electronic Comics and Computer Art',
Cartoon Art Museum, USA, 1991.
54 ROGERSABIN

comic to have an integrity in terms of chapters, and indeed as a work as a

whole, this is very difficult to achieve: on a computer screen, the pacing
in this regard can again be completely destroyed.
There are other artistic/aesthetic issues. For example, the idea of
working with the juxtaposition of facing pages is impossible - another
important technique, used very effectively, for example, in the Marvel
superhero comics of the 19605. Then there is the fac t that the borders
on a screen are quite different to those of a comics page, makin g such
tricks as the 'bleeding' of action sequences off the page much less dra-
matic. No doubt new compositional ideas will evolve when digital comics
get into their stride, but conventional structures are too often non-
translatable. Finally, it's worth m entioning that at the moment the
quality of the reproduction itself is often inferior on a screen (mainly
due to pixilation and poor scanning), and this is especially detrimental
when it com es to covers. 13
False Assumption N umber 3: That net comics are the next historical
step for the comics m edium. The logic goes that because over time
computers have become more and more prominent in the production
of comics - from taking over chores such as colouring, to experimenta-
tion with computer-rendered books (Shatter, B atman: Digital JusNce,
etc) - that the inevitable final phase will be comics on the net. After all,
in a broader sense, comics have always been altered by technology; like,
for example, the way in which the 1960s underground benefited from
the advances in cheap offset litho printing, or the 1980s small press
made use of the photocopier revolution. As we've m entioned, some ad-
vocates of net comics (like Scan M cCloud) are predicting that the
printed comic book will be superseded by the computerised form until
it all but disappears.
Indeed, dlis idea that 'net comics' are 'the next step' has been rein-
forced symb olically by the science fictional content of many comics,
and in particular by the increasing obsession in SF storylines with cyber-
technology. Computers have always played a role in com ics, of course,
ever since Batman started to make use of his giant riddle-solving com-
puter in the Batcave (and probably since before then) . But since the
mid-19 80s, the very popular 'cyberpunk' genre, which has become a

13. Traditionally, covers have been the 'selling ·point' of comics, the first thing the
buyer sees, and have therefore tended to be of a higher quality artistically and in
terms of production values than the interiors. (Often , a different artist will be
used.) For this reason, rafe comics with undamaged covers arc particularly highly
prized in the collectors market.
THE CRISIS"IN MODERN AMERICAN AND BRITISH COMICS 55

major theme in SF, has predicted a future society which is dominated

by computers, and in which cultural capital is signified by computer
knowledge. (A tenuous point, but a valid one, I think.)
But this suggestion of a take-over by compurerised comics implies a
false progression. The rise of one medium does not necessarily herald
the fall of another, any more than the rise of cinema led to the destruc-
tion of theatre. As we have seen, the advantages of print are numerous,
and it is therefore. much more likely that net comics and traditional
comics will continue to co-exist side by side, one feeding from the other.
It is fashionable to talk of a 'post-print' age, bur again we must ask who
benefits, and who loses, from this. There is a sense in which loo~ing
'forward' to the net is a statement that comics have 'had their day'. It
fits neatly with the history of the decline in comics sales since the late
1940s~ and with the dissipation of the mid-l 980s euphoria when it was
expected that comics were in for a revival (a euphoria spurred by the
freak success of 'adult' graphic novels such as Watchmen and The Dark
Knighl Ruurns). But, in fact, comics are far from finished, and, as we've
said, creatively speaking are going through a golden age.
So, t6 conclude this (main) pan of the paper, there is no need to as-
sociate comics with compurers to make them sound exciting, or to 'jus-
tify' them culturally. They are already exciting, and will continue to exist
in pretty much their present form for the foreseeable future. It follows
that the idea that new technology will 'save' comics needs careful scru-
tiny. This is not to imply that the net will not have a role: of course it
will. As we have seen, as net comics develop they will no doubt evolve
their own aesthetic, which will be a fascinating process to observe . But
for the time being it's fair to say that the traditional print-based comic
represents a highly sophisticated consumer product, while the cifeap,
wafer-thin, 8 by 11 inch, satellite-interfaced personal computer still be-
longs to the world of science fiction.
There is a postscript to this story, however, and that is the role that
the net might come to play in the actual distribution of comics. This is
quire a different issue, of course, and involves basically advertising and
selling 'print comics' via the net - in other words, using the net as a sell-
ing tool. Why this is imporrant is because, theoretically, the net could
open up whole new markets, and even cut out the need for traditional
shops. If that happened, then maybe, for example, more women would
buy comics - a market that has long been put-off by the male-dominated
atmosphere of comics shops (and one which the VS and VK industries
have long been trying ro recapture). Once again, [he true potential of the
56 ROGERSAB IN

net will not be known for many years. Yet we can begin to sketch out some
of the main issues (though very briefly - this is a subject that requires
much more research).
Perhaps the main imped iments [0 progress arc econ omic. The biggest
at the moment is that there is no efficient way of making small financ ial
transactions over the net: for example, m ost credit ca rds have lower
limits, and so t OO do the reta ilers. To combat this, there are plans afoot
to create a new ' net currency', which will speed things up imm en sely,
but at the mom ent this is still at the drawing board stage, and is being
hotly contested by government bodies who are anxious that they should
be able to reap their tax benefits. Even when transactions arc of a viable
nature, it has been shown that many people are still frightened of tapping
their cred it card number in to the keyboard - and this comes back to
the technophobia I talked about earlier.
Additionally, buying over the net can be expensive (shipping and
handling fees are often surprisingly high), and subject to delay: packages
often take weeks or months to arrive. Because the net is not a priority
outlet for most retailers, e-mailed orders can get ignored or overlooked,
leaving the buyer awaiting a parcel that will never arrive. Even if your
money is d ebited, there is no guarantee that the product you have paid for
will ever get to you. All of which adds up [0 a further dent in consumer
confidence.
Partly in the light of this, mainstream comics companies have been
slow to capitalise on the net for distribution purposes. DC Comics, for
instance, have shown themselves to be half-hearted in this regard , but
feel it's useful [0 have a website in order to sell other things - like mer-
chandising - and for advertising purposes in general. As part of a much
bigger multinational - T ime-Warner - they have agendas other than
simply selling comics, and arguably this can be off-pu ning for potential
buyers (indeed, they d o not sell individual titles over the net, but merely
give detail s of how [0 take out a yearly subscription). The same is true
for other mainstream publishers: the sites may look good, but their effi-
ciency is questionable, and sales through this route remain negligible.
The alternative scene uses the net in slightly different ways. In gen-
eral it has been more willing to adapt, but there are still drawbacks.
Here, there is usually no tie-in with other products, so the COStS of
maintaining and updating a website have to be calculated very carefully
aga inst potential profits. Unfortunately, this ca lculation often means
that it's hardly worth doing. As Tony Bennett of Knockabout Comics
explained to me: "The net has been useful because our site has generated
THE CRISIS iN MODERN AMERrCAN AND BRITISH COMICS 57

sales from obscure parts of the world - Pola nd, South America, and so
on. It seems to reach people we wouldn't otherwise reach. But orders
are still very, very small."14
Also, sociologically speaking, there is a sense in which the net de-
stroys the exclusivity that is part of being a fan of alternative comics.
Such comics are akin to fanzines in the way chat they can often signify
being part of a 'hip club' requiring a degree of comm itment and know-
ledge. As Peter Bagge has pointed out, the people who buy alternative
comics are often simultaneously into alternative music and alternative
literature (,anti-corporate culture', as he calls it). l'i In other words, buyers
are assumed to share roughly the same values and politics. But the pro-
blem with the net is that arguably it destroys that sense of camaraderie,
because basically 'anybody' can visit a website, whatever their political
or cu ltural persuasions. Many involved in small press and alternative
comics, therefore, find this method of d istribution unsatisfactory. 16
To finish on a personal note, I hope the net does make a difference
someday with regard to distribution. As we have seen, there is nothing
wrong with comics as a product, so a more efficient means to distribute
and sell that product is to be welcomed. For example, I would love to
see the comics by Chris Ware and Joe Sacco reach the kind of audience
they deserve. There are obvious difficulties, but if publishers are going
to direct their energies to the net - and if past evidence is anything to go
by, they will in increasing numbers - then this seems like a potentially
profitable avenue to pursue. To me, it is certainly more sensible than
trying to find ways to turn comics into hybrid computer games - a
whole different can 0' beans (and one that has very little to do with
comics in the first place) . Anne Magnussen opened the conference by
saying that com ics are a unique medium. The net is a unique medium,
too. Let's hope they stay that way. 17

14. Inlerview with lbny Bellnen, 17.0 1.98.

15. Peter Bagge, quoted in The COlllics.101lI"llol, numbt::r 159, May 1993, p.flR.
16. For an elahoration of this thcme, see Slephcn Duneombe Zines: Notes /1"0111 Ulldcr-
ground (Verso, London, 1997), t::speci(llly p. 230. for ~ome useful links to alterna-
tive sites, sce the lively British-based sitc Cartoo Nct (at hnp:llwww.pavilion.eo.uk/
canoollO!L) .
17. Sinee the paper was written, it has been announced that Scott MeCloud will bt::
elaborHting on his views on net comics in a new book, provisionally entitled Re-
illvemillg Comics, to be published in 20DO.
America's First Comics?
Techniques,Contents, and Functions
of Sequential Text-Image Pairing in
the Classic Maya Period

Jesper Nielsen and SfJren Wichmann

O. Introduction l
Many introductory books on the history of comics begin with the pub-
lications of the firs t American comic strips in the late 19th century (e.g.
Fuchs and Reitberger 1978: 13; Hegerfors an d Aberg 1996: 5), and
hence concentrate on the las t 100 years of comics history. Occasionally
extrem ely brief references are made to prehistoric or other early cul-
tures that used comic-like means of expression, that is, combinations of
text and image. Oft-mentioned examples are Egyptian and Mesopota-
mian reliefs or the famous medieval Bayeux tapestry (Fuchs and Reit-
berger 1970: 10-11 ; Eisner 1986: 5; H egerfors and Aberg 1996: 5). In
contrast to this m ild ly ethnocentric ignorance of the time depth and
cultural variety of comics, Scott McCloud, in his innovative book Un-
derstanding Comics (1993) focuses on, and describes in some detail, the
way in which not only the ancient Egyptians, but also the Pre-Columbian
M ixtecs of the 14th to 16th century Mexico, used conventions similar
to those found in modern comics in their screenfold books of bark paper.
McCloud concludes that

there's an incred ib le wealth of ancient comics and some may yet

hold the key to comics' future. Discovering and cataloguing this
work has al,ready begun. But there's much more that needs to be
done! There's a big gaping hole in the official history of art and
it's high time somebody fill ed it. (McC loud 1993: 200, emphases
removed)

I. We would like to thank JusLin Kerr for giving us his permission 10 publish his
remarkable photographs of Maya Vessel paintings. In addition, we gratefuUy
acknowledge comments from Alfonw Lacadena, Stephen Houston and Erik Boot
on an earlier, more lengthy, version of this paper.
60 JESPER NiELSEN AND S0REN WICHMANN

In this paper we shall try to fill a part of this gap, and demonstrate that
it is in fact possible to push back the time of the appearance of the pre-
decessors of American comics some 1200 years before the Mixtecs. As
early as the 3rd century A.D. scribes and artists of the Classic Maya so-
ciety realized that the combination of text and image offered unique
possibilities for relating series of eventS (see Fuchs and Reitberger
1978: 55 for a characterization of comics along these lines). In fact
these early Maya examples have even more in common with modern
comics than the Mixrec codices described by McCloud . Maya sequential
art painted on ceramics and stuccoed walls or engraved on limestone
tablets and lintels shares a broad range of expressive features with mod-
ern comics. The aim of this paper is to discuss and delimit the definable
properties of what we have termed Maya sequem£al text-£mage pairing as
a neglected subcategory within the broader category of Maya visual
communication. More generally, this preliminary investigation seeks to
throw some light on the development and practice of text-image pairing
in a culture historical perspective.

1. The cultural context a nd media of text-image pairings

The Pre-Columbian Maya civilization flourished in southern Mexico,
Belize, Guatemala and the western part of Honduras from between ca.
250 B.C. to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519 A.D., and was one of the
cultures of major importance in Mesoamerica. Since only four Maya
screenfold books (or codices) have survived to this day, polychrome
vessels and plates provide by far the richest source for the study of se-
quential art. Around 1000 vessels with text-image pairings have been
published in photographic reproduction, and many more are kJ;lown or
expected to exist. The majority of these vessels were produced in the
Late Classic period, more specifically between 600 and 900 A.D. Un-
fortunately, most of the known vessels are unprovenanced, as they have
seen the light of day as the result of the sacking of elite tombs by loot-
ers. The four surviving codices are sacred almanacs, which, due to their
function, contain only few examples of sequential art, but it must be as-
sumed that this genre was also represented by the bark paper books.
D orie Reents-Budet ( 1994: Chap. 6) has identified three major cate-
gories of pictorial themes found on Maya ·ceramic vessels, each theme
having several subcategories: (a) the natural environment; (b) historical
scenes, including subcategories with some of the most frequent themes
such as palace, warfare, ballgame, and sacrificial or ritual scenes, and
AMERICA'S 'F IRST COMICS? 61

finally, (c) supernatural beings and events. There is ample evidence that
finely decorated vessels had a utilitarian use, namely for drinking choco-
late or maize gruel, but their function as a social currency may have
been of equa lly great importance. Vessels played a central role in political
negotiations and alliance building between city-scates and in important
rituals, and are likely to have been the most common and important
type of object in ritual gift-giving (see the vessels K3314 2 and K5094
for examples) .
Despite similarities in the outward appearance of Maya text-image
pairings and modern comics there, is a considerable difference with re-
gard to content and function. What the two have in common are primar-
ily idioms or expressive traits and techniques. We hesitate to use the term
comics as synonymous with Maya sequential art, since to many it proba-
bly implies messages of a humorous or entertaining nature. Although
Maya sequential art in some cases does seem to convey hurnor, this is
certainly not always the case. Thus, we prefer a less specific and culturally
biased definition, such as that suggested byWill Eisner (1986), namely
sequentiaL art, or a more precise and elaborate version thereof: juxUlposed
pictorial and other images in deliberate sequ8l1ce (McCloud 1993: 5-9).

2. Sequential text-image pairings as a new subcategory

of conjoined text and image
Four major categories of visual communication were used by the ancient
Mayas: (a) discrete texts; Cb) images; (c) conjoined text and image, i.e.,
text and image occurring together but spatia.uy separated from one an-
other; and finally (d) embedded texts, in which textual elements merge
with images (Berlo 1983; Nielsen 1998: 2-5).
The discrete texts (a) are texts written with Maya hieroglyphs that are
not accompanied by any images. Such " pure" and image-independent
texts are very rare in the extensive corpus of hieroglyphic inscriptions.
Even rarer in the. Maya comext are examples of the second category,

2. Throughout this paper we shall make many references to different vessels, using,
whenever possible, the numbering system of the most prolific publisher of Maya
vessels, ]ustin Kerr. Kerr numbers arc introduced by "K." Most of the vessels are
published in Kerr's Maya J.Use Book series that number 5 volumes to date (Kerr
1989- 1997). In addition, Kerr's corpus is available on the internet: http://
www.famsi.org/mayavuse/. Among the other rich ~ou rccs arc Robicsek and Hales
(198 1), Recnts-Budet (1994), and Coe (1973). Both the Kerr series and his inter-
net vase archive provide various concordances to his and other numbering systems.
62 JESPER NIELSEN AND S0REN WICHMANN

Cb), which comprises "pure" images (although instances do occur, e.g.,

the panels from X'telhu). By far the most common ly used type of visual
communication and artistic expression was that of conjoined text and
image Cc). Janer C. Berlo (1983) has shown that with respect to this
type the images are not necessarily simply illustrations of the event de-
scribed in the text. Text and image elaborate on each other, and, in or-
der to receive the complete message of a vessel, a stela or a page in a co-
dex, one has to read, and combine, the information of both text and
image (cf. plate 3, and further discussion below). Thus, Maya visual
communication never suffered the radical separation of text and image
that is, or at least has been, characteristic of the Western world. For a
long time this separation resulted in a conception of "high" art as com-
prising either "pure" texts or "pu re" images, whereas the combination
of the twO was regarded as inferior and best suited for advertising, en-
tertainment and types of "Iow" art (McCloud 1993: 140-151 ). To
Maya artists, on the contrary, the combination of text and image was
the most expressive and hence preferred kind of visua l communication.
Category (d), embedded texts, transcends the boundaries' between text
and image and is a result of integrating or embedding hieroglyphic
signs into images in subtle ways. This is mainly possible due to the dose
relationship between Maya hieroglyphic signs, which to a high degree
are representational, and the images and iconography employed. Em-
bedded texts could be used to signal the material of which objects were
made, to indicate place names or personal names, etc. In fig. I , the
grape-like markings on the monstrous heads at the base of each of the
two panels are examples of embedded texts. These markings recur in the
signs for tu:n 'stone ' and witz 'mountain'. The monstrous heads thus
somehow represent mountains. Since the eyes resemble the hierogJyph
,
for water, ha', the combination seems to evoke an expression ha' wit.z
'water mountain', which would be the Classic Maya equivalent of the
Nahuatl term a:l-tepe:tl, a term used for 'town, city' in general. Thus,
the two monstrous heads probably refer to place-names (cf. Nielsen
1998: 9 for this observation with reference to simil ar examples).
The subcategory of sequential text-image pairings belongs within the
broad category of conjoined text and image, and has sequentiality as its
most distinctive and recurrent feature. The juxtaposition of images and
rext in sequence enables the artist to indicate movement and temporal-
ity and to describe a series of ongoing events. Hitherto, sequentiality in
Maya art has received surprisingly little anention (Robicsek and Hales
1981: 11 3; Schele and Miller 1986: 38; Reenrs-Budet 1989).
AlVl.ER ICA'$ FIRST COMICS? 63

2.1. The organization of images

Unlike Maya texts, which have a fixed reading order left-right or top-
down, Maya images are not necessarily decoded in a specific order.
Furthermore, the artists who produced the painted vessels, did not use
any over t means, such as arrows, for linking images together in a specific
order, a technique common in a modern context, or footprints, a device
often used in Postclassic Central M exican screenfolds. Nevertheless, in
subtle ways that were specific to the medium of cylindrical vessels, the
artists cou ld direct the decoding of the images such that the viewer's at-
tention would be more or less focused unconsciously in response to the
artists' intentions. Nowadays the images on Maya painted vessels are
most often photographically reproduced by means of the roll-out tech-
n'ique invented by Justin K err. This allows a cyl indrical image to be re-
produced as if it were painted on a single, flat page. It is a clear advantage
for the st udent to have a complete overview of each vessel, but when
studying these roH-outs we must not forget that this is not the way the
Maya viewer would confront them.
When one examine a real-life Maya vessel, the part which is clearly
visible without the onlooker turning the vessel corresponds to a little
less than half of the total diameter of the vessel. In size this visible
stretch more or less equals the minor part of the roll-out image when
divided by the golden section. Thus, a natural way of utilizing the space
for painting would be to place three or four evenly spaced images or
scenes around the vessel wall . This pattern, which we shall call ABC is
indeed a common one (figs. I, 5, 6). We also include under this type
such vessel paintings that have two (e.g., fig. 4), or more than fo ur im-
ages; the criterion is not the number of images, b ut rather thar the char-
acters d epicted turn in the same direction , that no particular image
stands out as central, and that there be no h eavy frames separating the
images . Another layout which is even more common is one that indi-
cates a front, suggested by an artistically elaborated or thematically
central image and a back constituted by back-to-back figures. In this
type, the front and the sides are not separated. Thus, the scen e of the
front "spills" over into the sides, but usually only that part of the scen e
which is minor in importance. Thus, in a palace scen e, the fron t may be
constituted by a ruler or other major political figure sitting in an elevated
place with rows of subordinates to either side of him. The subordinates
si tring last in each row will meet back to back on the side of the vessel
opposite the point where the ruler is seated and will constitute the back
of the vessel painting. Although palace scenes m ay be more comm on in
64 JESPER NIELSEN AND S0REN WICHMANN

this type, which we shall name bAd, we have chosen as examples

scenes of an action-oriented nature (fig. 2 and plate 4). The different
varieties could be symbolized abAde, bABd, bd, etc., depending on the
number of central and secondary images, but we prefer to use che gen-
eral label only in order not to complicate the use of symbolic conven-
tions. A third common organizational principle is one in which the total
paimed space in divided into four: two large spaces containing equally
imporram, in fact often near-identical, images and twO smaller ones,
typically containing vertical quadrangles containing glyph rows or dec-
oration. We shall name the resulting type AxBy (plate 3, fig. 3).
We stress that this is not intended (0 be an exhaustive typology, al-
though a greater part of dle corpus fits these major types perfectly or
with some allowances for deviations and combinations.'

2 .2. Narrative sequcntiality in Maya art

It is possible to distinguish two slightly different ways in which the
Maya producers of sequential art narrated series of events. One is broad
sequentiality. Characteristic of this type is that between each sequence
enough time has passed for a markedly different situation to obtain. By
this means a story is told. T h e other type is narrow sequentiahty. What is
important here is motion . By making very small changes in the position
of, say. a person's arm or a bird 's wing, the representation afmotion is
achieved. Unlike cases of broad sequentiality. no actual course of
events is narrated. but, as with early modern form s of animation. the
images are made to appear as if they are moving. In only a few cases is
it hard (0 distinguish clearly between the two forms of sequentiality.
Broad sequentiality is not common (we have so far only identified
,
about a couple of dozen examples), but it is common enough for us to
clearly identify the type . An example is seen on an Early Classic vessel,
now in the Berlin Museum fur Volkerkunde (fig. 3), of which one half
shows a Maya lit-de-parade accompanied by mourning figures, and the

3. Not only do the types co'·er most of the corpus, bUl deviations from the paucrns
also seem to be significant. In other words, the exceptions may sometimes be said
to confirm the rule(s). On Kl092 a scene fearuring inebriated people is shown.
This painting does not fit any of thc patterns. It seems as if the painter intentionally
chose a disorderly general organization in order to convey disorderliness. Other
examples are K1182, K1558, and a number of vessel paintings showing supernat-
ural companion spiri tS (wayob? In the latter instances it is as if the deviation from
the organizational pattern appears 10 convey a supernarut1l1 world, fit for the super-
narurals that inhabit it.
AMERlCA'S FIRST COMICS? 65

Fig. 1 K2023 (from Kerr 1990: 203). Copyright: Justin Kcrr

Fig . 2 K2208 (from Kerr 1990: 221). Copyright: Justin Ke rr

Fig. 3 Vessel from the Museum fur Volkerkundc, Berlin (from Schele and Mathews
1998: fig. 3.27). Copyright: Justin Kerr
66 JESPER NIELSEN AND S0REN WICHMANN

other half a resurrection scene showing the deceased reborn into the
world of his ancestors. The vessel in plate 3 is another excellent example.
Several instances of narrow sequentiality appear on the vessel paint-
ing in fig. 4, which shows two successive hunting scenes involving the
story of the Hero Twins well known from the Quiche epic Papol VUh.
The first scene captures the moment when a Hero Twin has just fired a
clay pellet from his blowgun. Notice that the peUet is still hanging in
the air. The target, a heron-like waterbird, unaware of the danger, is
about to swallow a fish. Note dl.e wings of the fiying bird above the
blowgun, as well as the bird below it. When we turn the vessel, the ac-
tion moves forward in time about one second. As the clay bullet strikes
the heron its long neck is thrown back by the power of the shot, and it
drops the fish, which is then immediately taken by the bird below the
blowgun. By changing the position of the wings of the flying bird the il-
lusion of flapping wings is achieved. The scene, then, is presented in ul-
tra-slow motion, so to speak. Since the totality of narrow sequences
combines to tell a story, broad sequentiality may be said to obtain. The
vessel painting thus also illustrates the point that the two types of se-
quentiality may combine.
The experience of sequentiality can be obtained by turning a vessel,
so explicitly drawn frames are not needed. A very similar principle of
achieving sequentiality was used in optical toys such as the zoelropes and
phenakislOscopes invented in Europe in the first half of the 19th century.
The zoetrope "contained a series of drawings on a narrow strip of paper
inside a revolving drum [with slots to look through]" (Thompson and
Bordwell 1993: 4-5). Such "moving pictures" are often regarded as
forerunners of the cinema, but they are also very close to the way in
which we dlink Maya vessels were "read".
Among the three major ways of organizing images one, namely the
bAd type, is structurally incompatible with sequentiality, since there is
only one major scene. Both of the remaining types, AxBy and ABC, al-
low for sequentiality since both contain two or more images of equal
importance.
Although we have implied in this section that the individual vessel is
the typical medium for painted narratives, it is important [0 point out
that there are stories which seem to extend over several vessels, each
telling its part of the story. Prominent examples of this phenomenon,
which, for want of a better term, we might call network sequentiality, are
the story of the sacrifice of the Jaguar Baby (fig. 2) and the story of the
snake, the old man, and the woman (Robicsek and Hales 1981: 11 3-11 8).
AMERICA'S FIRST COMICS? 67

Unfo rtunately it is difficult to know how such the matically related vase
paintings functioned in the lives of the ru ling elite - we do not even
know how they fun ctioned in their deaths. In other words, although we
may assume that the known examples have been stolen from elite
tombs, we d o not know whether a particular series of examples come
from one and the same tomb.

2.3. Determining the directional deco ding of sequential

text-image pairing
For the m odern student of M aya vase paintings who has only vague in-
sights into the stories they tell, it is often difficul t to determine which
scene comes fir st. There are, for instance, cases in which two persons
are shown going through a series of rituals. In order to fit (he descrip-
tion into the limited space of the wall of the vessel, the artist does not
show both persons going through all partS of the ritual but instead
shows each person going through one part of the ritual only (K5445; cc.
also K53 51 ). In these cases it is very diffic ult to determine the starting
point . Although the M aya artists did not use any specia l devices to help
the viewer determine the direc tion of d ecoding, there are nevertheless
often thematic or visual clues by which the viewer may b e helped .
Since stories told by vase paintings apparently always constitute part
of the shared cultural knowledge of the Maya elite, the theme of the
painting provides clues as to where decod ing should start. In some cases,
such as paintings referring to the them e ofth e resurrection ofthe m aize
god (som e examples are Reenrs-Buder 1994: 209 and K535 1), even the
m odern student knows enough of the content from related pictorial
m aterials and orally transm itted myths to be able to rough ly identify a
pa rticular seque nce in the larger story. In other cases, which are rare,
the action is of such a common nature that the cultural boundaries do
not obstruct the interpretation of sequentiality (see figs. 3-4).
The visual clues to direc tion ality are diverse and subtle . Sometimes
there is an overall " line" in the composition (K2352. K 5445) and
som etimes the glance of a central person ind icates the direction (the
Princeton Vase).

3. The techniques and idioms of Maya sequentia l art

H aving demonstrated that the Classic Maya develo ped sequential art,
we shall now be concerned with a n umber of formal traits of a more
68 JESPER i'lIELSEN AND $0REN WICHMANN

Fig. 4 The " Blowgunncr"VesscJ (K4151 ; from Kefr 1992: 466). Copyright: Justin Kerr

F ig. 5 K4377 (from Kefr 1992: 483), Copyright: Juslin Kerr

Fig. 6 K4947 (from Kefr 1994: 622). Copyright: Justin Kerr

AMERICA'S FIRST COMICS? 69

specific nature that this Maya subcategory of visual art shares · with
modern comics. The m ost common forms of expressive features, idioms,
graphic conventions or "grammar" (Eisner's term, 1986: 7) found both
in comics and in Maya sequential art are discussed below.

3.1. Con junction oftext and image

Although sequential art withou t texts does exist, it is fair to say that it is
through the combination of image and text, i.e. of showing and telling,
that the genre m ost marked ly distinguishes itself from other art forms
and achieves a special form of expressivity. Scon McCloud lists a num-
ber of categories of text-image combinations (1993: 152- 155) found in
today's comics. Two of these categories, the additive and the interdepen-
dem combinations can be found in Maya sequential art. The additive
combination occurs when "words amplify or elaborate on an image or
vice versa" (McCloud 1993: 154). Although we have not yet found
good examples, such surely occur. since additive combination is the
rule in Maya non-sequential art represented by stelae and codices.
More common is the imerdepel1dem combination, in which "words and
pictures go hand in hand to convey an idea that neither could alone"
(McC loud 1993: 155). In such combinati ons, hieroglyphic texts ar-
ranged in columns, sometimes serving as boundaries between the
scenes (as in the AxBy type), frequently provide important background
information on the d epicted scenes. Furthermore, text placed in front
of the characters, often attached to the mouth by speech-lines, may re-
port what the actors of the event say or feel. A good example appears in
the left-hand scen e of plate 3, in which the old man is saying, "the rabbit
took my stick, my clothes, and my tribute." Stuart ( 1993) interprets
this as a lament that he is not able to hand over his rribute to the Sun
God, sea ted on his throne to the right.
Finally, there is a third type of text-image combination used by the
Maya, the so-called embedded texts. which we have already touched upon.
While the integration of elements from the writing system into images
is a common phenomenon in Maya art, it is relatively rare in m odern
comics) although there are well-known examples such as Uncle Scrooge
being depicted with S signs in his eyes. This difference is partly due to
the fact that many Maya hieroglyphs and images are closely related
(Nielsen 1998: 4), whereas our alphabetic signs have developed into ar-
bitrary signs bearing no apparent resemblance to the material world.
70 JESPER l\.'lELSEN AND S0REN \VlCHMANN

3.2. Pictorial representations aCmotion, sound and smell

As already noted, the Mayas were able to use images in a movie-like
fashion. This kind of sequentia lity, which we have called narrow, was
achieved by changing the positions of the arms, legs, or head of the
characters depicted in the scenes. An example in addition to those in
fig. 4 is provided in fig. 5, which is taken from a vessel decorated with a
scene showing supernatura!s drinking. In three sequences we are able
to fo llow the movement of the drinking cup. In the first scene the cup is
close to a large jar which probably holds the liquid and is held almost
vertically. In the next scene the cup is raised, and is n ow slightly more
tilted towards the mouth of the character. In the last scene the charac-
ter is drinking from the cup. By rotating the vessel we can almost see a
fully animated sequence (for additional examples see K3649, K 3844,
K4619, K4649, K4989, K5371, K.5421, K5454. Robicsek and Hales
1981: fig. 9; for an example outside of the ceramic corpus see Bonam-
pak Room 1, as discussed by Miller 1988: 32 1). A device to illustrate
motion within one and the sam e picture may be found on a vessel
which shows a ballgame in progress (plate 4). Reents-Hudet ( 1994:
269) argues that the undulating lines or curlicues that float around the
scen e are speech-lines tying the hieroglyphic captions to the figures.
Since there are more curlicues than figures we prefer to interpret the
function of the curlicues in a different way. We suggest that their func-
tion is similar to that of the curlicues found in. say, H erge's Tintin,
where they may occur behind a running man to indicate speed or quick
motion. Such a function clearly fits a depiction of a ballgame scene, in
which speed and m otion are central ingredients.
As for the representation of sound, only a few possible examples can be
found, not counting the combination of glyphic text and speech-lines
described above. On K4613 two jaguar-like felines appear to be roaring
or d eclaiming fierce words, since speech-ba lloons with a flame-like out-
line emanate from their mouths (see also K3924). If our interpretation
is correct, this is a unique example of the shape ofa speech-balloon being
changed in order to indicate the character or emotion expressed by the
voice. In contrast, this technique is very common in modern sequential
art (Eisner 1986: 34). Two additional ways of indicating sound or
breath are seen in association with animals. Sometimes small undulat-
ing lines emanate from the nostrils of deer (plate 3; see also Robicsek
and Hales 1981: no. 43 and fig. 64); on K5367 smoke-like scrolls emanate
from the mouth of a bat; and on a vessel published by Robicsek and
AMERICA'S FIRST COMICS? 71

Hales (1981: fig. 17a) a deity appears to be screaming out or perhaps

rather vomiting a very large and strange personified speech-scroll.
Finally, the Mayas also seem to have had ways of visualizing smells.
Occas ionally the skeletal inhabitants of the feared underworld-place Xi-
balba are shown with various colored smoke-like scrolls emerging from
their n avels or posteriors. This appears to be a way of depicting the fou l
smell of the more or less decayed creatures of the Xiba lba (cr. K718,
K3924).

3.3. Scene-over-setting
In Maya imagery ch aracters and objects always appear in the foreg round,
normally tied to a ground tine (Schele and Miller 1986: 36, Reents-Budet
1994: 9). As a pictorial device this is similar to the principle of scene-
over-setting (our term), which is a common trait of modern comics, as
noted by Fuchs and Reitberger (1978: 48). The scene-over-setting
principle operates in a great many painted ceramics, and appears al-
most never to be deviated from. Apart from persons and animals, the
outlines of palace walls, a stylized mountain, curtains. steps of a
ba ll court, vessels or the like may occur in the foreground, but n ever very
prominently and often only partially depicted so as to merely suggest
the setting of the scene (cf. K5445 and Reents-Budet 1994: figs. 3.4
and 4.44). As noted by Robicsek and Hales (198 1: 9), the background
is usua lly empty (i.e., represented by monochrome coloring, as in fig.
I). Only rarely is a naturalistic and detailed background with a landscape,
trees, temples, crowds of people, etc. represented. In our survey we
have only encountered one clear example of this. On the Early C lassic
vessel from Berlin noted above (fig. 3), the resurrection scene has a
complete background, showing mountains, a temple, and trees with ani-
mals among their branches. The result is a crowded image in which it is
difficult to distinguish the individual elements. This is in stark contrast
to the vessels which have a scene-over-setting composition where the
viewer's attention is not distracted in any way.

3.4. Gesture a nd positioning of human and animal figures

In modern comics almost all types of emotion s and attitudes can be ex-
pressed graphically by means of what Eisner calls a "grammar of ges-
tures" (I 986: 149). Here gestures and body language are schematized
72 ]ESPER J'JIELSEN AND S0REN WICHM ANN

to such a degree that we easily recognize and understand the charac-

ters' m ood s. Gestures and body position s were important to the M ayas
as well, and the meanings of some of the gestures appear to be common
to both the M ayas and to us. Some gestures, h owever, arc culture-spe-
cific and m ost of the m any different Maya gestures and bod ily positions
have not yet been interpreted (Kurbjuhn 1980: 117-184). The mean-
ings of a few specific types of gestures and positions can, however, be
determined with some certain ty. Among these is "the posture of royal
ease" (SchalTer 1986), a position in which rulers sit cross-legged upon
their thrones, sometimes with one leg hanging over rhe throne, and
with hands ges ticulating towards a lesser noble, scribe, or other subor-
dinate. No doubt this was a position associated with powerful and in-
fluential persons (e .g., K5 353, K 5450, K5453). Additionally, there is a
subordin ate attitude, which presumably expresses respec( for higber-
ranking individuals (cf. the old man in plate 3; other examples are
K495 9 and K5082). Nevertheless, there are plenty of other examples
which at the present are difficult to associate with specific emotions,
rank etc. (K791 , K4412, K490S, K5374) .
By changing body proportions from the normal to the abnormal,
modern comic artists make humans and animals appear funny. Accord-
ing to Fuchs and Reitberger (1978: 50) the proportions between the
head and the body of figu res in humorous comics frequently change
from 1:8 to 1 :3 . A similar change in body proportions is found in Maya
sequential art, although nO[ necessarily in the ratio 1:3. The characters
that undergo these changes are always supernatural beings, su ch as the
animal companion spirits (wayob') or the denizens ofXibalba, the Maya
Underworld (fig. 6; see, in addition, K1196, K3450, K40 11 ). T hese
characters are sometimes weird m ixtures of humans and animals or d if-
ferent species of animals (K 5082; Robicsek and Hales 1981:' nos. 49-
53; Grube and Nahm 1994) . It is possible that the Maya sought to ridi-
cule the creatures of the Otherworld, bU( a m ore p lausible explanation
is that abnormal bodies are a trademark of supernatural beings; they
seem to have conveyed something terrifying and threatening, as we
imagine the world of spirits and god s to have been for the ancient Maya.

3.5. Color and light

The broad specuurn of colors used to paint the polychrome vessels
served mainly to enhance the realism of the representations. Some colors,
like red, had symbolic values, and could be associated with various reli-
AMERICA'S 'FtRST COMICS? 73

gious concepts, deities, etc., but colors were never used in the expres-
sive manner that we know so well from modern comics, such as an en-
vious man turning green, a sick one yellow or a fr eezing one blue. We do
find variation in skin colors, bur it seems ro serve other purposes. Skin
co lors may range from light brown to dark brown and near black
(K791 , K441 2, K4549, K5453). Although som e of the variation m ay be
due to body painting, it might also indicate different ethnic groups or rank.
Practically no examples of the use of light effects and shadows to
produce an impression of volume or three-dimensionality of persons
and objects are known (Schele and Miller 198 6: 35). F or som e reason
the Mayas did not develop this technique. Not even in scenes that
clearly take place at night, in dark chambers or caves and where torches
are in use, d o we find the use of shadows (e.g. K5445 and Reenrs-Budet
1994, fig. 5.9.).

3.6. Perspective
The Maya only used normal perspective in their images aod never the
bird's or worm 's eye view. Furthermore, persons and ob jects were always
depicted two-dimensionally. As Schele and Miller (I986: 36) observe,
"spa tial illusion in two-dimensional art was severely limited, and the
optical devices used to imply position in space were very few." Any im-
pression of perspective or relative position in space was indicated only
by overlapping, the basic orientation point being the ground line (e.g.
](767, ](3413, K 3814) .

3.7. F rames
It is equally rare to see an expressive use of the shapes and sizes of the
frames. If present, the frames serve mainly as neutra l devices to separate
the scenes or to indicate the passing of time . As in modern comics, the
frames "conta in and transpOrt th e look of th e reader" (Bisner 1986:
57). Maya frames are generally of a very simple rectangular shape and
of uniform size .4

4. K535 1 is an exception. It shows a ~equencc featuring the so-called Paddler Gods in

their canoes. T he images have the rou nded rruciform shape that symbolizes the
entrance point to the watery Underworld (Frcidd et al. 1993: 89-94; 215-218), the
place towards which the Paddler Gods are u·avelling. In one of the images, the
canoe is til ting and ahout to ~ink. In this unique example the frame indicates the
selling of the srene.
74 JESPER NIELSEN AND S0REN WIC HMANN

4. Discussion
In the course of this investigation we have attempted to identify some of
the principles accord ing to which Maya sequential art works and to dis-
tinguish useful categories and establish a terminology of use in the
analysis of M aya visual communication in general and sequential art in
particular. In add ition to presenting these analytical tools, however, we
would also like to contribute to the discussion of comics and culture by
introducing a broader culture historical perspective.
It is possible to argue that the Mayas, for all we know) produced
America's fi rst comics. Maya sequential ar t cer tainly shares many of its
features with modern comics, so whether we choose to actually ca ll it a
form of comic is really just a matter of where to draw arbitrary bound-
aries in terms of definition. To look for America's first comics is in itself
only a superficially interesting project since representational techniques
d o n ot tell the whole story of Maya "comics." By confining oneself to
comparative, formal starements one runs the risk of introducing an evo-
lutionary point-of-view. One of rhe formal differences is that the stories
the Maya artists tell are few in numbers and abbreviated to one or two
scenes. In contrast, the number of Western comics is massive and they
often tell whole stories. This formal difference, however, requires a socia l
explanation . We attribute the difference to the fa ct that the M ayas were
more unified in terms of shared cultural knowledge than m embers of
Western society are. For the Mayas the messages existed b efore the me-
dium, i.e., as orally transmitted myths and stories. T he artists would
elaborate on, but nor create narratives. By combining the techniques of
narrow and broad sequen tiality more consistently the Mayas could eas-
ily have told whole stories just as Western comics do, but as far as we
know th ey did not, apparently because there was no need for it . One
similarity is that artistic achievem ents exist both in M aya sequential art
and Western comics. Aga in, we should look for social explanations. The
painted Maya vessels were a form of "social cu rrency" (Reems-Budet
1994: 88) in an exchange network of goods and prestige, whereas West-
ern comics are primarily comm ercial. The fo rmer were exchanged for
prestige (of the donor), the latter for both money and prestige (of the
artist). From the perspective of a purely forma l approach to art forms
one might opine that the Maya artists could be p laced on an evolution-
ary ladder close co the tOp steps represented by Western comics. A few
steps m ore, such as the consistent use of combinations of narrow and
broad sequentiality and the introduction of point-of-view would bring
them ul? to the standard s of today's Western comic artists. Tbe best ar-
AMERICA'S "F IRST COMICS? 75

gument against the evolutionary approach, however, is that the condi-

tions that brought about Western and Maya sequential text-image pair-
ing in the first place are so radically different that this approach fails
even at the outset: the conditions are, in fact, diametrically opposed. In
Western society the combination of text and image was, for centuries,
considered a debased form of communication . Only artists who directed
their work towards a mass audience, predominantly the lower classes,
dared venture into text-image pairing. The Mayas, however, considered
the combination of text and image the most exqui site and exclusive 5
form of artistic communication, and reserved it for elite consumption
only.
Thus, more than a thousand years apart and under diametrically' op-
posed social conditions art forms arose that share a surprising number
of formal features.

5. Pseudo-writing on vessels of lesser quality anests both to the preslige of writing

and to the limited degree of litcracy in Maya society.
76 JESPER NIELsEN AND S0REN WIC HMANN

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Coe, M ichael D. ( 1973). The Maya scribe alld his world. New York: The Grolier
Club.
Eisner, Will (1986). Tegllesericll & den grafukefortalletek"ik (Comics & Sequen-
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Frcidcl, David, Linda Schelc and Joy Parker ( 1993). M ayo Cosmos. Three TlIOIt-
salld Years 011 the Shaman's Path. New York: WilIiam M orrow and Co.
Fuchs, Wolfgang J. and Reinhold C. Reitberger ( 1970). Comics: Anatomie eines
Massel/mediums. Munich : H einz Moos Verlag.
F uchs, Wolfgang J. and Reinhold C. Rcitberger (1978). Comics-H alldbuch.
H amburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. GmbH.
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Inventory ofWGy Characters on Maya Ceramics.' In : Justin Kerr, The Maya
Hue Booll, vol. 4. NewYOl'k : K err Associates. pp. 686-715.
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Carlsen Comics.
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Kerr, Justin (1990). The Maya Vase Book, f.VI. 2. New York : Kerr Associates.
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Modular Structure and Image/Text Sequences:
Comics and Interactive Media

George Legrady

As an artist working in interactive digital m ed ia, with a background in

photography and an interest in a conceptual approach to the structuring
of cultural narratives, comics always seemed to be a kind of distant cou-
sin, something to consider as a reference m odel, a resource to examine
and [0 ' b orrow' from. I was drawn to the m edium beca use of its forma l
properties - its e mphasis on visualiry, the staging of narrative delimited
in frames, its structuring through the weaving of image sequences, usually
woven through textual flow, etc. Studying comics and photo novels al-
lowed me to further consider the construction of meaning occurring in
sequenced images, in comt ast to the still photograph and cinematic
n arrative unfo lding in tim e.
My research has n ot been guided by any systematic approach but
rather by chance encounters and browsing. It has primarily consisted of
spending periods of time in the extensive " bande dessinees" section at
FNAC, the large Pa risian med ialbook store, joining the large crowd of
readers deeply im m ersed in the fantasy narratives of their material. Or
else scavenging at newsstands or first and second-hand bookshops in
search of material that would exemplifY conventions, explorations, in-
novation or creative authorship related to th e medium . As a child raised
in the French Canadian educational system, I would naturally spend
much time with su ch classics as Timin and Asrel'ix, b ut this was a form
of consu mption rather than analysis. I had been search ing for some
time for theoretica l material that would discuss comics from perspec-
tives such as narrative construction analysis, syntax and reception, as I
h ad been interested in the second level, connotative aspects related to
the experience of reading comics and what it m ight give the viewer be-
yond the teUing of the story. Watching readers in the comic book stores
m ention ed earlier made me realize that com ics seem to provide some
kind of a quick entry into anodler space, one that is private, fantasy-
d riven, and lodged within a psycho-emotional and subliminal state.
M y work in interactive m edia is, nonetheless, m ore closely related to
creative production than to interpre tation . As a producer of image/text
80 GEORGE LEGRADY

narratives, my commitment is to the effectiveness of narrative development

and the exploration of its sequential organization. My contribution to
this conference is a discussion that reflects on extending the linearity of
the comic format into a hybrid form influenced by multimedia conven-
tions . Since the comic format consists of a sequence of frames organized
on the page either in a linear or modular fashion, the potential exists to
orchestrate relationships and plot development in such a way that the
viewer has a choice in the unfolding of the narrative, similar to the
multi-directional reading options in crossword puzzles. Another approach
might include the flexibility to sequence image/text frames according to
one's interests and see what possible narrative might evolve. In both
cases, the outcome pushes the comic form into a hybrid variant beyond
its conventions. Such formats may well develop in the near future as
digitalization becomes implemented in all forms of communication. It is
worth noting that I first came across this conference as an announcement
on the Internet. I begin my paper with this reference to the Internet as an
information source in order to underscore certain strategies of information
search and access prevalent today, modular and multi-linear in structure,
which will serve as a background model for my presentation today.

Modular informational structures have become a standard organizing

principle in our everyday life, in particular since the mid-eighties' intro-
duction of Apple computers' multiple window desktop interface meta-
phor. In this metaphor environment familiar to all of us working with
computers, frames called windows, can be opened and closed in any or-
der, positioned in any sequence, linear or layered. They can be moved
around virtually on the computer desktop through the use of the mouse,
another metaphoric device that came into common usage at the time of
the Mac desktop interface. Each window functions as an open-ended
container, a form of organizing structure in which one can group any
set of information, textual or visual, facilitating information access and
retrieval at a later date. This desktop environment is a space for orches-
trating information that functions purely on the level of the metaphoric.
Digitized information clusters are by nature fragmented, discreet
and can be ordered in any sequentia l structure. Fragmentation, samp-
ling, quick reading, frame-by-frame communication, serial offerings,
are standard modes by which we interact with information resources,
obvious examples being stock exchange listings, television news, news-
papers such as "USA Today" with its graphics dominated info boxes.
The design of information technologies has also steadily moved in the
MODU l AR STRUCTURE AND IMAGElTEXT SEQUENCES 81

direction of modu lar, non-l inear interaction. One of the main proper-
ties of digitized information storage systems like CD's, laserdiscs and
DVD's is that the user can jump around in a non-linear way from one
song or video frame to anNher, bypassing the author's and distributor's
predetermined sequencing. In the music industry, software that allows
this kind of re-editing of the ma teri al where the new version is con-
structed from samplings of the origina l left intact. is called "non-de-
structive" editing. Through this ability of storing the re-sequencing of
the material, the listener! viewer! reader engages in a form of author-
ship, not dissimilar to the assemblage artist. One juxtaposes pre-exist-
ing data blocks to create new meaning through their relationships. Nar-
rative construction of this nature is the premise of inreractive, non-:lin-
ear multimedia .
From an info-cultural perspective, the modu lar format of comics fits
the in fo rmation-processing paradigm of contemporary culture. In the
process of reading a comic. where one proceeds from one frame direcdy
to the one next to it, the stor y unfolds linearly and evolves throu gh the
sequence not unlike reading a text or experiencing time-based visual
and aural media, notably cinema and music. The viewer does not inter-
vene in the sequencing of the material. Nonetheless the discreet nature
of the co mic fram e, where each frame is a se lf-enclosed conrainer, can
also potentially function as a b ranching or connecting node for addi-
tional narrative layers that might run parallel to the main sequence in
which the frame s are ordered. I am here referring to standard comics
devices where texts, objects, etc. are drawn in such a way that they
break out of their frame boundaries, crossing into other frames and
thereby shattering [he illusion of rhe comic frame as the window
through which the story occurs.' In fac t the narrative occurs on many
levels, for in stance the frames exist in relation to each other in a vertical
and horizontal matrix, ordered in sets bound by the limits of the page.
These groupings provide diegetic meaning as well. Looking at the page,

I. l'his strategy of escllping the boundaries of the frame ha ~ heen in practice since the
~arly days of comics. It signifies some form of complicity between the comies
author and the reader, or betw~en lhe author and comic character in relation to the
!ttory laking place and positions th~ reader as either accomplice or witness to lhe
unfolding narnltivt'. It is a form of second level narrative thal charges the story with
an additional layer of complexity. For instance, Gcorge Herriman's Krazy Kal
throwing a briek from one frame to another comes lO mi nd. \'(fes Jones' ]'l,e NelsollS
regular scrial in lhe qU!lrLedy architectural maga7-inc ANY (Architccture, New
York) rurth~r explores issues of framing, cro~s-frame and non-linear flow by which
to conccptualile the constructi ng of narrative through the comics genre.
82 GEORGELEGRADY

we can then observe that reading the frames does not necessarily have
to follow in a linear direction but can possibly occur in all directions if
the author designs it in such a way.

Whereas the comic format is structured in a two dimensional matrix,

interactive multimedia can be considered as the non-linear combination
of images with texts and sounds where the user selects and sequences
the elements in time. The viewer's role becomes one of active participa-
tion, as the assembler of one variation of the story (construction of a
meta-narrative), according to the evolving sequence based on selections
of elements chosen according to chance and interests. The hierarchical
relationships between the elements are generally predetermined by the
author who defines them in a multidimen sional network of connections
according to a system based on a concept or metaphor by which to give
the relationships meaning. In such a network environment, the elements
are conceived as a set of connecting points or nodes, each representing
some component of the document. Hodges and Sasnett point out that
the "linkages among these nodes define the relationships among the
components ...".2The links are not bound by any sequential connections
except those determined by the author of the document and can be se t
with greater and lesser degrees of order or randomness following some
form of organizing principle. For instance, "they can be organized as
trees, lists, or interconnected webs. They can be used to represent phys-
ical or logical relationships .. . Cross-references from one ro another are
encoded as linkages. The essential point is that a simple system of
nodes and links makes a powerful conceptual tool for describing many
different structures of information."} The aim is to allow for variations
in the sequencing of data relationships thereby reducing pred ictability
and increasing diversity in the viewing experience.
As an example, Slippery Traces<t, an interactive CD-ROM produced in
1995, functions in such a way through the exploration offragmentation
and juxtaposition in the process of narrative development. In brief, Slippery
Traces is a visual narrative in which the viewer assembles a "story" by
going from one postcard image to another. A number of conditions and
filtering processes are encoded mathematically into the computer pro-

2. Hodgcs, Matthew and Sasnett, RusseU (1993). Multimedia Compuling: Case SlIIdies
[1"0111 MlT Pl"OjeclArhena. Addison-Wcs[ey. pp. 57-58.
3. Ibid.
4. This is a slightly revised version of my text 'Slippcry Traces: The Postcard Trail',
published in Arlilllacl 3. pp. 101-104.
MODULAR STRU CTURE AND IMAGEfrEXT SEQUENCES 83

gram that selects the next image in response to the viewer's actions. The
postcards have first been grouped in categories. Every image in the
work is related to other images according to properties of similarities and
differences defined in a ducabase. Each postcard contains approximately
five "hot spots" (see p late 5), each of which links to about two other
categories and images . The user constructs a viewing sequence by click-
ing the mouse on a hotspor over an area of interest in the current image
on the screen. The program searching aid brings up the next image
through a random generating function that responds to the dynamically
pre-selected images according to the criteria defined in the database.
The resultant sequence of viewed images can be reviewed to examine
the evolving "meta-narrative" twelve images at a time (see plate 6). Here
one can see the particular connections that relate one image to the next.
The essence of the viewing experience in the work can be understood
as being located in the play and contrast of expectations between knowing
that the program will bring forth an image that is somehow related to the
clicked hotspot and the resultant degree of closeness or distance between
the potential suggestion of the clicked horspot's content and one's ex-
pectation of what the new image might be. The emphasis is also on the
dynamic potential of information sorting and sequencing possible
through digital data processing.
A key component of non-linear interactivity is the capability of [he
viewer to arbitrarily access elements in the networked structure.
Whereas the cinematic form produces meaning through the predeter-
mined sequencing of time based scenes, comics rely on sequence as
well, bur instead of timed visual sequences . and sound, groupings of
multiple image/text frames on the page function as structural guides to
create meaning. Compared to these twO forms, non-linear interactive
m edia can be understood as an environment in which the viewer actively
assembles from the various sets of given elements and pre-defined rela-
tionships. M eaning in the interactive work is a result of the sequential
selection of components that the viewer assembles in the viewing process.
The viewer can then be considered as someone who actively constructs
the narrative through the assembling of fragmented or modular infor-
mation elem ents. The sequential sum of viewed selections becomes the
narrative.
The term ' montage' derived from cinema, can be ucilized ·in a dis-
cussion concerning both comics and multimedia. Umberto Eco defines
a difference in the way the term functions in comics: "The relationship
between one frame to the next is governed by a series of montage rules.
84 GEORGE LEGRADY

I have used the term 'montage', though the reference to the cinem a
should not make us forge t that rhe montage in a comic strip is different
from a film, which merges a series of stills into a continuous flux. The
comic strip, on the other hand, breaks up the story's continuum into a
few essential components. Obviously the reader welds these parts to-
gether in his imagination and then perceives them as a continuous
flow:' ~ In the case of multimedia, Hodges and Sasnett expand the
meaning of the term (0 refer, not only to transition from one context to
another, but also to the on-screen spatial organization of multiple infor-
mation segm ents (i.c. windows) when they say: "Montage treats the
combination of scenes - which are chosen, how they are sequenced, the
transition from one to [he next...The combination of contexts - how
they share the screen or how the transitions are made from one to an-
other."6

Once information is digitized, it is by nature fragmented, discrete and

can be ordered in any sequential structure. Scon McCloud, the author
of a book that analyses the structure and narrative strategies in comics
by discussing the com ic book format, proposes the following definition
to underscore the medium's fragmented form: "comics panels fracture
both time and space offering a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected
moments, but closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally
construct a continuous, unified reality."1 In its descriptive approach of a
particular kind of grammatical structure, this definition emphasizes a
reading where the viewer is engaged in filling in the gaps and assem-
bling relatively distinct elements to achieve narrative meaning. Chris-
tian Merz describes this operative act in his discussion of cinematic
form as a process where "going from one image to twO images, is to go
from image to Janguage."1I He is here referring to the complex set of
syntactic and grammatical rules that become activated when discrete
units are brought into p lay to generate linguistic ordering. In comics,
cinematic and multimedia environments, texts are used in multiple
ways, primarily to describe something or as a linking device between

5. &0, Umberto (1987). 'A Reading of Steve Canyon'. In COII/;e Icolloclasm. Shcena
Wagsraff (cd). London: l eA. p. 24.
6. Hodges, Matthew and Sasnetl, Ru s~ell ( 1993) . Multimedia Computillg: Case Swdies
/rom MIT Projecf Athelia. Addison-We~ley. pp. 41 .
7. McCloud, Scott (\993). Ullders((lIJdillg Comics, The Invisible Art. New York, Harper
Perennial. p. 67.
8. Metz, Christian (1991) Film iAnguoge,A SemiOfics of the Cinema. Chicago. p.46.
 MODULAR STRUCTURE AND IMAGElTEXT SEQUENCeS 85

frames. In an early ar ticle on the meaning of the photographic, Roland

Barthes proposes that the function of text positioned next to an image
is ideological, first intended to anchor the meaning and th ereby to direct
the viewer's reading of the image "towards a meaning chosen in ad-
vance".9 He argues that in the case of comics, the rext has a comple-
menrary relationship where "the word, in the same way as the images,
are fragments of a more general syntagm and the unity of the message
is rea lized at a higher level, that of the story". H e then d iffe rentiates this
relarionship berween image and rext in film as being more critical as it
"advances the action by setting out, in the sequence of messages,
meanings that are not to be found in the image itself."JO
If the individual fram e can be considered as the smallest closed syn-
tagmatic unit in the comic forma t, Phillipe Marion referred at this con-
ference to the comics frame as being secondary to the larger unit of the
page. 11 As an example, we can look at any ofth e double page spreads in
the first chapter of Alex et Danie l Varenne's Ardeur 3. La Grande Fugue
(see figure I, there are any num ber of other examples that could func-
tion here) can be looked at from this perspective - the double page is a
complete n arrative unit in itself. Each of these two p age spreads is de-
sign ed in such a way that they stand on their own visua lly and in terms
of n arrative content. These two-page units are then assembled sequen-
tially into a chapter. The organization of frame s on the page allows for a
conventional reading, as onc move from left to right, top to bottom .
Given that the page fun ctions as a closed structure in itself, a different
kind of reading could be introduced in addition to the expected linear
narrative unfolding from fra me to frame. This reading would involve
bypassing the conventional sequential flow in favor of letting the page
. become an open space in which the frames can be potentially intercon-
nected from all angles, resulting in greater narrative complexity. If trans-
ported into the multimedia environment, one can imagine such pages in
rerms of menu fun ctions in the in teractive mode, where each fram e
cou ld functio n as a node - a start, junction or end point for second level
sub-stories.

9. BarLh I:~,Roland ( 1977). 'Rhetoric of the Image'. In Im(lge, Mwic, 'lb:l. New York:
Noonday Press. p.38.
10. Ibid.p.41.
11. "cvery double page is first seen as one image". Phillipe Marion. Gomics & Culture,
24 ~ 26 septcmber, 1998.
86 GEORGE LEGRADY

Fig. I Alex et Daniel Varenne. La grat/de Fugue. 1987. Copyright: Editions Albin
Michel S.A.

In the interactive CD-ROM version of "Fro id Equateur") the author,

Enki Bilal, remarks in a 1996 interview that in terms of narrative, it is
possible to go from the cinematic to the comics format but that the re-
verse does not work. 12 In the non-linear multimedia environment, there
are many possible methods by which a story can be visualized and de-
signed to evolve. The decision by the CD-ROM design team to present
each comics frame of Bilal's CD-ROM version of "Froid Equateur" as
a single fu ll screen image unfortunately proves him right. Even though
his drawings are rich in texture and meaning) I was struck by the loss in
the translation from print to multimedia . The expansion to the cinema-
tic) full screen format with text at the bottom and linear forwardlback-
ward sequencing capabilities through clicking buttons erased any sense
of context for each image's relation to the larger narrative. The resultant
fullscreen linearity introduces a rigidity into the narrative flow revealing
(at least for this work) the importance of the page as an organizing nar-
rative structure where the frames function as units of a syntax) receiving
much of their meaning by being seen next to each other.

12. Bilai, Enki (1996). Froid Equateur. Paris: M etal Hurlant Productions, CD-ROM
MODULAR HRUCTURE AND IMAGElTEXT SEQUENCES 87

When the sequence of events in a story can be resh uffled from the
original sequence to enhance the narrative plot development, the viewer
is fo rced into a more creative role - interpretation enhanced by plot
construction results in increased layering of meaning. [n an article that
discusses strategies of narrative, Seymour Chatman relates that the
French "narrato!ogie", the study of narrative, developed d uring a time
when cinema and semiotics blossomed. O ne of the observations to
emerge was that "narrative itself is a deep structure quite independent
of its medium", I) meaning that there is a separation between how one
tell s a story and the story itself. Chatman refers to this relationship be-
tween a story and its recounting as 'double time structuring.' H e points
out that "all narratives, in whatever medium, combine the time. se-
quence of plot events with the time of the presentation of those events
in the text, which we ca ll 'discourse-time '. What is fundamental to nar-
rative, regardless of the medium, is that these two time orders are inde-
pendent. In realistic narratives, the time of the story is fixed, following
the ordinary course of Iife ... but the d iscourse-time order may be com-
pletely different."I~ A story, for instance, can be tOld star ting at the end,
moving to the beginning then onwards to the middle, etc. Following
this argument, the key enhancement of non-linear multimedia narrative
structuring is that the narrative event may no longer need to have a pre-
scribed beginning or end. Since the viewer constructs the stor y through
the selection of subject matter which eventually develops into a se-
q uence, the narrative event in the interactive mode begins when the
viewer selects the first image 01' event, and ends when the viewer walks
away fro m the computer or insta ll ation.
In Slippery 1hue5, the viewer moves from one information source selec-
ted from a range of possible choices to another, also selected from other
possible choices. As mentioned earlier, these links are defined by key
words (hidden from the viewer) in the database, according to common
literal or metaphorical properties. The work's title, Slippery Traces, I ~
makes reference to ]acques Lacan's particu lar use of the term 'slip' to

13. Chatman, Seymour ( 1980) . 'What Nm'eis can do thal Films Can't (and Vice
Versa)'. In Criticallllqlliry. Chicab"O: University of C hicago, Vat 7, Number I,
Aurumn 1980, p. 12t.
14. Ibid., p. 122.
15. An edited wrsion of the SlipPC1'Y '!irlces interactive work has been published in Art·
iJllacl.1 CD·ROM 1996 by ZKM·Ccnter fol' Art and Media Kadsruhe, Germany.
The CD-ROM version differs slightly from the installation version in that approxi-
mately 50 of the 240 imase~ have been replaced due to copyright reasons.
88 GEORGE LEGRADY

describe the unstable relationship between a sign and its m eaning. In

his remark that "meaning emerges only through discourse, as a conse-
quence of displacemenrs along a signifying chain"1 6 he is referring to
the notion that the m eaning of things are d efined not in themselves, but
through their relation to other signs. Lacan argues against the Saus-
surean notion that there is a stable relation between a signifier and what
it refers to. Another example to consider is Jacques Derrida's observa-
tion that, in the construction of meaning, a signifier always signifies an-
other signifier: no word is free from mcraphoricity. The example of the
dictionary is offered. When we search for the m eaning of a word, our
recourse is to look in a dictionary where instead of finding meaning we
are given other words against which to compare our word. From this
we can gather that meaning. orhetwise expressed as the term 'signified',
emerges through discourse. as a consequ ence of displacements along
signifying chains. Both of these references consider meaning as being
created through the interaction of information m odules sequenced in
relation to each other.
Slippery Traces had its roots in a two-projector slide show created to
explore the ways that the meanings of images change when juxtaposed
with other images. Images are normally seen in relation to each other,
and like words positioned together in a sentence, they oscillate each
other, slightly expanding, re-adjusting, imperceptibly transforming
their meaning through contrast, association, extension, difference, etc.
Transferred to the non-linear dynamic environment of the computer,
the shifts in meaning are exponentially increased as the images are freed
from their slide-tray linear positions, to be constantly re-situated in re-
lationship to each other as determined by criteria defined in the com-
puter code. The 240 postcards in this project were selected from my
collection of over 2000 postcards. These were gathered over a period of
twenty years mostly through visits to second-hand stores and flea mar-
kets. In addition to exotic or eccentric approaches to the convention of
the postcard, I was looking for images that revealed the photographic
image's relation to cultural beliefs and also images that expressed that
which could only be a result of the photographic. The first step in the
production of Slippery Traces involved selection and classification of the
material. This process, subjective in approach as I followed my 'com-
mon sense', was nonetheless systematic in the way that Claude Uvi-

16. Sarup, Madan ( 1988). A" Jlllrodllctory Gllide to Post-Slrllcwroiillll and PoslModern-
ism. University ofOeorgia,p. 12.
MODULAR STRUCTURE AND IMAG ElTEXT SEQUENCES 89

Strauss described ordering as a first step towards a rationa l approa.ch to

making sense of the world. 17
Following the selection of images, categories were created through
the simpl e act of stacking them according to common themes. The 2S
categories that emerged based on what was 'at hand' consisted of such
topics as nature/culture, colonialism, futu re, military, industry, the ex-
oticization of the Other, scenic views, morality tales, etc. Images that
did not have a category of their own were grouped into their closest the-
matic area extending the categories' fun ction from simple cl assifica tion
to d1at of narrative. Another factor in the selection process was to
search for cultural and ideological expressions through postcards of 20th
century Western world views on global development, tourism and ~ul­
tural exchange. Additional criteria for selection also included culturally
significant or relevant subject matter or visually interesting compositions
that expressed perceptions based on the photographic paradigm.
These relationships were encoded into a database where each cate-
gory, each image and each grouping of hots pots had to be painstaking-
ly, systematica lly cross-referenced to maintain equilibrium in the flow
between the sections, in order to avert bottlenecks and dead-end repeti-
tions. The outcome can be envisioned as an imaginary three-dimen-
sional, nerve-cell-like membrane network in which all 240 images are
interlinked, with over 2000 connections criss-crossing to form a unified
whole. Connections, or hot spots, have something thematically in com-
mon with the image they ca ll up. Each time the viewer clicks on a h ot
spot to move to another image, he or she weaves a path in this dense
maze of connections; a path that is recorded for the duration of the
viewing event and remains there to be looked up to see what sequence
one has traced through one's choices.
Viewers follow their own desires within an environment predefined
by my perceptual filters encoded into the database . By perceptual fil -
ters, I mean not only the way I have categorized the postcards, but also,
essentially, the way they function with in the program's structure. The
database then is in tended both as an artistic expression, a condensation

17. Ont! of the four randomly selected quotes at thc start of Slippl!I'Y 1l'Qces eomes from
Claude Lcvi-Strauss's book The Savage tY1ind (1966). The first chapter, 'Science of
the Concrt!It:' discusses methodologies of classification in the indigenot,ls world in
contrast to the Western scientific modd: "Any dassHication is superior to chaos and
even a classification as the;: level or scnsible properties is a step towards rational
ordering .. .The dcci~ion that evt!rything must be ta ke n account of facilitates the cre-
ation or a 'memory bank' ."
90 GEORGE LEGRADY

of a particular way of looking at imagery and also as a tool for the author,
a device for narrative deployment. The conditions of this approach have
been encoded through computer programming, specifically by the use
of dynamic database structures . The navigation and sequencing flow of
Slippery Traces incorporates tile form and function of database struc-
tures as a creative device, and underscores a philosophical approach to
computer programming as aesthetic practice. Whereas in the cinematic
model the narrative experience is deeply lodged in the temporal unfold-
ing projection on the screen, the intera ctive media model shares with
comics its investment in the frame, the sequencing and juxtaposition of
frames) and discrete fragmentary segments that can potentially result in
multidirectional narrative structuring. I have come to this conference as
a media artist in search of new perspectives. In exchange) I hope to
have generated some thoughts on new ways of conceptualizing how
comics might evolve when integrated into a non-linear narrative struc-
ture environment.
The Importance of Being 'Published'.
A Comparative Study of Different
Comics Formats

Pascal Lejevrel

The comic stri p 2 roday is very diverse . Comics do not only vary in style
and content, but also in terms of production and consumption. A lot of
these differences arc local. One can see some important differences be-
tween the Japanese manga, the European production and American
comics. But even within each territory, comics do not form a homoge-
neous group. Think, for example, afthe differences in the USA between
comic strips, comic b oo ks, non-mainstream comics and small press
comics. All these comics can be further classified in different genres
and sub-genres. Readers usually confine themselves to one or just a few
genres .}

1. The importance ofthe publication format

What causes this heterogeneous production of comics? To understand
the huge variety of com ics, one must not only take the authors' creativ-
ity into account, but also the way in which these comics are published.
The publication format may seem to be independent of its method of
creation, but nothing could be further from the truth. Whether an artist
gets only one row of panels in a newspaper, must confine his story into
a comic book of 32 pages, or gets more than one hundred pages in a

1. I would like to thank MicheJ Kempeneers for h i~ I;riticlll reading of the first draft of
thi~ paper and-K ris Jacobs and Andrew S. Pease for their advice on me translation
to English.
2. I use <comic strip' as a !;eneric term, which I define prototypically as the juxtaposi-
tion of fixed (mostly drawn) picture~ on a support us a communicative act. Comie
strip suwds here for 111e whole of drawn sequential stories: stop comic, !.:omic book,
graphic novel, small press, bande des~inee, manga, et!.:. For a more developed argu-
ment, see D ierick, Charles & Lefevre, Pascal (eds.)( 1998). Porging a New MediulII,
The Comic SII·ip ill lfle Nineleelllfl Cell/lilY. Brussels: VUB PRESS. pp. 12-13.
3. TIle choice or the nced for reading a certain kind of comic is largely culturally
determined. Popular culture is always a process in which factors such as social con-
text and intcrtextual relations play an important role.
92 PASCAL LEFEVRE

DIMENSIONS OF DIFFERENT FORMATS

Comic strip, S unday page 1908 Contemporary daily comic strip

European album

ODD
I ID
ODD
I ID
Manga comic book Pocket " Patte de mouche"

DO
D
D
Fig. 1 Comic strip formats.

graphic novel, format will always be decisive. Even the dimensions of

the publication are very important (see figure 1).
Even me m ost idiosyncratic authors, such as the Frenchman Edmond
Baudoin, take into consideration the format in which their comics will
be published . For the firSt ten years of his career he worked for the
standard black and white European album of 48 pages (of which 44 or
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ' PUBLISHED' 93

Fig. 2 Edmond Baudoin . Le premil l" voyage. Plate No. 2 (no page numbers). 1987.
Fu(uropolis. Copyright: L'Assodlltion.

46 are used fo r the comic itselO. When Baudoin later reworked the idea
of one of his European albums, L e premier voyage (see fi gure 2) fo r a
manga magazine (see fig ure 3) for the Jap anese publisher Kodansh a, he
94 PASCAL LEFEVRE

F ig. 3 Edmond Baudoin. Le voyage. Plate No. 6 (no page numbers). 1996 . Copyright;
L'Association' .,nitially published in a manga magazine by Kodansha (1995-1996),

not only exceeded the usual 46-page limit, but he also adapted his way
of telling stories. The smaller format changed his layout. Because he
could use more pages to tell his story, his style became far more visual,
THE IMPORTAi'l'CE OF BEI NG ' PUB LISHED' 95

wi th less text than his European comics had. It was the first time he
created a story of more than 46 pages. Le voyage had five times more
pages (22 1 plates) than Le premier voyage. Baudoin told me that he also
adopted another drawing technique: he drew much faster than usual.
When Baudoin drew Made in U.S. or Nam (see figure 4) for the ex-
tremely small format (7,5 * 10,5 cm) of' Patte de Mouche' of L'Associ-
arian, he put his pencil aside and drew with a pen. The minner lines are
clearly better suited for such a small format. Obviously format has a big
influence on Baudo in , but at the same time, all these comics are still
typically Baudoin, It is not because an artist adapts his work to a format
that he loses his identity.
From the 1980s and onwards, some of the most successful cOOlies
were later republished in pocket format, In most cases, it was impossible
to reduce a complete page because a lot of d etails would be lost and the
d rawings would become too small for the reader. Therefore, the comics
were adapted. 'The original page layout was d isca rded and replaced by
another division in to rows, To do this, the initial panel dimensions had
to be adapted and sometimes even the composition of the drawings had

t~ r(/8U l!6 'MM S'MPtl.A" 'UUl /1£

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:TOUR L.i, ~R"L4 rll.' 8 u /),SI> MONT~ C."t'$
ROI.AJl.5·, t£~ ~,U.ANT~ ..... UA OUlliH f
TO<.>& ~u" Q(" tTA,(m CI<I<~ '-' ~"~r
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Fig. 4 Edmond Baudoin. Nam, 1998, L'Association, Collection Pune de Mouchc,

Copyright: L'Associalion.
96 PASCAL LEFtVRE

Fig. Sa Andre Franquin. Idee! Noires, gag no. 43, Fluide Glaciate, no. 5 1, scptembre
1980. Copyright: F1uidc GlacialelAudie.

to be changed . A sign ifi cant example is a tennis gag of the Idees noires
series by F ranquin (see figures 5a and 5b) . The original plate is cleverly
com posed so that one player is always sta nding on the left end of a tier.
fac ing the right and h is opponent, standing at the olher end of the tier.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ' PUB LISHE D' 97

Fig. Sb Andrt F ra nquin. Idees Noires, p. 147. Collection J'ai Lu,

no. 1 (pocket edition), Copyright: J'ai Lu.

They hit the ball to each other. The reader gets the impression that the
ball flies across the space of the plate itself from left la right and back.
This effect is lost in the pocket version, where the players no longer
physically face each other on the sa me row. The dimensions of the pan-
els are also adapted to fit the new layout. Although the author himself
was responsible for this adaptation, the pocket version is less compact
and less refined than the initial publication.4
An author working for French language p ublishers such as Dupuis,
Dargaud or Le Lombard is expected to develop a series around som e

4. Sec the dossier C'e.H dims "Ie"poche (edited by G illes Ciment) about the pot:ket edi-
tions in Stan Burets & Thicrry Groensteen (eds.) ( 1987), I.:AIIJI.!e de la lxwde dess-
inee. Grenoblc: Gltnat. pp. 87-88.
98 PASCAL LEFEVRE

central characters. He knows that his stories will have to be exactly 46

pages long, which is, as severa l artists and critics 5 have stated, too short
to develop a novel-like complexity. It is an exception when an author
gets the opporrunity to make a one-shot story and to exceed the page
limit. For this purpose, publishers created special series comprised of
several non-related albums (e.g. Dupuis' A£r Libre-collection).
So, the format will eventually influence the total concept of the com-
ic, not only the style, but also the content. The material aspects of the
format will determine the page layout, the choice between monochrome
or calor, the type of story, the way in which it will be told, etc. The
readers know the format's advantages and disadvantages. When someone
buys or reads a certain comic, he can detect from the format - even
without knowing the characters or the author - what he can expect
from that particular comic. Different formats even stimulate different
manners of consuming: a manga magazine is quickly read and thrown
away after reading, while a European album will be kept and read sev-
eral times.
A format is not only defined by its materiality (the size, the paper
quality, etc.) bur also by its temporal aspects (does it have a temporal
regularity or is it published only once at a precise time?) and editorial
choices (how long can a chapter or a story be, what are the taboos?). It
is therefore necessary to take the format into account when one judges
a work. As obvious as it may sound, this fundamental aspect is often
n eglected in comics criticism. Of course, the format will not and can-
not explain every aspect or detail of the comic concerned, but at a fun-
damental level it is responsible for major characteristics. Stop comics
are especially made for newspapers, in which they can be enjoyable.
This is not always the case for reprints in book form. Reading one hun-
dred gags of the same series one after another can become a repetitive
and dull activity. Although American newspaper comic strips are printed
daily in hundreds or even thousands of newspapers, they rarely succeed
on the international market in book form. The reverse can also be true:
comics that are made for albums are seld om enjoyable as a comic strip
in a newspaper. Reading even a page a day of a Cosey or Baudoin comic
would be futile, because the pages are supposed to be read in their context.

5. Groenstcen, Thierry (1998). 'Considerations sur un an populaire et meconnu.' In:

LA bande denillee en Frallce, Ministcre des Affail'es etrtmgen:s - adpf &. Paris:
CNBDI. pp. 28.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ' PUBLISHED' 99

A newspaper reader would get the impression that nothing happens

when reading only one page.
Both material limitations and editorial choices have their impact.
Each sort of publication has its potential and limitations and therefore
incites artists to use the resources offered. But an artist will not neces-
sarily use every potential the format offers. Sometimes artists need time
to understand the potential of a medium. The earliest comic book au-
thors, for example, ignored the potentials of the medium. They imitat-
ed the page composition in regular tiers of the comic strip (uniform
grids of equal-sized panels). Comics critic and artist, Robert C. Har-
vey6 deplores the fact that they ignored the spacious page format which
would have allowed them to vary the size - both height and width -:- of
the panels for emphasis. Once Kirby and Eisner started using the space
in a more baroque way, their approach became fashionable among
comic book artists.
Culture, tradition, ideology, personal qualities, etc., will all influence
the choice of resources artists will make. Nevertheless, each analysis of
comics has to start with a study of the form in which it is being pub-
lished. That is the reason why this paper is called: The imparlance of be-
ing <published', rephrasing a book title by Oscar Wilde, without any fur-
ther connotations. This is a first attempt towards a comparative study of
the comics format and its influence, hoping that others will refine and
correCt my observations, since it is impossible to be an expert in every
possible format. The worldwide comics production is far too vast for
one person to h ave a complete knowledge of it.

2. Some important formats

For the time being, some main groups of formats will be compared: the
comic strip in the newspaper; the comic book series; the manga maga-
zine7 ; the Eu ropean album series; the one shot; Small Press . In the ta-
ble below, a description is given of these basic formats. Of course, there
are exceptions to each variable and sometimes the lines between for-

6. H:1rve)', Robert C. (1994). The Art 0/ the Fllllnies, All AeSl/lclic Hiuory. Jackson:
Universil>' ('ress of Mississippi. pp. 29.
7. I base my observatiuns mainly on two works: Schudl, Fredcrik L. (1996). Drcam-
lal/d Japall, Iflritillgs On ,Wadem A1fanga. Berkclcy: Stone Bridge Press, and Grocn-
sreen, Thicrry ( 1996). I.!ulli'IMrs des IIImlKas, Vile imroduclIim cl la ballde dessillee
japolloise. Casterman.
100 PASCAL LEFEVRE

mats can become blurred. Yet while formats can share the same charac-
teristics, they never share all of them.

TABLE 1: Characteristics of some important formats

(The less common features are placed within bracke ts)

Color Paper
M= quali ty
• of Page MOl1o- Artists
tiers size chrome Soft or A=Author Speed &
# of per width * FC= Futl Hard Publication S=Small Direction
FOR.MAT page~ page height Color Cover rhy thm T=Team of reading

Comic 1 tier 14,5· M Low Daily t\ O[ (5)T Fast

S trip 4,6 cm se Left TO
right
Comic 32 3 \7 * 26 FC(M) Mod- Monthly (S)T Fast
Book om crale (quarterly) Left 10
SC right
Mnnga 300- 3 17 * 23 M Low Wct:k1}' (S)T Vcry ra.~l
Maga7.ine 400 (or 4) om se biweekly Righlto
monthly left

cu ropeon (32), 3 or 4 22, 5 ~ FC(M) Mod- Not Aor ST Fa~ l

Album 48 or 30cm crate defined Left to
(64) SC or r ight
pages HC
Onc Often 3 or 4 22,5 " FCorM High No< A or ST Moderate
ShOl >48 30 cm HC defi ned Left to
pages right
Small Vari:l- Varia- Varia- M Low No< A Moderate
Press bl, b!c blo se defined Left to
riglll

What are the possible consequences of the different publication formats?

It is risky to indicate and attempt to prove causal relations, bur we do not
have to believe in a causal relationship to see that these very different for-
mats have som e very different characteristics, both in style and content.
As noted earlier, these observations are simply generalizations and not all
these characteristics are present or strongly visible in each concrete work.
n Ul IMPO RTANCE OF BEI NG ' PUBLlSHI!D' 10 1

TABLE 2: C ontempora ry comics (the last 2S years )

FORMAT STYLE CONTENT EXAMI' LES

Syndicated - un iform and soocr $fyl~ in - humor, short gags- sim ple, Garyield
Comic Strip a s~ies uncom plicated stork s Hagar
m~instrt'am _ on ly one tier - series around a protab'Oni~t &tlle Bailey
- clenr li ne drawing - poor character dcvd opmem, Hi and 1,0;1
- min imal background stercotypical charactcrs DiI/)trl
- politically correct (f(.,\v
blacks, no poor, no eternal
lover5, lmrdly any drinking
or smoking)
(".omi.: !look - uniform st~'k: in each book - series ar(lulKi a p rotal:oni$l SlfpermQl'
main5tream - exaggerated movem~nt - muscled heroism o f 8a/IJuw
- sh ifted camcl1l un!;1es- splash superhcroes X-Mcn
pages - short stories or chapters Spawn
- color err~~ts - spectac ular scene~
- creative page composition - action
- varying panel si~es and shapes
- ha roque sfylc
_ big sound elTeCtS
Manga - line dr.. wing - $Cri~s around a protagon ist Dl'<)lO lIoo l/
Mal:azin~ _ speed and depth elT~cts with (beroism and ordinary ARim
mai.llul'eam lines. shadi ng and screen ton~5 people) Gmlll/ll
- ~X ln:me iconog raphic, less - storytclling with focus on A ppltJted
l't rbal (mut~. sphere panels) the minutia of da ily life
- creative page oom posi tion - a~wdations
_ combination of d ilTerent I:raphic - spectacular scenes: action,
styks (sometimes eccentric) sex, disasters, monsters
- simple b~ckgrounds
- dilatinn nf sccnes
- an alytic breakdown
- Uft o f , montage'
- uo colon (only page oolor-efTcct)
- (b ig) sound eiTeet'
European - uniform sobe r but elaborated - series ~T(luud a heroic Timill
alhum series sty le in each story protagonj~t Spirou
mai nstrea m • clea r line drawings lI'ith color. - adventure and/or humor Xfll
_ 3 or 4 tiers ,xr I»Igc - short sto ries or chapten Jenmiail
- stereotypical character.; I.UrA)' LuRe
- u(.1 lon
- politically eotr~CI
One-$ho t - well-executed uniform or - mo re adult themes: politics. Firu
Graphic multifonn style d aily li fc, autobiography RtmK:yalld
Novel - creat il'C • .arti~tic coloring - character dev~lopm("nt, IIIe RI"eNou
nOn- 'coulcur directe' no her(li~m Mm.,
mainstream - ~obe r or elaborated sty le - long, complicated storic s Cag/lj
- elaboratcd (or ,impl~)
backgrounds
- creative page composition
Smulll'ress idem onc shot. but idem onc shot, but & .tlarual
nOIl·main- - monochrome - no heroism Dirly PIOlle
strca m - naive or expcrimental styles - alternative, unusual.
- naive 01' experimental daring themes
narratives
102 PASCAL LEFEVRE

3. The potential of a comic strip in a newspaper

Although it may seem as if a battery of restrictions characterizes publi-
cation of comics in newspapers, this format has unique possibilities; the
most obvious of which is daily frequency. A daily cartoonist can play
with events in the news. The wagering on real horses by comics character
MuttS, is an early example.!' Another example isWinsor McCay, whose
Little Nemo is dreaming about Christmas or St. Valentine's Day. 10 Later,
cartoonists had to submit their work weeks in advance. The syndicates
needed more time to prepare the comics for distribution to newspapers
all around the country and nowadays, all around the world.
In Belgium, the Flemish newspapers started publishing more comics
by local artists after the Second World War. These artists worked for
only one (group of) newspaper(s) . So, until some years ago, the deadline
was very short. Some cartoonists, such as Marc Sleen, worked in the
newspaper's offices for years. The Guinness Booh of Records credited
Marc SIeen in 1989 for having made the longest running comic strip by
only one author, without the help of assistants. In Flemish, the comic
strip is called Nero (the main character was named after the crazy Roman
emperor).
The adventures of Nero are a unique mix of foolish humor, adven-
ture, wild imagination and criticism of hot topics. For years the stories
of Nero started running in the newspaper before the full script was
completed. Sometimes Sleen worked only a few days in advance of the
publication. During the publication in the dailies, Sleen drew out his
story and let himself be inspired by the events of the day. Sleen's writ-
ing adapted itself to the calendar. II The external time (the dates of the
publication in the newspaper) influenced the internal time of the story.
Special holidays and other important dates in Belgium such as the sixth
of December (Sinrerklaas), N ew Year's Day, Christmas, Easter, All
'Pools' Day, Labor Day and the reopening of the schools (beginning of
September) could be incorporated in the comic. The allusions to the

8. P isher, Bud (1907-1982). A. MUll. It started in 1907 a~ a comic strip in the San
fhmci5co Chronicle.
9. Harvey, Robert C. ( 1996). The Art of the Comic 1100k,An Aesthetic HiJIO!Y. Jackson:
University Press of M ississippi. pp. 37.
10. McCay, Winsor (1905-1926). Liule Nemo ill Slllll1berlmtd. It started initially as a
comic strip om 1905 on the Sunday Pages of the New York Hero/d; album reprint in
'l7IC Complele Liulc Nemo in Slumber/alld, val. I, Titan Books, 1989.
11. The use of the calendar in the Ncro series of Sleen is described in Kerrcmans, Yves
and I,efevre, Pascal (1997). 50 jaa/" Nero, Krolliek mm een dagbladverschij/lSeJ. Ant-
werpen: Standaard. pp. 89-92.
TI-IE IMPORTANCE or BEING 'PUBLISHED' 103

external time could even engender a pause in the story (e.g. characters
pausing to wish the reader a Happy New Year) or change the course of
the story: in one story (De W:mc[schieurs I 2), the necessary antidote is
found in the Easter eggs falling from the sky, in another, the mule of
'Sinterklaas' saves the heroes (De juwelen van Gaga-Patl)."
But Sleen went further than just alluding to important dates. He also
referred to, and even criticized, the events of the day, both in Belgiu m
and abroad. He took a stand in great Belgian conflicts such as the Royal
Affair (which brought Belgium to the brink of civil war), or in interna-
tional problems (such as the Cold War). The elasticity of his storyline
and his method of working consistently made it possible to incorporate,
even during the publication of the comic in the newspaper, new events
and to change the course of the story. For example, in De IJzeren K olo-
nel (The Iron C%uel) from 1956, an English colonel asks Nero [0 help
regaining the Suez Canal, maintaining that his great-grandfather
bought the canal. This theme is clearly inspired by the nationa lization
of the Suez Canal by Egyptian president Nasser. When publication in
the newspaper started war was imminent, but it would take until the end
of October before British and French airplanes would begin bombing
Egypt. Even before the outbreak afthe war, Nero and the Iron colonel
disembarked on the Egypt shore, where they were taken for foreign in-
vaders. The Suez crisis is not the only hot issue that Sleen incorporated
in this Story. When, by the end of October, Russian troops crushed the
Hungarian protest, Sleen had two other characters pass through that
country. This was not p lanned in advance, because some days before
the Russian tanks attacked, the two characters were already speaking
about a trip to Egypt. On 18 October, they said that they would travel
via Germany, Austria, Bulgaria) Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel. At that
point, they did not even mention Hungary, since [he crisis only began a
few days later. When Soviet tanks began to crush the H ungarian rebel-
lion on 27 October, the author quickly adapted the script and inserted
a scene where the two youngsters are cruising through Hu ngary. On
Thursday 8 November) they confront a Russian tank (see figure 6). But

12. Sle(:n, Marc ( 1956). Nel'o, De mmelschietcrs. Initially publishcd in the Aemish
newspaper, Her WJlk (9 January - 19 May 1956); most recen t album reprint De
klassicke avonrUl'ell vall Nero, 25 Standaard Uitgcveri;, 2000.
13. Sleen, Marc (1949- 1950). Nero, Dejuwel<!1I 0011 Gaga-PulI.lnitiaUy published in the
Flcmish newspaper, De Nieuwe Gids ( 14 September 1949 - 16 January 1950),
most rccent album reprint: De klassieke atIO/IWI'e1l 0011 Nero 7, Standaard Uitgeverij,
1998.
104 PASCAL LEFiNRE

Fig. 6 Marc Sleen. Ntro, De !Jzel"ell Kolol1el. Tier 81 . HetWk, 9 November 1956.
Copyright: Standaard Uitgeverij. Album reprint planned for the year 2000 in the series,
De klassieke QOOI/IUI"CII 00// Ncro by Standaard Uitgeverij.

when one of the young friends of Nero, Petoetjc, talks about two Bel-
gian ministers (Van Acker and Spaak) who visited the Soviet Union a
few days earlier and mentions their cultural agreement, the Russian sol-
diers run [0 them with open arms. However) the twO Flemish kids
knock them out and drive off with the Russian tank. They continue
their voyage to Egypt, where the Suez crisis is reaching its peak ...
The Flemish comic strip can reflect on hot new items as fast as the
(editorial) cartoon. The incorporation of the dates of external time also
has other consequences. Most comics try to form a consistent world of
their own, with a logical internal timeline. In Nero, the characters
themselves often neglect the proper internal time: they sometimes
speak in terms of externa l time, which does not always parallel the in-
ternal time. When Nero's wife says that her husband was absent for 5 or
7 months, she does not mean the time he was away in the story (inter-
nal time), but the period of the publication in the newspaper (external
'real' time). Sleen more than once played with those tensions between
the external and internal time. This linking of internal time and exter-
nal time loses its importance in the later book publication. Moreover, it
can even become confusing. Comics of this sort have to be read in their
context in the original format, if all of the allusions and references are
to be understood.

4. Concluding remarks
An entire book could be devoted to the way in which different formats
influence comics without exhausting the topic. For the time being, I
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ' PU BLISHED' 105

juSt wanted to identify the iss ue with the hope that others may feel in-
spired to work on this hypothesis as well. Interesting problems shou ld
be studied, for example, why do some formats come into being and not
others? Although my observations may sound a little crude and unre-
fined, the point was made clear that when we want to study a comic, we
should always thoroughly consider the format the comic was made for.
Comics and Film: A Narrative Perspective

Hans-Christian Chrisliansen

Aesthetic and narrative analysis of comics has been dominated, within

criticism and theoretical debate, by a paradigm which re lates comic art
to other media, particularly film.
There is also, of course, evidence of general conceptual continuity
from medium to medium.
Genuine inspiration from cinema to comics was of some importance
in the early 19'" century, as Griffith and Senner, among others, influ-
enced the comics in respect to motifs, storyline structure and subjects
(the heroes of silent cinema often became protagonists in comics).
On the other hand, comics have been and cominue to be popular
material for adaptation to cinema and other arts, and, as early as 1900,
The Edison Film Company produced a series of film s based on Frederick
Burr Opper's "Happy Hooligan".
This is a natural relationship, as comic strips, with their popular cast
of characters and ready-made situations, with almost the same plot de-
velopment as the movies of the day, provide an easy visual source. Nev-
ertheless, the influence lies primarily in m otifs, and in the structure and
function of the plot I, and even if there are obvious analogies between
the various languages, there are even more intriguing aesthetic differ-
ences, thus undermining certain postulates about cinematic influence
on comics. In the comparison of texts created within different expressive
media it is necessary to investigate the systems common to both media
and the systems unique to each medium in order to understand the
m eaning of signs in each text. I shall take my point of departure in what
must constitute the core of this debate: the cinematographic style, i.e.
the use of continuity editing, close-up and point of view, often related
to the fi lms of Porter and Griffith.
What in comics criticism is called the cinematographic style is the
particular dynamisation of the graphic language (often related to Noel

I. As John Fell notes, a figure like the mischievous boy, who serves in comics as an
age nt to acruate practical jokes (in "' I'he Yellow Kid" , "'I'he Captain and the Kids",
" Buster Brown", for instance) features SUrprisingly frequently in early films (Fell,
1983)
108 I-fANS-CHRISTIAN CHRrSTI ANSEN

Sickles, Caniff, Raymond and Herge), using graphic equivalents to

those narrative devices, for example close-up, chiaroscuro, point of
view and dynamic editing of camera-angles (see figure 1).

' . ..
Fig. 1 Slig Hoybyc-Olscn. 1999. Copyrighl: Stig H0ybyc-Olsen

However, the term "cinematographic style" in some ways overesti-

mates the influence from cinema to other media and does not take into
consideration more general structures behind these new norms.
I would like to examine [his aspect more closely by distinguishing
components which are invariant to both texts (this I shall call «rorm")
and to components which arc unique to each text (this I shall call
"substance").

Form
As John Fell, D avid Kunzle, Francis Lacassin and others have already
documented the existence of cinematic techniques in comics and other
graphic narratives well before Porter and Griffith we can now lo'o k for a
more general structure or idea behind the development of a cinemato-
graphic language, i.e. a deep structure of the visual language beyond
style.
In order to clarify th e operation of visual conventions related to the
cinematographic style in cinema and comics we could take our point of
departure in film theory investigations in this field. According to Pu-
dovkin, cinematic techniques are correlates to spontaneous perceptual
activity in which the camera "sta nd in" for us and editing guides u s
through the events by directing our attention to what is importaoc, an-
ticipating the way we observe life around us. Hugo Munsterberg posits
that the cinematic techniques work in much the same way that the
COMICS AN D FILM: A NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE 109

mind works and each figure of fil m has its counterpart in perception:
editing parall els the memory and imagination in its ability to compress
and expand time and space, close-up parallels the psychological activ-
ity of attention etc. Even jf this film/mind ana logy is problematic in a
phenom enological perspective (Carroll, 1996) it is still usefu l in a func-
tiona l perspective (m ean ing, for example, that close-up and attention
are functionally analogous regarding selective focusin g).
David Bordwell, for h is part, indicates the releva nce of cross-cultural
regularities in understanding the stylistic techniques of fi lm and argues
that we should bypass the nature/culture couplet and concentrate upon
som e "contingent universa ls" (Bordwell, 1996) of huma.n life, practices
which arise in human activities, neither wholly natural nor wholly .c ul-
tural. His theory then is useful in explaining why audiences are able to
readily assimil ate cinem atOgraphic techniques without dismissing the
" unrea listic" and stylistic or aesth etic qualities present in these tech-
11Iques.
[n bringing together these statements we can sketch a continuum in the
way that cinematic techniques are related to both cross-cultural regulari-
ties, more universal human experience and style) understood in the sense
defined by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson as the use a n artwork
makes of the m edium (Bordwell andThompson, 1990 p. 126):

CONVENTIONS

N ORMS

CROSS-CULTURAL UNIVERSALS

DEEP STRUCTURE OF VISUAL STORYTELLING

The term "conventions" covers devices that rely primarily on culturally

specifi c skills and knowledge while the term " norms" covers devi ces
and techniques m ore loosely related to cultural codes. As examples of
the latter we could mention speed-lines (comics) and punctuation (cin-
ema) , both of which are also stylistic devices. To illu strate this we can
take our point of departure in punctuation. Punctuation can be inte-
grated in comics, but as this device is not a prim ary unit of the Janguage
of com ics (because of the lack of movement involved) it demonstrates
powerful allusions to cinematic S[yle and the historical norms in force
within cinema (see figure 2).
110 HANS-C HRJSTlAN CHruSTIAt'JSEN

Fig. 2 8ug Hoyhye-Olsen. 1999. Copyright: Sug H0ybye-Olscn

Cross-cult ura l universals are figures and techniques instantly recog-

nisable across cultures and time. To illustrate this we could take our
point of departure in the shot/reverse-shot d evice that relies on a cross-
cultural universal, as it approximates face-tQ-face personal interaction
and is therefore instantly recognisable across cultures. It still has a con-
ventional aspect, as it is unfaithful to ordinary vision because it changes
camera position so as to favo ur vision and has no analogies in real life
(panning from speaker to speaker would be the best equivalent to a
viewer glancing from one character to another) . Furthermore, Bordwell
considers that this device deserves to be called a stylistic invention
(Bo.rdwell, 1996, p.87), as he finds no para llels in contemporary repre-
sentationa l system S, such as comic strips.
The deep stru ctur e of visual storytell ing refers to techniques based
on general models of smrYlc Uing or even on universal human experience,
relatively independently of style. As an example of a device related to
this deep structure we could take facial expressions and postures,
which, according t'o Scott McCloud (1993) and W ill Eisner (1985),
form an alphabet for the language of comics. According to McCloud,
comics have developed a language based on facial expressions and hu-
man gestures, while Eisner states that "comics communicate in a "lan-
guage" that relies on a visual experience common to both creator and
audience" (Eisner p. 103). As stated by Paul Ekman ( 1983) fac ial ex-
pressions represent innate, evolved behaviour and as stated by Fein and
Kasher ( 1996) people have a firm comprehension of the gestures used
in comics and these gestures are undersmod to m ean the same as simi-
lar " rea l life" gestures. This language is then common to both (ea rly)
cinema and to comics but is more important to comics because they
lack m ovem ent as an expressive parameter.
 COMICS AND FILM: A NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE III

The same deep Structure underlies the cinematographic style in which

many devices are the exclusive property of neither the comic strip nor
the cinema. As John Fell h as pointed out, the interesting point about
the development of cinematographic narration is the very non-uniqueness
of movie techniques. C lassical narrative cinema thus reproduced older
models of storytelling drawn from western culture, and many of the nar-
rative and technica l devices that we commonly assume to have originated
with Porter and G ri ffith were nothing more than carry-overs from other
media. This dispels the myth of "spontaneous genera tion", the notion
that the narrative techniques and devices introduced in the early days of
the silent cinema were invented by the early innovators of the cinema.
Relying on the assum p tion that the language of im ages is rooted in con-
tingent universals and that the key figures ofthis language, points of view,
close-ups and classical editing, affect us d irectly, by involving instinct
and emotion, we could instead talk of a deep structure of visual story-
telling.
Just as the basic featu res of the cinematographic style derive from a
deep structure, so too does the actual integration of this mode into story-
telling rely on bas ic structures of a more social character. The means by
which cinematographic style is imegrated into the language of pictorial
storytelling is determined by our interest, meaning the comm unicative
aims we are interested in achieving in the specific cultural seu ings. If we
first consider cinema, the development toward the cinematogral?hic
style parallels the development towards longer and more complicated
narratives: fro m medium shot registration in a non-continuous style
characteristic of the early stage of development of cinematic art (in
wh ich the camera does not serve a narrative fun ction per se·and tempo-
. ral cominuiry d oes not assume a dominant im portance) towards higher
stages of cinema development, at which poim we find for ms of editing
based on dle sim u ltaneous interaction of a n umber of shot sections,
evoking com plex associations in the spectator.
T h is development took p lace during the period 1907-19 12, when
the cinema as a commercial in stitu tion developed strategies for drawing
spectators to specific fil ms and the industry learned to te ll a story in a
coherent, cohesive manner, combining age-old literary devices with
cinematic ones.
Th us, cinemalographic language evolved out of a demand for new
genres as the old formats no longer sufficed to hold the readers' atten-
tion: this can be paralleled by the development from typically humor-
ous comic strips) which do not challenge storytelli ng techniques and
112 HANS-CHRlSTIAN CHRISTIANSEN

wh ich hardly need to concern themselves with a continuous sequence

from one picture/strip to another. towards adventure strips with their
demand for more complicated narrative techniques. This point can be
illustrated by, for example, the development of "Wash Tubbs" from a
typical humour strip afthe twenties to adventure strip with a more soph-
isticated narrative style in the early thirties.
This relation between narrative style and genre is actually confined
by the frequency between genre and picture-narrating features. For ex-
ample: as a rule there is a higher frequency of point of view-structures
in adventure comics than in romance comics.
This indicates that comics gathered at least some of their basic ex-
pressive resources without recourse [0 the cinema but rather to the social
and commercial institutionalisation of genres and a universal grammar
of pictorial narration.
Nevertheless, the question of cinematic influence is still a grey and
overlapping domain in which we have to take into considera tion the
substance of the media. While the grammar of facial expression is more
important in comics than in cinema, a device like point of view does
not have the same stylistic history or semantic aspect in comics as in
cinema (in which it has proved capable offulfilling more self-consciously
expressive purposes) and the use of this figure in comics o[[en relies on
strong allusions to cinematographic meaning. This is due to the lack of
spatial continuity and the relative unimportance of eyeli nes in comics;
in evaluating the various features of visua l storytelling language we
therefore have to take into consideration the particular subs tance of the
two media, i.e. the distinct collection of technologies or technico-senso-
rial means of expression they display.

Substance
The substance provides the material for the communication of meaning
by any text. Differe,nt media use different systems of expressive material.
This m eans that, in comparing cinema and comics, we should not look
for exact semantic equivalents for particular elements, and that any dis-
cu ssion of the means by which the media are used, artistically requires
some understanding of the aesthetic quality of the media and an under-
standing of the media and an understanding of the way in which we
perceive comic images and film.
As such the cinematographic devices in com ics cannot be treated as
cinematic style, as this fails to do justice to, for instance the juxtaposi-
COMICS AND FIl.M: A NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE 11 3

tion of the disparate images and the unit of the pages that constitutes
the tableaux of the comi cs.
To verify this point I shall demonstrate the way in which cinematic
devices are used differently and have a different impact in the two me-
d ia in the construction of time, space and identification.

Cinema
In cinem a the cinem atographic techniques permit the narrative to pro-
ceed in a clearly defined spa ce and to create an omnipresent narration
(shifting the audiences' vantagepoint on the action freq uenrly to follow
those parts of the scene most salient to the plot) . The shots confer vari-
ous degrees of importance on intersubjective relationships, underlining
particular lines of tension, and permit identification with the diegetic
situation.
We can say that these characteristics embody mainstream cinema or
the institutiona lised narrative form, also known as "transparent" cinema
(Andn~ Bazin) or continu ous narrative style (Tom Gunning) . It ac-
countS for characteristics of narrative form that transform the screen
into a transparent frame. The strategy behind transparent cinema is
narrative fluidit y or continuity, which arranges the basic elem ents in a
chain of intentional links. It consists of factors such as:

• Spatial continuity (i.e. the 180 degree system)

• E yelines
Within the cinema's microcircuits of identification, eyelines or
glances have always been a prominently privileged vector, and the
interplay of eyel ines regulates a number of editing figu res (shot!
reverse-shot, point of view, ete.)

• Match on action
In classical Cinematic continuity, movement appears as an organ-
ised set of actions segmented in space and time: what Bazin
termed "analytical montage". Spaces are linked in time through
chains of action and reaction as well as through logical relations
of cause and effect. This is an analytical breakdown that controls
our attention within the story and draws the spectator Within the
diegetic situation or illusion (suture) and creating the illusion of
"a m agic window".
114 I-tANS-CH RlSTIAN CHRlSTIANSEN

The illusion of direct access to the diegetic world in cinema is closely

related to the aesthetics, technology and psych ology of cinema and to a
feature relying on the quasi-natural perceptua l base of cinema noted by
gestalt, realist and cognitivist film theory. In classical fi lm theory the
cinematic image is described as a transparent representation of reality.
According to Bazin and other photographic realists the photograph
puts us in m echanical contact with what we see and preserves real simi-
larity relations between elements of the cinematic image. Christian M etz
(1975), following Bazin, focuses on the perceptual and p sychological
indices of reality inherent in the photograph, to which is added apparent
movement but underlines as well the emotional participation fa cilitated
by the immateriality of the filmic image. Baudry ( 1976) in his theory of
the cinematic apparatus argues that this apparatus creates an artificially
regressive state, giving an effect of the real more powerful than can be
created by mere perception, while David Bordwell describes the cine-
matic situation as "a witness emotion". For this reason the labour of
enunciation in classical cinema consists of shaping the spectator's rela-
tionship with the diegetic situation and this labour is accordingly less
visible in classica l n arrative cinema. The cinematographic techniques
help the spectator to participate directly in the labour of enunciation,
and continuity helps to efface the marks of the enunciative labour. Fur-
thermore this invisible control of e nunciation maintains the audience's
impression that it is actually entering the diegesis: so here, at the enun-
ciative level, the kinship with the graphic art is lost.

Com ics
Cinem atic transparency relies on the movemen t and the index quality
of the cinematic image (the quality which, according to Bazin; creates
an intimate relation between spectator and the subject of the image). Let
us take our point of departure in these twO essential features of cinema
by comparing the narrative communication of cinema and comics.
Movement: From a perceptual point of view cinema has genuine
movement which func tions at "a subinferentiallevel" (Danto, 1986 p.
89). Furthermore, movement as such plays a major role in film viewing
by turning a fl at screen into a window Onto a world of depth, reducing
the distance between the voyeur and the imaginary space and implicat-
ing spectators in the m enta l space of the diegesis.
On this level of perception cinema differs from the comics' successions
of static images. as no sequence of immobile sections can reconstitute
COMICS AND FILM: A NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE 1 15

genuine movement. A film in the material sense of fil m stock is a collec-

tion of sti ll images, but its projection cancels out the stills, yielding one
single moving image: it is an intermediate image (wh at Deleuze calls
'Timage moyenne"l) to whi ch movement is no t added, but belong to
the image as immediate given. The movement we see in fi lm is indistin-
guish able in perception from real movement in time, even if some film
th eory conceives film as a succession of still images, for example the
montage theor y of E isenstein, which conceives montage exclusive as an
expressive and semantic process. H owever, this overlooks the fact that
cinema has not just meaning but also duration (and Eisenstein's theory
of montage could actually be applied successfully to comics). Some
then wou ld argue that there are a number of films, such as Oshima 's
"Band ofNinjas" (a fi lm ofa com ic strip), in which there is no movement.
Nevertheless. as Carroll (1996) states, this is an artistic cho ice, and the
viewer of this film cou ld presume that there will be movement in the
image, while this is never a possibility in still images. Contrary to this,
comics represent a set of still images which provide the time for a re-
flexive, atempora l reconstruction of meaning.
The index quality : In most theory, comics are, like film. described
as the world of the index, not as "pencil of nature"3 bur of the artist's
pencil or the narrator's construction of the dieges is; and diegetization is
then related more to the trace of the pen than to the illusion of a magic
window.
Comics foreground the presence of enunciator; this to a d egree
blocks the identificat ion process in making it more difficult for the
spectator to create an illusion of being in the locus and unique origin of
all identification: to comics readers the master of enunciation has b e-
come a figure with whom to identify.
Furthermore, as the illusion of a magic window is not basic to comic
enunciation, the gaze is not tra umatic as it wou ld be in cinema: It does
not effect a rupture in the texture of the fi ction by what would be an
emergence of a metalinguistic con sc ious ne ss~.

2. Gilk~ DcJeuze: "Cinema I :·The Movement-image", l\Olinoeapolis: Unive rsity of

Minnesota Press, 1986
3. The titlc of the work in Fox "ll11 bot describes his invcntion (photography) ·
4. The gaze in comics could be regarded as a SOrt of tr:msitional moment, wha t Bar-
thes caUs a "catalyst", which acts to maintain contact with the spectator, that is
encouraging lhe spectator to remain attenti ve by relating minor but fascinatin g
incidents withoUl altc ring its course
116 HANS-CHRlSTIAN CHRISTIA.t'-!SEN

However, comic narratives challenge the camera's and the cinemato-

graphic language's truth teUing gaze. It breaks the naturalism and
brings the viewer into the spaces where reality is socially constructed,
thus undermining its own agency. For this reason, the eyeJine match
and related figures are not essential factors in comics, as we arc not sit-
uated at the centre of the diegesis and these techniques do not have the
same sururfunction as in cinema (rying the spectator ro the diegetic il-
lusion).
Other aspects of continuity, for example the gathering of shots into a
sequence with some sort of narrative fluidity (temporal continuity),
were developed in comics before such techniques were developed in
film. We can distinguish between at least three form s of connectedness
related to temporal continuity in comics:

1) Matched cuts
Closure of movement (the time concluding shot A is rigorously contin-
ued into shot B) (see figure 3).

2) Movement images
Visual and temporal continuity established through action and shot-ra-
shot closure. In this category the movement of the strip is assured by
the continuous linking of one shot to the next and the identification of
movement with action and visua l linking assures the continuous un-
folding of adjacent spaces.
This technique is an important aspect of comic narration, developed
first by Topfi'er and Christophe, whose pictures demonstrate a strong
sequence of movements from one image to another, sometimes under-
lined by dividing the narrative into small pictures and thus expressing a
rapid succession of events.
Nevertheless comics are in general characterised by temporal jumps
between the successive images, so-called elliptical cuts.

3) Elliptical Cuts
While immediately successive to the narrative continuity of shot A, the
action of shot B is temporally discontinuous and what interest us here is
not what unites the images but the way they are separated by a hiatus, a
sudden shift from one time frame to another and in which no visual
continuity can be established.
COMICS AND FILM: A NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE 11 7

/' /'
\1 I
-
--.

Fig. 3 SLig: H0ybyc-Olscn. 1999. Copyright: Stig H0ybyt!-Olscn

For this reason spatial continuity is not essential in comics, as the travel
over time deconstructs conti nuity. It is, however, an important point
that thi s discontinuity is not disruptive as it would have been in cinema.
But why are these elliptica l cuts - characterised by a gap, a visual differ-
ence between two images - " invisible" in comics while they are more
perceptually disturbing in moving images?
One reason why these intervals are not disruptive in comics is the unit
of the page which constitutes the tableaux of the com ics and which (at
least in mainstream comics) creates a coherent diegetic space and a mental
strucmre in which to place the series of images. Without the order of the
pictures as part of an event or the spatial layout the series is not readable
or, at least, not to the same extent. We read comics according to a visua l
scheme and should not forget that the re-reading of com ics is common.
The reception-aesthetic background for the sense of continuity be-
tween temporally and spatially discontinuous pictures is closure, which
allows the viewer to fill in [he gaps between the picmres and which is an
experientially rooted way of making sense of the world. Hochberg and
Brooks (1996) even advance the proposal that comics narration may be
the best means by which to represent what goes on at the level of men-
tal processing in film viewers and in real world behaviour: "Comic
strips may be popular because they approximate the way in which we
think of the visual world" (H ochberg and Brooks, 1996 p.382) .
According to Bergson's "reconnaissance" (habitual recognition) the
apprehension of reality always requires an interior "cincmatographe", a
11 8 ' HANS-CHRlSTIAN CHRlSTlANSEN

series of snapshots preserving only those features relevant for our im-
mediate needs, fearures whose discontinuity is mentally suppressed.
F urthermore, as posited by A.M. Barry, "men tal images tend to have
the characteristics associated with caricature or with cave art in that
they abstract and amplify the relevant, and this relevance give shape [0 me
essence afthe rhing" (Barry, 1997 p,102). Comics in this sense approxi-
mate the mental representation of visual events in the static sequence of
pictures and in amplification through simplification (McCloud,
1993). In consequence, the disruptive character of elliptical cuts in cinema
derives not primarily from the a-temporal relation between the pictures
but from the unwanted apparent motion between non-corresponding
objects, motion which slows the viewer's comprehension and makes the
medium itself more intrusive.

Conclusion
Classical cinematic narratives situate the spectator at the centre of the
diegetic space and presume a stable world that can be recorded - and as
such implement a version of positivistic realism - corresponding with
the n arrative form of 19· century realism. As posited by Anne H ollander
(199 1), the technological and aesthetic character of the media (the
emotive power of moving picture imagery which gives cinema an unme-
diated appeal) imbues cinema with its romantic-realistic character and
cinematic techniques are thus used to create strong identification and
to m ove our feelings.
Comics on the other hand are rooted in a parodic tradition, a mode
mat motivates extreme departures from canons of verisim ilitude and
makes them particularly rich as sites of multilayered dialogic meaning.
Comics thus are in general consonant with postmodernis[ themes: the
challenging of authority from social hierarchies and the challenging of
textual illusionism per se. With Schmitt (1992) and Fresnault-Deruelle
(1976) we could argue that comics have inherently unique features
which would tend ·to promote fo rmal play of potentially disruptive kind:
for instance the anti-naturalistic iconography and the deconstcuctive or
confJictuai play between word and p icture and picture-sequen ce.
H owever, even if we cannot overlook the inherent qualities of the art
forms we should not fall into the pitfalls of medium-essentialism, Le. to
believe that the medium has an essence with teleologica l ramifications.
As stated by Noel Carroll, am ong others, this sort of m edium-essential-
ism depends on a number of controversial presuppositions, for exam ple
COMICS AND FILM: A NARRATIVE PERSI'ECTIVE 119

the supposition that all art form s have distinctive media . Even .if they
did, the medium is not always the message. and the comics as well as
cinema allow for multiple ar ticulations and can be used for opposing
communicative aims (Eco, 1994).
Cinema (and film th eory) has thus always attempted to face two dif-
ferent ways: towards realism and formalism. As Tom G unning among
others has stated, cinema has always existed within a tension between
classical narrative realism and attraction or exhibition ism which chal-
lenges the continuous and transparent narrative style. Por ter's "The
Great Train Robbery", for example. is considered a highly innovative
film in relation to classica l narration, but challenges the transparent
style in the concluding picture of "Bronco Billy" firing h is revolver at
the audience. This same formal p lay or exhibitionistic mode is still an
important element in such cinematic genres as comedies, musicals,
(post) modern cinema and effect-film ("Independence Day", "Termi-
nator", "The Mask" a.o.).
Furthermore, art form s are never static and can always acquire new
media with converging possibilities opposing the fixation with a telos.
As film, for example, becomes more and more imertwined with the de-
velopment of virtual rea lity, the visual orientation follows not the cam-
era as a narrating instance but the "ride" in the machinery and in this
aspect parall els animation film . The trend is toward total sensual-sur-
round experience itself, identification with the apparatus itself; as for-
mulated by A.M. Barry "T he art has thus moved from simple two-di-
mensional movement th at reflected a slice of life and invited us to look
on rea lity in a specific way to total immersion in artificia l experience"
(Barry, 1997 p.2 30).
This tendency towards reflection of the apparatus itself shares formal
features with postmodern art, but draws as well on the same pre-indus-
trial roots as animation film and comics: medieval carnival, caricature,
puppet theatre and magic lantern effects.
Thus, even if cinema and comics constitute two distinct cultural forms
with different substance and aesthetic potemial, they have parallels in
narrative style and cultural history which defy essentialism.
120 HANS-C HRlSTIAN CH RlSTIANSEN

References

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" Cutting Up" Again Part 11:
Lacan on Barks on Lacan

DonaldAult

The failure of repl-e.semau·ou produces rather than disrupts identity.

That missing part which representation. in failing to inscribe.
cuts off is the absence around which the subject weaves its
fantasies, its self-image, not in imitation of any ideal vision
but in response to the very impossibility of ever making vis-
ib le this missing part.
- Joan Copjec, «Cutting Up" (/989)

H ow did I feel about the final appearance of my drawings?

They almost never looked as well staged or technica lly exe-
cuted as I had pictured them in my imagination. I did them,
as Blake put it, by "copying visions fro m my imagination." I
admic, though, that after years have passed and m y original
"vision" has faded from my memory, I see my paintings
and drawings much as you do - as being exactly like I must
have intended them to be.
- Carl Barl~s, Correspondellce with Donald Aull,
Decembel' 12, 1989

What did I imagine my characters were doing between the

panels? For the first time I realize how deep and complex
the creating of comic book stories really is.
- Carl Barks, Correspondence with DOtlald A ult,
September 9, 1998

Carl Barks is one of the most widely read and published authors of the
twentieth century. His work is accessible in numerous languages and
has been consistently in print for the past 55 years. Jacques Lacan 's
work is gnomic, resistant to translation, couched in complex algorithms,
linguistic theories, and d iagrams of {he subversion of the subject. What
could these lWO drastically d ifferent forms of discourse, these two dif-
ferent ways of constituting signific ation, have to say to one another? 8 e-
124 DONALDAULT

cause the cutting up of the body of the comic book page by panels ad-
dresses elusive issues in Lacan's psychoanalytic theory. my thesis is that
Lacan and Barks could have been speaking to one another all along.
Comic book page format invokes Lacan's "imaginary," "symbolic,"
and "real" registers as they intersect with the "gaze." These extremely
complex registers, which are implicated in Lacan's rewriting of the Oe-
dipus complex in terms oflinguistic signification, are expertly developed
in Joel Dot's Introduction lO (he Reading of Lacau, to which the [oHowing
account is indebted. For Lacan, the imaginary is the locus of the "ego,"
which takes itself to be a unified totality, and stems from a fundamental
misrecognition (meconnaissance) at the mirror stage, an anticipation of
mastery over one's own body image. In Dor's terms, in the mirror stage
"the very unity of the body takes form as exterior to the self and inverted"
and is thus sub ject to "chronic misrecognition" and "imaginary alien-
ation" (97) throughout life. The imaginary register is fundamentally
dyadic, involving only subject and object, child and (m)other. In order
for the child to enter fully into social relations, the imaginary must be
intercepted by signification (in language) through the agency of Lacan's
"Nam e-of-the-Father." Dor notes that such symbolization involves "the
subjective experience in which the child frees himselffrom an immediate
experience and finds a substitute fo r it. This is the meaning of Lacan's
formula 'the thing must be lost in order to be represented'" (Dor 113).
"Symbolic castration" entails primal repression (the original split between
conscious and unconscious) and the replacement of the imaginary
phallic signifier with the symbolic paternal metaphor, the Name-of-the-
Father as bearer of language: "the phallus appears, at the end of the oe-
dipal process, as the symbolic loss of an imaginary object" (Dor 117).
What is cut out or sacrificed by the intrusion of the symbolic order is
the real which is covered over by a process Lacan calls a "suturIng" of
the imaginary and the symbolic (Lacan 11 8). The real always has the
potential to reassert itself as a disruption of the ego's sense of its own
self-sufficiency and completeness, an interruption usually accompanied
by anxiety.
The comic page most directly invokes Lacan's " imaginary" order
through its pictorial dimension (its visual images); the "symbolic" order
through its linguistic dimension (its letters, words, and syntax); and the
"real" through the interruptions or cutS in the body-space of the page
which leave blank spaces between the panels that correspond to (or
mark the absence of) events that are assumed to be occurring "be-
tween" the panels. Any attempt to keep these three orders separate im-
" CUTTING UP" AGAIN PART 11: LACAN ON BARKS ON L.ACAN 125

mcdiatcly b reaks down l however. The heterogeneous semiotic dimen-

sions of the page (the fi gural and the verbal) arise materially out of the
sa me medium (ink on paper) and thus arc physically homogeneous.
Th e words, which are aligned most obviously with the linguistic field of
the symbolic, not only are palpably visible in comics b ut also functi on
in visual competition with the images and thus belong to the imaginary
order as well. In turn, lhe images form networks of interrelations from
panel to panel, panel to page, and page to page and thus participate in a
symbolic order governed by laws of substitution and association (meta-
phor and metonymy). Finally, interruptions between panels cannot be
straightforward transcriptions of the "real," which, for Lacao, resists
symbolization absolutely, because the shapes and sizes of the blank
spaces between panels place constraints on the kinds of images that can
show up in adjacent panels. Consequently, the gaps between panels ser ve
imaginary (visual) and symbolic (metaphorid metonymic) functions.
The space of the comic page is thus a scene of reading where the in-
terruption of the symbolic and the imaginary by the rea l is perpetually
repeated. Corporeal fra ming, that is, panel boundaries cutting into the
body-space of the page and figure boundaries cuning into the space
within the panel, re-enacts both the primal umbilical cut and the psychic
castration or sacrifice of being that, for Lacan, is entailed in the entry
into the symbolic or social order. In the fragmented panels of a comic
page, space is forced to give way; things are squeezed ou t of one space
of the page into another; one image is sacrificed for another; one part of
one body is excised so that another part of another body can fi nd its
place. The comic page thus celebrates the incompleteness (lack) which
produces its str uctural specificity precisely at the cuts of the panel
frames. What is left over, the remainder in the blank space between the
panels, performs the disruptive function of the real. There is n othing in
this space, but it introduces discontinuities into the spaces of represen-
tation and allows the pa nels to assert themselves as fragments. It is
tempting to think that wh at has been left out can be bound up, covered
over, or healed by the Lacanian process of "suture," an intersection of
the symbolic and the imaginary performed through the act of readingj
for, as Lacan affirms, "The moment of seeing can intervene here only
as a suture, a conj unction of the imaginary and the symbolic," which is
performed by the insertion of the Lacanian subject into this dialectica l
process (Lacan 11 8).
The possibility of suture is, however. complicated by the labyrin-
thine function of the " things" of the real that Lacan ca lls the "gaze."
126 DONALDAULT

Lacan describes it: " I see only from one point, bu t in my existence I am
looked at from all sides" (Lacan 72) and then further elaborates it: " ...
in our relation to things, in so far as this relation is constituted by way
of vision, and ordered by the figures of representation, some thing slips,
passes, is transmitted, from stage to stage, and is always to some degree
eluded in it - that is wh at we call the gaze" (Laean 73). As it shows up
in the comic page, the gaze exposes the spectator to being loolwd at by
the panels from a multiplicity of places at the same time, rendering the
spectamr simultaneously consril'Utcd and fragme nted by this kaleido-
scopica lly dispersed gaze. Although for Lacan Suture involves a stitch-
ing toge ther of the symbolic and the imaginar y - a dialectic of the gaze
and seeing - the com ic page fl attens this un con scious aspect of th e real
(th e gaze "from all sides") into a two-dimensiona l, specular format . Yet
the comic page makes rhe gaze no more manageable or masrerable . The
comic panels crack open rhe body of the page, placing the viewer in the
position of being fragmented in a mosaic m irror. Imagining the comic
page as a fractured mirror, with the panels serving as mirrors of varying
curves and angles, the viewer appears as a multiplicity of imaginary
captures, and these views are actual aspects of the spectator caught in
the gaze of the world. By th is means, the misrecognition and anticipated
mastery of the mirror stage is both reenacted and radically destabilized
by the comic page. Altho ugh this d estabilization is apparently covered
over when the gaps between panels are presum ed to disappear thro ugh
the fiction of temporal lapse or perspective shift} they nevertheless leave
a residual trace in the spatial fie ld of the page's body.
Thi s fra gmentation of the gaze allows com ics to participate in two
different ontological and semiotic fi elds at once: as multiple appearances
of the same character at different places at the same time on the page and
as a representational sequence of windows that show the same character
at different limes, a unified embodied consciousness residing in a world that
exi sts independent of the actual drawings. In the former sense} a comic
"character" is analogous to an alphanum eric letter or piece ofpuncruation
in a conventional language that takes on significance only relariona lly or
differentia lly as it is repeated and gathered up into signifying clusters. It
usually does not point to its own individuality as a repeated character. This
sense of character (whether alphabetical} m athem atical, or ideographic)
functions m ost transparently when it presents itself as fl at or l WO-
d imensional. Imagine reading a senten ce or an equation composed of
three-dimensional characters} all of which are turned at a ninety-degree
angle from the surface of the page. Thus the identity of alphanumeric
" CUTTING UP" AGAIN PART [I: LACAN ON BARKS ON LACAN 127

characters is of an entirely different order from that of characters who

serve the function of em bodied consciousness. This other and admitted ly
more common sense of character in comics, however, is most transparent
when the lines that constitute it (that is, establish a boundary between
inner and outer as if on the surface of the character) are assumed to sig-
nify the edges of a solid, three-dimensional figure; otherwise the flatness
of the page and frozen, repetitive character poses move into the fore-
ground , as they do in many contemporary American comic strips.
Whether articulated as potentially genuine beings who can be looked at
from any side or as more limited, two-dimensional visual figures, comic
characters are presented as occupying spatial and temporal locations
distinct from other such characters and belonging to an underlying
worl d that exists independent of the panels in which the characters ap-
pear - an alternative universe whose "real" dimension seems to depend
on events th at have been cut out or are occurring between the panels.
Windsor McCay's Little Nemo page from September 23, 1906 (plate
7), impressively displays how the very form of Lhe comics page can cap-
ture the viewer in a simultaneous, mu ltiple gaze (concentrated here in the
repetition of the elephant's eyes) while exhibiting the disruption of the
imaginar y and the symbolic by the real. McCay draws this page as if it
were a representative sequence of photographs or motion picture stills
shot from a stationary camera as an elephant moves toward it. The spatial
slices th at Cut into the presumed bodily tota lity of the elephant, however,
push to an extreme the fiction of a lapse oftime and d ifferential distances
from the framing panels. It is as if the series of temporaVsparial slices ex-
isted before the elephant entered into the space of the page in order to cut
its body into pieces. Because the panels can't "give" way to their con-
tents, the cuts in the body of this page allow a gigantic phallus/vagina to
be unveiled, hovering over the mother/son dream-limit in the last panel.
The imaginary genitalia and the oedipal situation that underlies them are
forced into the open and visually produced by the rigid, incisive walls of
the vertica l panels as they presumably cut huge portions out of the ele-
phant's body. It is as if the "dream" has momentarily reversed the end of
the oedipal process which, as already noted, always involves the symbolic
loss of an imaginary object (Dor 11 7). T he imaginary phallic signifier
which rears its head in the next-ta-last panel has expelled the imaginary
father (the bearer of the Name-of-the-Father) from the fin al panel.
This Nemo page forces to a (psychoanalytic) crisis the side-by-side,
top-ta-bottom juxtaposition of panels, a feature of comics which is
structurally analogous to the linguistic categories of metonymy and
128 DONALDAULT

metaphor, which Lacan, via Roman Jakobson, rewrote as algorithms of

the unconscious. The arrangement of panels on the comic page corre-
sponds to a syntagmaz;c or metonymic function in the visual field of writ-
ing and drawing operating along the axis of contiguity and combination
where characters appear to be outside themselves in separate panels,
emphasizing their alterity, spacing, self-alienation, and self-duplication.
This feature presupposes that the comic world is constituted by the
drawings (what you see is what you get). The composition of the page
allows images to exhibit interconnections across panel borders and is
the condition of the possibility of self-reflexive comics. This condition is
analogous to the surface structure of the page and tends to make the
visual gestalt of the total page primary, as in this Nemo page. The gaps
between the panels draw attention to themselves as such. This aspect of
comics is analogous to the dream-work of displacemem in Freud and
Lacan. In reading comics, the viewer is invited to combine displaced
character aspects (m etonymically) into subjective unities by taking a
part (a visua l aspect) for the whole (the character for which it stands), a
synecdochic subset of metonymy.
In contrast to this metonymic dimension of the comic page in which
characters are potentially aware of themselves as outside themselves and
able to see themselves seeing themselves in prior and subsequent panels,
comics have the power to draw the reader/viewer into a potentially total-
ized, alternative world in which the same character reappears unprob-
lematically panel after panel under the spatial fiction of a lapse of time.
This process allows both the reader and the character to be constituted as
a coherent identity by a synthesis of visually similar elements. This func-
tion of "representing" the same character at different times corresponds
to the dream-work of condensation and to the pamdigmatic or metaphon·c
dimension of the visual field operating along the axis of substitution ~md se-
lection. Yet, like the metonymic dimension. this metaphoric function can
operate on [he comics page o,dy ill conjunction with displacements of images
along the symagmalic axis of contiguity. In this metaphoric dimension. the
panels function as if they arc windows on an ongoing world into which
the reader is given only periodic glimpses. Analogous to the deep struc-
ture of the page. this world depends on visual cues that draw attention
away from the surface gestalt of the page and the visual cuts at the panel
boundaries and into a world constituted not by but through the drawings.
In this metaphoric or paradigmatic dimension, each view of a char-
acter is analogous to a linguistic elemem that the artist selects from a
paradigmatic set or oncological schema of potentially substitutable poses
 "CUITING UP" AGAIN PART 11: LACAN ON BARKS ON LACAN 129

or postures that exist in the artist's imagination. Such a schema must

not be confu sed with ordinary three-dimensional figurin es or two-d i-
mensional model sheets which produce only frozen, preselected visual
aspects as guides for artists to keep their drawings within a certain
range of acceptable poses. Paradigmatic schemata or ontological model
sheets, which may have " non-Euc1idean " dimensions, are the condition
for the possibility of stand ard model sheets and figurine approximations
of the schema ta. The evidence for such schemata is the way they allow
an artist to produce surprising variations and unpredictable deviations
from standard poses which are nevertheless still coherent with the char-
acter's sub jective unity. Such a paradigmatic set constitutes what could
be called a figural lexicon of potentially interchangeable morphological
elements. In this sense the visual lexicon of a character exists in relation
to the possibility of its insertion into the syntax of narrative situations in
general but is both independent of any particular situation and con-
strained by the paradigmatic set to which it belongs. Every individual
comic artist employs a constantly evolving visual lexicon or spectra l
band of gestural possibilities that acts as a key element of artistic signa-
ture. An aspect of the uniqueness of Carl Barks' Ducks is that, by virtue
of capturing features such as character intersubjectiviry, indirect access
to individuality, and non-EucJidean gestural features, Barks' Ducks ex-
ceed the boundaries of any consistent, specifiable two-dimensional
model sheet or three-dimensiona l figurine.
Barks' comic narratives hold a central position within a Lacanian
framework because his readers characterize his stories as unusually "real,"
that is, they feel themselves constituted as exceptionally coherent identities
in the face of) indeed by virtue of, his manipulation of narrative fragmen-
·tation. Barks ' techniques usually de-emphasize the metonymic surface
gestalt of the page and emphasize the constiturion of characters and plots
through exceptionally transparent processes of metaphoric condensation.
The characters Barks drew and narrated were humanized "Ducks,"
which could have contracted his field of representation to "D isney"
paradigms of character condensation and n arrative displacement. Barks
himself has insisted ) however) that he allowed his Ducks to conform to
his imaginative vision in any situation in which he placed them) no matter
how incommensurable the drawing in a particular panel might require
the character to look in relation to other neighboring drawings. Thus, al-
though his techniques do not usually call attention to themselves the
way McCay's do, Barks' incorporation of potentially incommensurable
visual aspects of his characters into otherwise transparent narratives
130 DONALDAULT

exposes the unconscious dimensions of his texts that aIJow his narratives
to operate aZlhe limit of Lacan 's explanatory categories.
Even in textual situations such as covers and splash panels with no
panel disruptions, where one might expect the least possible dissonance,
Barks often insinuated virtually invisible cuts - or rather h e developed
scenes in which the cut and the suture are so seamlessly interwoven that
they seem to d isappear as separate functions. Two Barks single-page
layouts arc sufficient to show how he invoked subtle temporal and spatial
discrepancies that produce a visual surplus or excessivity. These excesses
are nOt noticeable until you begin to think through dlC implications of the
"at-the-sam e-time-ness" of the structure of the events being presented,
that is, the way a single scene exceeds or overrides the need for a series
of panels by performing multiple functions at once.
The tvalt D isney's Comics arid Stones (# 134) jack-o-Iamernlpumpkin
pie comic book cover (Fig. I) bears no explicit markings of cut and su-
ture; everything is presented as if simultaneous and unprobJem atically
self-present. Yet the whole composition is about cutting and looking,
and it lays out different temporal events aligned with each of the figures:
the transgressive act of c utting the pie, an event which has apparently al-
ready happened but seems to be happening "again " (and yet for the
" fir st " time beca use the nephew is in the process of making an incision
into the pie-face's mouth, a por tion of the pie-face that has already
been cut out); the act of illdulging in the fruits of the transgression (yet
one of these nephews is displaying the sign of satisfaction before he has
tasted the piece of pie that has been CUt in the shape of a mouth) j lhe
sudden maten·alizarion oJ DOrlald (like a jack-in-the-box, apparently hav-
ing given the nephew no warning of his approach) ; and the stale of being
discovered (with the transgressive nephew seeming to be caught forever
in the surveillance of Donald 's androgynous authoritative stare). The
joke is grounded in the simultaneous togetherness of events (transgres-
sion, indulging, sudden m aterialization, and discover y) that belong to
different orders of sequentiaJity.
By contrast, the ~'Vacation Time" opening splash (Fig. 2) d oes not
invoke d ifferent sequential "m oments" but three d ifferent spatial "per-
spectives" on a single event, with the axes of perception being aligned
with [he three nephews - down on the whirlpool, up under the bridge,
and behind the rock - at the same time. The way these perspectives work
can be clearly seen by contrasting the original drawing with Barks' re-
structu ring of the space of this panel fo r the oil painting he did of this
scene in 1972 where he "corrected" the perspectives. In the original
"CUTTING up n AGAIN PA RT 11 : LACAN ON BARKS ON LACAN 13 1

splash panel, space functions as a surplus. Here more is shown than is

possible from a singl e vantage point - a utopian excess of the scopic
drive. The sce ne simulates the Lacanian gaze because there is no si ngle
"place " from which these events can be viewed realistically) and the
spectator is simultaneously occupying multiple scopic positions as if situ-
ated within a multiplicity of " things." It is as though we get a glimpse of
what it might be like to be the gaze of the world: we are able to look at
the scen e at the same time we are seeing it .
In add ition, because Barks maximized his freedom to draw the
Ducks any way his imaginative vision dictated, they do not always share
three-dimensional congruence with themse lves from panel to panel.
That is, they cannot easily be captured by the gaze . One way Barks
dealt with these potential discrepancies was to draw the Ducks from
two perspectives at once. First, he exploited the metonymic displacement
of the images on the flat page and the simultaneity of rhe lines that con-
stitute both the words and the images in order to make the potential
three-dimensionally incongruent aspects of the Ducks fit together at the
level of their positioning in relation to themselves in their reappearances
on the same comic page. Through this first technique, Barks promoted
the feeling of a complete, satisfying composition - a visual gestalt of the
page that draws attention away from the potentia l n on-Euclidean nature
of the D ucks in their imagined transitions fro m pa nel to panel. Second,
Barks drew the Ducks directly for the intersubjectivity of the characters
themselves and only indirectly for the reader. In this way Barks trans-
fo rmed the way readers metaphorically condense and metonymi cally
combine different aspects of characters across panel cuts. By positioning
them in relation to narrative points of view that persuade th e viewer
that the characters simultaneously sha re their various potentially non-
Euclidean aspects, Barks induced the impression that those aspects
which are "unseen" by the co mic reader are perceived by other charac-
ters and that these "unseen" aspects perceived by other characters look
the same to them as they would if seen by the comic reader from the
other characters ' perspectives. This possibility arises from the fact that
he designed the Ducks in a way that would allow him to control exactly
wh ich aspects would remain "unseen" and to allow any aspect, no matter
how incommensurable, to be "seen" if necessary. In this way, Barks ex-
panded the paradigmatic set fro m whi ch he cou ld select visual. aspects
by incorporating the gaze directly into th e characters' intersubjectivity.
Since a trademark of Barks' style is that h e drew characters to seem
as though they exist primarily for their access to each other and on ly in-
132 DONALD AULT

......
....... ,.....
!DELLj
..... -.

Fig. 1 Carl Barks. 1%1, DiSlley's Comia and SlQries. In: Wait Disney's Comics and StO-
ries, # 134 (New York: D ell [K. K. Publications), 195 1). Reprimed in The Carl Barks
Library, Set VIII, Vol. ~ (Sconsdale: Another Rai nbow, 1983) page 360. Nov. 1951.
Copyright: The Wait Disne y Company

directly for the reader, hi s style allows a kind of voyeurism . Every d etail
Barks chooses emphasizes positive relatedness and community among
objects, words, balloons, and characters. Barks' clean lines insist on an
absolutely clear distinction between in side and outside: a world in
"CU'ITING UP" AGAIN PART Il: lACAN ON BARKS ON lACAN 133

Fig. 2 Carl Barks. Vacation Time . In: Vacation Parade No. I (New York: Dell, 1950).
Reprintt:d in The Carl Barks Library, Set VI, Vol. 3 (Scotlsdale: Another Rain bow
(19831) page 551. Jul y 1950. Copyright: The Wait Disney Company

which the desire to hold things in their place is secure. In a world where
there is a minimal acknowledgment of the spectator, and characters ex-
ist for each other, the viewer is, in Lacan's terms, more voyeuristic and
the style is more narcissistic' than in comics that exist as a spect.acJe (as
134 DONALDAULT

in superhero comics) or in comics where the characters act as if they

know they are being watched (for example, where characters refer to the
fact that they are characters in a comic book or comic strip). Pervading all
of Barks' work, however, is a counter-force, an irreducible, anti-utopian
moment, which sometimes makes his pages verge on tilting in the direc-
tion of the self-alterity of the characters, thus threatening the presumed
totalized world from which the discrete images have supposedly been
extracted. When, in the late 19405 and early 19505, Barks experimented
with radically jagged and dislocating panel shapes, a virulent, aggressive
aspect of his work forced its way to the surface.
"Big- Top Bedlam" is one such story that emphasizes both the surface
gesta lt and the fragmentation of the body of the page. This story traces
the paths of Daisy's brooch and the nephews' slingshot - two signifiers
whose trajectories allegorize the m etaphoric and metonymic dimensions
of comic book narrative, even as they show how the real perpetually in-
terrupts the intersection of the imaginary and the symbolic. Through the
main body of the story the brooch remains in lhe hands of fhe "same" char-
aCler (Zippo the quick-change artist), but Donald perceives it as constantly
changing hands, sliding from one character to another (Zippo's disguises).
The slingshot is the obverse of the brooch: it is an object that aczually
changes hands between three different, yet visually identical characters
(Donald's nephews). The complex relaying of these signifiers derives
from a precise set of misrecognitions. First, in the center of the story
D onald thinks the pinlbrooch keeps changing hands. keeps slipping
away at each new incarnation of Zippo's act. Because he is so captured
by Zippo's spectacular mastery of appearances, DOllald does noc recognize
thal Zippo is the "same" character from panel UJ panel. Second. Huey,
Dewey, and Louie recognize the continuity of Zippo but utterly misperceive
DonaldJs motives - they do not know he is chasing the brooch - a'misper-
ception that initiates their assault on Donald with the slingshot. Third,
Zippo misperceives D01lald la be a bill colleclOr (or agent of the law or sym-
bolic order, which Zippo as imaginary delegate of the real perpetually re-
sists). Fourth, Dona ld is unaware that his nephews are the ones whQ are
undermining him from afar (and behind) with their slingshot. Fifth, the
audience misperceives DonaldJs re/alion to Zippo; they think Donald is simply
Zippo's stooge. The humor of the slapstick violence toward Donald arises
our of the interplay of these multiple misrecognitions. It is as if there are
holes, absences, or areas of indeterminacy in each of the character-sets
that encourage misrecognition and initiate aggression.
Zippo sets the allegory of metaphoriclmetonymic process in motion.
"CUTTrNG (JP" AGAIN PART 11: LAGAN ON BARKS ON LA.CAN 135

Fig. 3 Carl Barks. Big-Top Bedlam.

In: Donald Duck Onc Shot No. 300
(New York: Dcll, 1950). Reprintcd in
The Carl Barks Library, Set 11, Vot. 1
(Scousdnle: Another Rainbow, 1986)
page 233 . Nov. 1950. Copyright:
The Wait Disney Company

In the first panel of Zippo's quick-change act, we witness what might

ordinarily be imagined as the disruption of a character's identity baween
panels - Zippo disappears as a figure within panel two, and is replaced
by the first three letters of his name (Fig. 3). The next several pages are
dominated by opposing forces and fractured panel structures which
drastically cut up the b ody of the pages, just as Donald is being brutal-
ized in the plot. In these pages, words begin to materialize as palpable
two-dimensional things in visual space, and solid black areas attach the
shifter character (Zippo) to the stationary audience, linking the one
who wants to be seen to those who think they know what they are see-
ing. Lines of flight (of the slingshot) and lines of sight (Donald's seeing
materializing as dotted lines) begin to em erge into visibility on these
pages, and these vectors of action at a distance by slingshot and eye
parallel, oppose, and dislodge the panels' jagged shapes and Donald's
putative "movem ent" through them . At the same time, the difference
between the nephews is m arked only once by the use of a name (the
symbol ic). As one by one the nephews take possession of the slingshot,
the only way to tell them apart is by the slingshot, which becomes a sur-
plus marker of sameness that distinguishes them from one another.
Given the plot oL shifting and misperceived signifiers, th e nephews'
visual identity with each other takes on a context-specific meaning in this
story - repetition of similarly "represented" three-dimensional volumes
is no guarantee of the "same" character, just as visual difference in this
story is no guarantee of the representation of a different character.
Significant switch points of these signifiers come thick and fast in
this section of the story. In the same panel (at the same moment) that
the slingshotfirst changes hands, the nephews acknowledge that they have
not been fooled for a moment; they know that Zippo is the same char-
136 DONALDAULT

Fig. 4 Carl Barks. Big-Top Bedlam. In: Donald Duck Onc Shot No. 300 (New York:
Dell, 1950). Reprinted in The Carl Barks Library, Set Il, Vo!. I (Scott5dale: Another
Rainbow, 1986) page 244. Nov. 1950. Copyright:The Wa!t Disney Company

acrer in different costumes. The curtain (or veil) , behind which Zippo
performs his "changes") functions, when seen almost head-on, as a
stand-in for the panel divisions of the comic itself (Fig. 4). By including
within the panel the curtain as allegorical surrogate for the panel breaks,
Barks imports the process of transformation between panels into the
panels, with a dotted line marking where Zippo has supposedly just been
- a trace of his simultaneous presence and absence from a definite
space in the panel. In his "drag" finale shown in figure 5, Zippo is, re-
markably, the "same" character in two different places in the same panel. At
this same moment, the double Zippo-as-woman both does and does not
have the brooch. Zippo-in-drag to our left is wearing the brooch; the one
to the right is not. At the moment that Zippo is split, the curtain is itself
doubled by perspective, suggesting that there is nothing behind the cur-
tain except another curtain, that there are n o props to fac ilitate Zippo's
transformations and no way for the transformations to occur except by
their being drawn on the comic page. As a figure for our desire to see
"CUTTING UP" AGA IN PART 11 : lACAN ON BARKS ON LACAN 137

F ig. 5 Carl Barks. Big-Top Bedlam. In: Donald Duck Onc Shot No. 300 (New York:
Dell, \950). Rcprimed in The Cnrl Barks Library, Sct 11, Vol. L (Scottsdalc: Another
Rainbow, 1986) page 245 . Nov. 1950. Copyright:Thc Wah Disney Company

Fig. 6 Carl Barks. 8ig-1op Bedlam. In: Donald Duck One Shot No. 300 (New York:
Dell, 1950). Reprintcd in The Carl Barks Library, Set ll, Vo!. 1 (Sconsdale: Another
Rainbow, 1986) page 245. Nov. 1950. Copyright: The WaIt Disney Company

what happens in the gap between panels, this glimpse behind the curtain
suggests that the disruption by the real is neither directly representable
nor simply a void. Given the crisis to which the panel structure has been
driven at this point, it is no surprise that the gap between th is panel and
the one adjacem to it is immense. In the second panel of figure 5,
Donald appears to be a voyeur: he seems to be looking (metonymically)
toward the previous panel but cannot see what is in it; its contents are
utterly cut off from h im because the panel borders are understood to
shift him into an entirely different room. In this panel, which is ju.xta-
posed to [he split image of Zippo, Donald's body and even much of his
138 DQNALDAULT

beak are rad ically cut off, obscured by the costume trunk (the ostensi-
ble source of the disguises) in Zippo's dressing room. In figu re 6, Zippo
remains in full drag costume (even sporting shapely fem inine legs) until
his body-image is cut off by the left margin of the first panel, with the
two-dimensional space-occupying word " RIP!" emanating as if from Out-
side the panel in the presumed underlying world of the narrative where
events occur «between " panels, signifying a tear that is simultaneously in
his costume (at the level of £he metaphonOc 'WOrld of the story) and j" the
body-space of the page (at lhe level of metonymic contiguity). This cutting
off of Zippo's body by the panel also implicitly enacts a tear in the curtain
which has been standing in for the gap between the panels (the rea l)
where Zippo has been able to transform him self, allowing the imagi-
nary props which seemed to be absent behind the curtain suddenly to
come into fu ll view in the fin al panel. Zippo is uncovered, demystified,
exposed as awkward and unba lanced, and shown in a state " between"
disguises, with a double face as his mask p artially detaches yet remains
connected to his "real" face within our view. What exposes his "be-
tweenness" to our view, the ob ject that pulls h is disguise off, is the an-
choring point of the pin.
Figure 7 marks the outcome of the final change of hands of the
slingshot. This time we are drastically placed at the eye of the shooting
nephew, positioned behind the Y shape of the slingshot, at the origin of
its trajectory; thus we are directly implicated in performing violence on
Donald, just as he has recovered the pin. At this very moment the panel
str ucture itself forms a precise tilted "Y" in the upper half of the page.
It is as if the fina l transfer of the V-shaped slingshot lO the third n ephew
(and simultaneo usly to the reader) has made an impact on the structure
of the page being looked at, precisely at the point where D onald loses
the precious object once again. This repeated ly los t object will be re-
turned once more, only after Donald no longer wants it, after he has
become aware that it designates his potential domination by Daisy. For
Lacan this is the moment of frustrat ion - the im aginary lack of a real
object (Dor 103); that is, the real object of D onald's desire will become
the absence of the very object he has been seeking.
In this inquiry I have attempted to recover some of the mysterious-
ness of the comics format of Barks' stories, where often the strongest
opposing tendencies of comics appear side-by-side: surface flatnes s with
three-d imensionality, self-reflex ivity with character self-presence, sub-
version of an underlying world with the coherence of a total world. I also
hope to have shown how Barks' n arrative strategies and some of Lacan 's
"CUITING UP" AGAIN PART 11: U\CAN ON BARKS ON U\CAN 139

categories such as the gaze, the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real
can illuminate onc another and, in the process, to have suggested how
Lacan and Barks cou ld have been speaking to one another all along.

Fig. 7 Carl Barks. Big-Top Bedf(lm. In: Donald Duck One ShO! No. 300 (New York:
Dell, 1950). Reprinted in The Carl Barks Library, Set 11, Vol. 1 (Scottsdaie: Another
Rai nbow, 1986) page 247. Nov. 1950. Copyright: The Wait Disney Company
140 DQNALDAULT

References

Barks, Carl (l986), The Carl Barks Library a/Wait Disney's Donald Dllck. Pres-
cott: Another Rainbow
Copjec, Joan ( l9 89). 'Cutting Up' In: Between Feminis1J1 and Psychoanalysis.
Ed . ByTeresa Brennan. London and New York: Routledgc
O ar, Ieei (1997). Introduction to the Reading oj Lacan: The Unconscious Struc-
tured Like a Language. Northvale, N .J. : Jason Aronson
Lacan, Jacques ( 1978). The Four Fundamemal CQncepts of Psycho-Analysis. New
York and London:W.W. Norton
Popaganda: Superhero Comics and
Propaganda in World War Two

Chris Murray

World War Two was a turning point for the relationship between Amer-
ican politics and popular culture. The years immediately prior to the
war had seen a tremendous growth in mass culture. This was largely a
response to new technologies such as telecommunications, the growth
of the press and the increasing popularity of the radio and cinema. As
the war progressed popular culture became a crucial means by which
political messages were disseminated.
America's geographical disrance from the main arenas of conflict
contributed to the feelings of apathy towards what was generally con-
sidered to be a European war. This isolationism was shattered by the
Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7th 1941. Before
this event no programme of propaganda existed in America, largely due
to the fact that Americans as a whole distrusted propaganda, seeing it
as manipulative and undemocratic. Pearl Harbour threw America into
the war and focused the need for some form of propaganda to inform
and motivate the people and troops. President Franklin Roosevelt, him-
self a staunch critic of propaganda, se t about trying to prepare his
country for war by advocating a form of propaganda that would inform
rather than inflame. In addition Roosevelt encouraged official rhetoric
in popular culture, thereby communicating political messages in a form
that the American public were already predisposed to be receptive to.
Advertisements, Hollywood films, animated cartoons, comics and so
on all carried m essages that supported the war effort. In this way the
distinction betweeq what was official discourse and what was popular
entertainment became blurred during wartime. As Toby Clark observes
in his book Art and Propaganda (1997) the appropriation of popular
themes by propaganda was common.

"Wartime propaganda attempts to make people adjust to· abnor-

mal conditions, and adapt their priorities and moral standards to
accommodate the needs of war. To achieve this propagandists
have often represented warfare by using conventional visual codes
142 CHRlS MURRAY

already established in mass culture. Thus, recruitment posters

have often been designed to look like advertisements or movie
posters. Propaganda films have used the formulae of westerns
and crime dramas. Film stars, singers, sports personalities, and
cartoon characters have been enlisted to propagate the official
messages of the war effort." (Clark 1997, p. 103)

The reverse was also true. Popular culture borrowed from officia l dis-
course and propaganda. With the boundary between propaganda/official
discourse and popular culture thoroughly breached it becomes mis-
leading and meaningless to distinguish between them as separate catego-
ries. Instead the interaction between these two apparently separate
discourses should be characterised as popaganda.
Roosevelt thought that propaganda should tell the American people
the truth, and popular culture was seen to be inherently democratic as
it was mainly produced "by the people for the people" . However, as
propaganda responded to the angry mood of the nation it became more
hate-filled and manipulative. Soon the Axis enemies, and in particular
the Japanese, became the villains and the American troops became ste-
reo typically heroic figures. This was a political myth in the sense that
Roland Barthes uses the word "myth", the substitution of complex po-
litical values and beliefs for simple common sense meanings. Barthes
calls myth "depoliticised speech ") meaning that those values that seem
to "go without saying" (for example, that the American troops are good
and the enemy are evil or inferior) conceal a highly political agenda and
are as a result not simply "true" or natural (Barthes 1957, p. l l). De-
spite this, myths of American superiority and enemy inferiority were ex-
tremely potent during wartime. These sorts of simple moral oppositions
conformed neatly to those found in many forms of popular culture, in-
cluding superhero comics. This continuum of rhetorical intention
across such a wide range of discourses is further evidence of the emer-
gence of an ethos of popaganda.
Even a brief lo<)k at superhero comics from the 1940s leaves little
doubt that the genre as a whole fed off of the American government's
programme of domestic propaganda. As comics historian Les Daniels
observes in DC Comics: Sixty Years of the WbrldJs Favourite Comic Book
Heroes (I995), superheroes were a product of their times, supremely
suited to complement the political myths of the 40s. Daniels says,
POPAGANDA: SUPERHERO COMICS AND PROPAGANDA 143

"The idea of the superhero, who gave up his ordinary life and put
on a uniform to battle the bad guys, had special resonance during
wartime; costumed characters became one of the emblems of the
age . In a sense they were America ." (Daniels 1995, p. 64)

Although he makes an essentially valid point, by stating the superheroes

"were America" Daniels himself buys into the myths expounded by the
comics. The question we have to ask is whose America were superheroes?
By and large they weren't an America for women, or for African-Amer-
icans, or indeed for any minority or disempowered group. Where were
the homosexual heroes, the black Batmans or the Captain Conscientious
Objectors? Far from representing America as it was, superhero comics
represented a view of America that was constructed by and within the
ideology of the dominant power structures and institutions. If supcrhero
comics represent something about America it has to be understood not
only what was represented, bur also what was excluded, and why.
In order to come to an understanding of the politics of superhero
comics it is necessary to observe how they engaged with the key ideolo-
gical issues of their time. Even before America declared war superheroes
championed President Roosevelt's interventionist policy. Stories often
saw the superhero in direct conflict with enemy spies or invaders, but the
real front line as far as comics were concerned was the comic cover. The
comic covers were instrumental in attracting the reader and selling the
comic as they were tile firSt points of contact between the comic and the
reader. The covers sold the ideology to the reader. Covers of this period
display a striking stylistic affinity with propaganda posters (see plate 8) .
1943's l%rld's Finest Comics #9 borrows heavily from the rhetorical strat-
egies of official propaganda. H ere the rhetoric has many levels; the moral
boosting imagery, the caricatures of the ·enemy leaders, the association of
the hero with all-American values and the war with sport and carnival ac-
tivities. This theme was also found in many examples of American propa-
ganda from World,WarTwo (see F ig. 1). This poster features caricatures
of Hitler and Tojo who are caged by the flags of the Allies. The strategy of
ridiculing the enemy and predicting victory is common to most popa-
ganda texts. In terms of their ideological function both this poster and
the cover to Wbrld's Finest Comics #9 are practically identical. Both revel
in the humiliation of the enemy and rely upon amusing representations
of their defeat, which is figured in metaphorical terms, not with reference
to real military defeat. The emphasis on play, the pleasure to be derived
from the defeat of the enemy seems childish to modern eyes, as does the
144 CHRISMURRAY

Fig. 1 Artist: Unknown. U.S. Propaganda poster. c 1939-45 . Reprinted in Stanley,

Peter (1983), p. 98

emotive and robustly patriotic rhetoric of much popaganda. However,

popaganda, with its dual reliance on what its audience feels to be true
(politics and myth) and what it wants or needs to be true (fantasy and
POPAGANDA": SUPERHERO COMICS AND PROPAGANDA 145

desire) cannot be easily dismissed as primitive manipulation but net::ds to

be analysed in terms of what it says about a particular people at a particular
time. Popaganda texts such as these defined who the "American people"
were, or what the dominant discourses allowed them to be represented
as. This was mediated through their construction of otherness.
The caricatures of the Axis leaders and the manner in which they are
treated mark them out as "other". Following an established pattern
Hitler is a wimp, Mussolini a brute, and Tojo a typically racist carica-
ture of the Japanese. This representation of Hideki Tojo, or the Japanese
in general, was a co mmon feature .of much American propaganda. In
Persuasive Images (1992) Paret, Lewis and Paret argue this was intended
to exploit widespread American prejudice against the Japanese. On the
comic cover (see plate 8) it is Tojo who receives the worst treatment,
with a baseball actually knocking out one of his front teeth. As Paret,
Lewis and Paret observe, crude racist caricatures of the Japanese were
often played against images of the American G .!. who was invariably "a
tough, sweaty, yet glamorous Anglo-Saxon" (Paret, Lewis and Paret
1992, p. 192). This strategy is something we can easily recognise on this
cover.
One of the recurring cultural myths that appear in popaganda texts
refers to the supposed superiority of white males, either to people of
other races or to women. One way this myth is maintained is through the
exclusion or denigration of other races, or of women. In their discourse
on war these texts reveal cultural prejudices on issues such as race and
gender. Why should this be so? Why does it seem to go-witho u t~saying
that superheroes, or the heroic figures featured in popaganda generally,
should be of a specific race and gender? And why is it that superhero
comics carry the ideology of dominant cultural and political discourses?
By what means are they empowered to address the very issues that define
notions of legitimacy and power? One answer is undoubtedly [Q be
found in the interrelationship between myth and ideology and the way
in which both infofm
infOl;m all texts.
One of the key myths of 1940s comics was the patriotic superhero
and one of the best examples of the patriotic superhero was, of course,
Captain America (see Fig. 2). The cover of Captain America #1 (1941)
is an image any propagandist would be proud of. Captain America, a
newborn symbol of American strength and moral superiority d,elivers a
punch straight to Hitler's jaw. If the reader were to be taken in by the
mythic connotation of this image they might conclude that Captain
America is America, that he is the living embodiment of American
146 CHRIS MURRA Y

Fig. 2 Jack Kirby. Captain America #1. March 1941. Copyrigh[: Marvel Comics

values. Is Captain America therefore representative of America? The

answer is no. What Captain America represented, along with many other
superheroes, was a particu lar myth of America, a myth that had close
ties to the dominant cultural discourses of the time. One of the clues to
POPAGANDA: SUPERHERO COMICS AND PROPAGANDA 147

this is that the myth advanced in the first story, and on this cover, seems
to arrive fully formed , the question is where does the myth come from?
The answer cannot be as simple as from the writer or rhe artist or the
publisher. Tt is better to think of this text as engaging critically with the
myths that circulate in culture. This text, like all other texts is involved
in an ongoing cycle of quotation and cross-quotation, drawing on various
other texts, such as other superhero comics, films, adventure serials,
the pulps, newsreels and d ocumentaries, propaganda posters and radio.
It is a child of popaganda, its myths conceived in the meeting of ideology
and myth with principles of pleasure, fantasy and desire.
When we say that myths circulate in culture we are in effect saying
that the myths that we perceive in comics such as Captain America are
not created by this comic. It is not simply the case that a writer writes
the sror y, an artist draws it and a publisher disrribmes it. In order to see
how m eanings operate in texts and how texts relate co one another, and
in order to com e to some understanding of what we mean when we say
that a text is popular, or official or mythic, we have to engage with these
concepts at a theoretical level.
Contemporary theory by and large rejects the notion (hat m eaning
in a text is determjned by the intentions of the text's creator. In his
1968 essay, The Death of the Author Barthes argued that meanings are
produced by the reader and not by the author. In one famou s quote he
says, "The text is a tissue of quotations drawn form the innumerable
centres of culture". He calls the text "a multi-dimensional space in
which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash"
(Barthes 1977) p. 40).
To see how we can relate this to superhero comics we can look at me
cover to 1946's A ction Comics # I 01 (see Fig. 3). This image is extremely
rhetorical and mythic, and seeks to tell the reader something about
post-war America. In 1946 this image would have been very resonant,
it probably wou ld have evoked in its readers memories of recent victory.
It would probably also represent a positive image of American techno-
logical superiority, the dawning of a new utopian age of atomic power.
That this text is "a multi-dimensional space" is apparent from the way
in which it collapses a whole range of associations and values inco one
another. Numerous rhetorical messages blend and clash beneath the
surface of this mythic represemation of post-war America, among these
the fig ure of the superhero. The implicit message is that if Superman,
who stands for justice and morality, approves of atomic power then it
must be safe, it must be for the greater good of America. Superman is
148 CHRIS MURRA Y

Fig. 3 Anist: Unknown. AClioll Comics #10 1. October 1946. Copyright: DC Comics

after all "the man of tomorrow". By association atomic power is the fu-
ture of America. Furthermore, Superman is shown alongside two afthe
most powerful technological advancements of the modern world, the
atomic bomb, and the camera. The myth conceals the true depth and
POPAGANDA: SUPF.RHERO COM ICS At'JD PROPAGANDA 149

nature of the concerns surrounding the use of atomic power, either as a

weapon or a source of energy. The manner of this concealment revolves
around a close association with democracy. Superman is a protector of
democracy; he is covering the atomic rest with a camera. The use of the
term "covers" strongly sugges ts that the test is being broad cas t to the
general public, therefore the camera is an instrument of d emocracy.
America is, according to the myth, not a country where citizens are
kept in the dark. Information is, according to this comic, freely dissem-
inated by the government. Perhaps this claim was a reflection of
Roosevelt's ea rly idealism. Also, the implication is that the atomic
bomb is a guarantee of America's continued status as a democrac y as it
will be used to keep the world free of tyranny, to protect America fl:om
aggressors. D epending on whether the reader was an adult or a child it
might well be imagined that it is Superman who legitimises atomic
power or the topic of atomic power that legitimi ses Superman as an
agent of the cultural and political discourses underpinning lhis text.
Either way the two are involved in a dyn amic relationship involving
myth-making and legitimisation. As a result this image is not a wholly
original creation , it d raws on themes and imagery that exist within
culture, drawing them together in a tissue of quotation s and cross-quo-
tation. Although even in the 1940s there were tensions and concerns
that are not revealed by this image, which, due to its mythic and
rhetorical n ature, sought to concea l such tensions.
The myth expounded by popaganda such as this cannot simply be attri-
buted to "the spirit of the age" or the innocence of the times. As seduc-
tive as it might be to bel ieve, the past is never a more innocent time;
myths exist in the service of ideology and must be understood as such.
Although, if we are to argue that it is the reader who determines the
meaning of a text, we should be aware of some problems with this asser-
tion . The most obvious problem is this, if we say a text is rhetorical we
are saying that the text has a specific meaning) that it attempts to com-
municate something important to its audience. How can we mainrain
this view if we are also arguing that meaning is constructed through the
subjective viewpoint of the read er? The cultural theorist TOIlY Bennett,
who has written extensively on the interactions between ideology and
popular culture, has gone a long way towards an swering this quest ion .
One of Bennen 's main points is that texts exist in what he calls a
"reading formation". For Ben nett reading is not simply an aCl of inter-
pretation . In place of " reading" Bennett proposes another term, "pro-
ductive activation". By thi s he means the act known as reading results
150 CHRISMURRAY

in the activation of cerrain meanings suggested by the text, These

meanings, far from being set and unchanging, are as much produced
by the reader as they are received or interpreted. For Bennett produc-
tive activation does not involve an individual interacting with a text but
of an individual interacting with many interrelated texts. As Bennett
says, a reading formation is "a set of intersecting discourses which pro-
ductively activate a given body of texts and the relations between them
in a specific way" (Bennett 1982, p. 80). In his essay 'Texts, Readers,
Reading Formations' (1982) Bennett describes the way in which the
productive activation of texts gives rise to reading formation s that clash
and blend discourses from contradictory cultures. This comes from the
concept expounded by Barthes that there is not one centre of culture
but innumerable centres of culture. Accordingly the superhero genre
represents one centre of culture, with all its associations and connotations.
Propaganda is another cultural centre, scientific p apers yet another,
p ornography and poetry are others and so on. T he point is that these
cultures cannot be held in suspension, they interact with one another,
continually transgressing and redefining their boundaries. This is the
very nature of the post-structuralist notion of texcual " play". Popaganda
is one su ch reading formation, a site where a range of distinct practices
and discourses intermingle in response to the political needs of the
readers and the capabilities of the culture, both ideologically and tech-
nologically. This has some important consequences for notions of read-
ing and writing.
The acts that are often inadequately referred to as " reading" and
"writing" are not two separate acts. In fact they are one and the same
act. When a subject reads they productively activate meanings, they
construct them, in other words they write them. A writer or artist, tra-
ditionally conceived, may seem to be involved in an original act of cre-
ation but he or she is in fact drawing on that "tissue of quotations" that
Barthes talks about. In effect, he or she is reading, productively activating
other texts, creating new meanings and reading format ions. We are all
readers and writers, irrespective of our cultural position. We all create
reading formations, and in the act of reading we productively activate
texts, creating new meanings, rc-writing the text in line with our own
experiences and interests.
Consider the famou s photograph R aising the Flag on Iwo Jima
( 1945) by j oe Rosentha l. This photo, which shows U.S. soldiers raising
the flag on lwo jima, is one of the most iconic and memorable images
from World War Two, but what does it signify?This image speaks to the
I'( WAGANDA: SUPERHcRO COMICS AND I'ROPAGANDA 151

totality of the American war effort in mythological terms. The soldiers

do not just raise che flag, they strive to raise it, rai sing the flag seems to
be a heroic effort. As George H. Roeder says in The Censored War
( 1993), part of the reason this image had such resonance in America
was chat this photo "presents the war as a collective effort that nonethe-
less allows recognition of individual achievement [and) through its sim-
ilarity to fam iliar images of communal barn raising ... linked the work of
war with activities on a mobilised home front"(Roeder 1993, p. 80).
The meanings that are communicated by this photo are official, in that
they are legitimated by the dominant institutions in society, however, it
is equally true to say that this phow legitimates these discourses. People
d on't work, fight and die for complex ideologies, or even for econo.mic
sys tems, they are motivated by myths, myths that simplify and package
ideology into form s that are emotion ally stirring. Official fi ctions such
as these legitimise the war and motivate the troops and public, but they
are fictions nonetheless.
Given the way that myths operate by anchoring fictiona l meanings in a
way that renders them seemingly timeless and unquestionable it could be
said that reading myths involves a particular kind of misund erstanding
of a text. This form of misunderstanding may be called "mythic fetish ".
Fetish is an interesting con cept in theoretical terms. Marx refers to
"commodity fetish" as the self-misrecognition of the subject as an eco-
nomic commodity in capita list structures. Freud talks about feti shism
in relation to fear of castration and the substitution of objects for ab-
sence and the desire to present a stable surface which h ides these fears
and anxieties. In Modest Witness -Second Millennium ( 1997) Donna H ar-
away, whose work has attempted to bridge the gaps between feminism
and scientific discourse, says that,

" Fetishism is about interesting "mistakes" - really denials -

where a fixed thing substitutes for the doings of power... Fetishes
literalise and, so ind uce an elementary material and cognitive error.
Fetishes make things seem clear and under control." (Haraway
1997,p. 135-6)

Popaganda texts bombard us with fetishes. The atomic blast and the
camera on the cover of Action Comics #101 are fetishes, superheroes
who dress in costumes that resemble the American flag exhibit a fetish.
Icons such as the American fla g, the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell,
the Swastika and so on are all fetishes: metaphors for values that come
152 CHRIS MURRAY

to be mistaken for the values themselves. For an American in World War

Two symbols such as the Stars and Stripes or Superman most likely
connoted democratic idealism and strength, the Swastika was a symbol
of evil and oppression. For a German the Swastika probably represent-
ed strength and national unity, the American flag and the products of
American popular cu lture may weJl have been viewed as decadent. This
opposition is at once the limitation of mythic fetish and its power.
Mythic fetishes also operate in a more general way, with knowledge
on issues such as race, gender, class and so on being accepted as tcue
and controlled when in fact it is highly ideological and full of tensions.
As with race, the dominant discourses on gender controlled images of
women through disempowerment and exclusion. Texts at all levels, in-
cluding most superhero comics, celebrated the superiority of men over
women with idealised representations of masculinity. This view of wo-
men was legitimised and perpetuated at me levels of official culture.
However, for the duration of the war this had to change. The war not
only mobilised troops to the front lines but also women into the work-
place (see plate 9). The 1942 poster "We Can Do It" by Howard Miller
represents a change in attitude from pre-war images of women and
their role in society. The spirit of the working woman became one of the
central myths on the home front, and the popular nickname for these
working women, "Rosie the Riveter", cam e to symbolise the general ac-
ceptance of women into industrial work. Or at least that's what the gov-
ernment posters, documentaries and newsreels of the period would
have us believe. As a myth, "Rosie the Riveter" served a specific histori-
ca l and political function, it helped boost war production, it was never
intended to be part of a drive for full equality between the sexes. This
then was the historical and cultural situation within which the first
Wonder Woman comics emerged.
Wonder Woman, who was created by William Moulton Marston and
Harry G. Peter, was often described as being "As lovely as Aphrodite-
As wise as Athena - with the speed of Mercury and the strength of
Hercules", but Ro~ie the Riveter is in there too (see Fig. 4) (Marston,
Sensation Comics #1, reprinted in Wfmderl%manArchives, vol. 1, p. 8). In
a very real senseWonderWoman was a response to wartime propaganda
in that it attempted to move beyond the scope of what was recognised
as official rhetoric . The posters and documentaries of the time reflected
the attitude that women in the workplace was a concession to the needs
of war, the changes were only to last for the duration of the war. Won-
der Woman advanced a far more progressive agenda. In the first story
POPAGANDA: SUPERHERO COMICS AND PROPAGANDA 153

APRIL NO.4

Fig. 4 H.G. Peter. Sensation Comics #4. April 1942. Copyright: DC Comics

the goddess Athena appears to the Queen of Paradise Island, Wonder

Woman's home before coming to America. Arhena rells the Queen that
the role of Wonder Woman should be to protect America which she calls
"the last citadel of democracy and of equal rights for wom en" (Mar-
154 CHRIS M URAA Y

sron) . Wonder Woman places protecting the right of women to be equal

members of society on an equal footing with the fight to prO[ect de-
mocracy against fascism. This is essentially a re-writing of the myth of
wartime America, and it might said that Wonder Women operates with-
in a different reading formation to me majority of superhero texts.
If any comic confronted the fetishist nature of myth it was WOnder
WOman, and it d id so by constructing its own liberating and positivist
myths in opposition to the more conservative and repressive myths of
gender that dominated in both official texts and popular ones. The
cover [Q Sematioll Comics #4 (1942) shows how the early Wonder Woman
comics established a myth of female equality. On this cover Wonder
Woman easily defeats two armed male opponents and is shown break-
ing a chain, which symbolically represents the chains of male oppres-
sion. Here Wonder Woman is a fetishised figure. If it was to be a
straightforward parable about sexual equality it would not feature a su-
perpowered woman, it would feature a normal woman who was the
equal of normal men. However, this can be explained. The natural out-
let offetish is fantasy. It takes a myth to fight a mytil. Part of the pleas-
ure principle at work in constructing fetishised myth s is that fetishes
can transgress the boundaries of the mundane. Identification with super-
powered characters, male or female, always carries with it an element of
fetis h. Readers misrecognise themselves in tile hero, they fantasise they
can leap tall buildings in a single bound, or like Wonder Woman stand
alongside men in battle. Mythic fetishes usually go beyond what is pos-
sible or permissible to say, and for Wonder Woman this means being su-
perior to men, or at the very least, equal to them.
Popaganda, the interaction of popular culture and propaganda, de-
fined the tone, politics and cultural position of early superhero comics.
In these comics entertainment value is inextricably linked to rhetorical
value. The pleasure of the text and its political worth are bound in
myths. These myths communicate not only what a cu lture believes but
also what it wants to believe, what it needs to be true. Superhero comics
were one expression .of American wartime mythology, and as part of a
mythology they existed in a dynamic interaction with the rest of thelt
mythology.
POPAGANDA: SUI'ERH ERO COMICS AND PROPAGANDA 155

References

B3rthes, Roland ( 1957). Mythologies. London: Vintage 1993

- (1977) lmage-M usic-Text. London: Fontana Press 1997
Bcnnett, Tony ( 1982). 'TexIs, Readers, Reading Formations'. In: Lileralllre and
Hiswry, 9.2. London:Thames Polytechnic
Clark, Toby (1997) Art and Propaganda. London: Everyman Art Library
Daniels, Les (1995) DC Comics: Sixty 1'ean of the lfilrld's Favourite Comic Book
Heroes. London: Virgin Books
Douglas, Ray (1990). The IXbrldWar 1939-45:A Cartoonist's Visioll. London and
NcwYork: Routlcdge
Haraway, Donna (1997). M odest W it71ess - Second Millennium. London and
New York: Routlcdgc
Heyman, Therese TIlau (1998). PoSlen American Style. New York: Harry N.
Abrams Inc.
Lupoff, D ick and Thompson, Don (eds) ( 1970). All in Color for a Dime. USA:
Krause Publications 1997
Paret, Peter, Lewis, Beth Irwin and Paret, Paul (1992). Persuasive Images: Poslen
o/t%ra1ld R evolution. Oxford: Princeton UP
Rhodes, Anthony ( 1975). Propagallda - The Arc 0/ PerSllasi01l . London: Angus
and Rohertson 1976
Roeder, George H . Jr. (1993). The Censored War: American Visual Experience
During Wbrld IWlr Two. USA: Yale University
Stanley, Peter ( 1983). lflhat Didl-bu Do in the~W:zr Daddy? Melbourne: Oxford UP
From Ahab to Peg-Leg Pete:
A Comic Cetology

M. Thomas Inge

Few American writers have a larger presence in our popular culture

than H erma n Meivillc, only perhaps Edgar AlIan Poe and Mark Twain
being the major contenders. Millions of Americans who have never
read a single work by Melville know the names of Moby Dick, Captain
Ahab, Ishmael, Bartieby, and Billy Budd. H arold Rass, founder of The
New YClI-ker. was sarcastically underlining this incongruiry when he
asked his often quoted question, "Was Moby Dick the man or the
whale?'" Moby-Dick represents for many the great unread American
novel, a challenge which many undenake but few finish, as has been the
case with [WO works from Europe, To!stoy's War and Peace and Joycc 's
Ulysses. Yet it remains the most revered work of ficti on by anyone who
cares about writing and American culture, a secure canonical work
which none would suggest be replaced in favor of a marginalized work
by a minority writer.
Moby-Dick has inspired so many other works of literature, from sci-
ence fi ction and pulp novels to mainstream fiction, poetry, and drama,
that the story of Ahab's pursuit of the great white whale seems perma-
nently imbedded in the nationa l consciousness. A writer has but (Q begin
a narrative with "Call me Jonah " (or whatever name is appropriate -
this particular line begins Cat's Cradle by KUf[ Vonnegut, Jr.), and the
reader is reminded of Ishmael's great sea adventure. The novel has been
repeatedly adapted to fi lm, radio, television, children's literature, comic
books, and comic strips. Themes, names, and images drawn from the
novel have been used in games, toys, puzzles, popu lar songs, names of
rock groups, riddles, jokes, advertisements, seafood market and restau-
rant names, and any number of products. So widely known is the basic
plot structure of M oby-Dick and so frequently has it been adapted (Q
the media that many people arc firmly convinced that they have read
the novel without having gone near the actual text. It is my intention

I. Thuroer,Jamcs (1957). T"c~w'S wilh Rots. Boston: Little, Brown. p. 77.

158 M. THOMAS INGE

here to explore how the process of adaptation has worked in just one
area of popular culture - comic art.
The American comic book, which originated in 1933, was less than
a decade old, but at a peak of wide popularity, when me first adaptation
of Moby -Dick was undertaken. This was the Classics Comics (known after
1947 as Classics Illustrated) version of the novel, number 5 in the series,
issued in September 1942, with illustrations by Lou is Zansky. The pub-
lisher, Albert L. Kanter, a former salesman and publishers representa-
tive, had established the series the year before at a time when journalists
and parent-teacher associations were expressing grave fears over the af-
fects on young minds of reading lurid super-hero comic books. A lover
of literature himself, Kanter decided to infuse this appealing form of
popular culture with the story-telling power of the classic European and
American writers and thus reach the large market of concerned par-
ents. Although soon teachers would criticize his comic boo ks as d esec-
rations of works of art and cheat notes fo r book review assignments, the
scheme worked and Kanter built one of the great publishing empires on
the basis of hi s comic book classics. 2
H ow sh ould one evaluate a comic b ook adaptation of a novel which
cannot by virtue of its brevity and form retain much of the style or
complexity of the original? In discussing ad aptations of fiction into
film , we have come to realize that it is perhaps unfair or improper to
judge the success of the new version only in terms of its faithfulness to
the original work. The factors which make for a successful and satisfying
film experience are not the same things which provide a good reading
experience, and each work most appropriately should be eva luated in
terms of the separate aesthetic possibilities inherent in each medium.
An excellent film can be made from a poor novel, and a great novel is
not likely to become a successful film without a commitment t6 the fu ll
power and visual artistry of the motion picture m edium.
I believe the same principle should be applied to comic book adapta-
tions. To ask if it is fa ithful to the book is beside the point.111at is to say
that the adaptation should be evaluated in terms of its success as a
comic book and how crea tively it uses and expands on the artistic and
technical possibilities of the m edium. Does it use the fu ll range of ver-

2. The beSt accounl of Alben L. Kante r's career is found in Malan, Dan ( 1991). The
Complcte Guidc /0 Cla5sic CcIlUlibles, 1Io/llllle Qlle: U S. Classics 1IlliStrQud. SI.
Louis: Malan Classical Enterprises. p p. 16-40. See also Sawyer, Michacl (\987).
'Albcrt Lewis Kanler and me Classics: The 1"1::10 lkhind me Gilbenon Company'.
In: Joul'llal of Poplllar ClIlw!'t, 20 (Spring J 987). p. 1-18.
FROM AHAB TO PEG-LEG PETE: A COMIC CETOLOGY 159

bal and visua l techniques peculiar to the comic book as a form of cre-
ative expression?
A major problem with Kanter's first comic book version of Moby-
Dick is the fact that he instructed his editors to remain as faithfu l to the
original book as possible in all of their adaptations. In the 62 pages of
comic art (with an additional page devoted to a M elville biography and
another reprinting Ralph Waldo E merson's "Concord Hymn " with four
sketches by Zansky) the artist and his unnamed writer (possibly Albert
L. Kanter himself) move through all the major plot events to incorpo-
rate more details from the original than would any subsequent comic
book version. There is even a slight nod towards the book's cetology in
that a diagram is included defining the differences between the right
wha le and the sperm whale, as well as other kinds of technical informa-
tion of the sort that Melville would sweep up in his inclusive text, such
as a diagram of the ship Pequod and two maps charting the progress of
the ship in pursuit of the whale around Africa and Asia. With the focus
on action and plot conflict as req uired by the comic book format, it was
not possible to incorporate any of the novel's major ideas or phil osophic
disquisitions, except for an occasional complaint by Starbuck that God
is against the ill-fated voyage or a lament by Ahab that he has been
wrenched from human comforts by a lusr for revenge that overcomes
his free will and rationality.
Zansky's art is often wooden and awkward with regard to design and
perspective, but occasionally he produced a nicely balanced panel or an
effectively arranged full page which moved beyond the mechanically
laid out six-panel breakdown per page found in most comic books.
When he is at his best, however, it is because of another artist whose
work has so profoundly influenced all illustrations of Moby-Dick that
hardly anyone has been able to escape it - that is Rockwell Kent (see
figures 1-8 at the end of d1e article).
Because of his d istinguished reputation as an illustrator of classic
works and books ,about sea voyages, K ent was offered a contract in
1926 by the Lakeside Press of Chicago to illustrate a limited edition of
Moby-Dick. Already an admirer of the novel, the one book he had always
wanted to illustrate, Kent set out on four years of detailed research on
whaling and natura l history. As the drawings began to proliferate, what
began as a single volume soon beca me a three-vo lume project. Involved in
every step of the production and design, Kent's inspired vision resulted in
a set of books which some consider among the most handsome volumes
ever published in the United States.
160 M. THOMAS INGE

Drawn in the bold style of wood block prints, the 280 drawings were
so original in conception and striking in appearance that they quickly
became recognized as the definitive illustrations for Melville's novel
upon their appearance in 1930. They were widely disseminated the
sam e year by publication in an edition from Random House, who de-
cided to include it as well in 1946 in their Modern Library series,
where it has remained in print until the present.'
Working over a decade after Kent's illustrations appeared, Zansky
turned directly [0 them for inspiration and imitation. Some of Zansky's
drawings are slighdy modified or redesigned versions, but others are di-
rect copies. Such "swiping," as it has been called, is a time-honored tra-
dition among illustrators and cartoonists working on short deadlines,
so long as the borrowing is not obvious. and Zansky has made them a
part of his own less powerful renditions. In fact, only after careful com-
parison can the reader identify the source . But the influence of Kent
did not challenge Zansky to do more than produce a competent and
undistinguished adaptation. H e preferred to settle for comic book art
that did the job but offered little that extended the boundaries of comic
book art as a new form of popular literature.
In any case, comic book readers enjoyed the Classics Illustrated adap-
ration of Moby-Dich. It went through 13 reprintings between 1942 and
1954. In 1959. the publisher commissioned an entirely new version and
a painted cover, this time with art by Norman Nodel and reduced in
length to 45 pages. Nodel had a cleaner and more carefully crafted style
than Zansky, but his stiffly drawn figures, staged tableaus, and mechan-
ical lettering were no improvement. What Zansky lacked in skill he
made up for in energy, and there is a primitive beauty in his naive if de-
rivative style. Yet the readers en joyed the new version and it saw another
9 reprinrings through 197 1. With a total of24 printings, M oby-Dick was
one of the bestselling of the Classics comic books, with only Ivanhoe and
Robin Hood surpassing it with 26 printings each. In addition to British
and Iri sh editions, the Moby-Dick issue was translated in numerous
countries, including Denmark, Germany, Greece, Holland, Iceland,
Norway, and Sweden.
At least one other publisher made an effort to compete with the
Classics adaptation at the height of its popularity in Features Presentation

3. See Spangler, WilHum (1976). 'Rockwell Kent and Moby-Di~k' . In: Extracts, No.
26 Gune 1976). p. 7- 10, and Jones. Dan Burne (1977) . 'Moby Dick:The Un-Used
Kent Illustrations'. In: ExtI'UCIS, No. 30 (May 1977) . p. 4-9. F.xtmclS is the newslet-
ter of the Melville Society.
FROM AHAB T O PEG-UG PETE; A COMIC CETOLOGY J6J

M agazine. Issue number 6, published in June 1950, contained a 2S -page

version druwn by an anist who signed his name H arper. Extremely
crud e and often lacking in perspective or design , the drawings finally
degenerate in the last few pages into incomplete sketches. The only re-
deeming feature of this version is a cover design by Wall ace Wood, soon
to emerge as one of the most tale nted artists of the 1950s in comic
books. U nfortunately, Wood was not hired to do the interior art. Given
the geniu s of his individual style, it might have been a rendition worth
remembering.
In 1973 another n oteworthy version of Moby-Dick in comic book
form was issued by an educational publisher, Pendulum Press. It was a
b lack and white 8" x 5 1/4 " pape rback edition published as a part of the
Now A ge lilUSlraced series designed to improve reading skills and
strengthen vocabulary for young readers. With a text by Irwin Shapiro,
art by Alex Nino, under the editorial supervision of Vincent Fago - all
seasoned contributors to commercial comic books - this version
achieved a m ood and style appropriate to M elville, with its emphasis on
grotesque ca ricature, careful detail, and cinema-like perspective and
point-of-view. This is a well-rend ered comic book version that employs
some of the best elements of the medium . A regular comic book edition
in color (abbreviated by seven pages) was issued as number 8 in the
Marvel Classics Comics series in 1976, and another again in full calor
but on high quality paper by the Pendelum Press in 1990, but the calor
m erely serves to detract from Nino's fine pen work.
A similar educational effort to improve reading skills was undenaken
by King F eatures syndicare in 1977 by producing a set of adaptations of
novels called King Classics, with motivational posters, teacher's guides,
exercises, lesson plans, and dramatizations on cassette tapes, for use in
the classroom. According to promotional materials, the texts were written
by Marion Kimberly, a reading specialist and professor of education.
Number 3 in the series was M oby Dick, which appea red again in 1991
in a separate hardcover reprint from W. H . Smith Pub lishers in their
Gallery Books series of comic classi,cs. The artist is not identified and
the story is laid out in a cramped, stilted comic strip format with no
efforts m ad e to take advantage of the artistic potential of the comic
book page. The dialogue seems to have been modernized (vocabulary is at
the 4th-5th grade level), as when Ishmael says at first sight of Queequeg,
"Oh boy! Look at my bed partner! H e looks like a real character." The
narrative is oddly developed with some things left unexplained, the text
often does not fit the word balloons, and the whole gives the appearance
162 M. THOMAS INGE

of having been poorly translated from another language (the books were
copyrighted by Editorial Bruguera and printed in Barcelona, suggesting
a Spanish origin). The characters appear to have been modeled after the
actors in John Hu ston 's film version - in fact, Ahab's death is modeled
after Huston's rather than Melville's account, with the mad captain tangled
in the ropes and harpoons around the whale's body. Children are not
likely to be inspir ed to better reading by this botched version, an unfor-
tunate result of well-meaning educators who have no appreciation for
the qualities of comic book art.
When the Classics Illustrated series was revived in February 1990. by
BerkeleylFirst Publishing, the fourth title to appear was Moby-Dick as
adapted by Bill Sienkiewicz. with the assistance of writer Dan Chiches-
ter. T he publisher's intention was to entrust the new versions to some
of the most accomplished of the new generation of artists at work in
comics. and Sienkiewicz, who had worked for all the major comic book
companies, had attracted attention through his individualistic and styl-
ized art.
The Sienkiewicz Moby-Dick is a brooding and masterful effort to
capture the philosophic terror that resides at the heart of Melville's
challenge to the universe and the benevolence of God. The text retains
the first-person point of view of Ishmael and skillfully abridges
M elville's expansive style, while retaining as much of the spirit and
mood of the original as possible. It is the first and only comic book ver-
sion. therefore. to anempt to capture som e of the deeper symbolic and
ontological inquiries of the novel.
The 44 pages are not broken up into the traditional comic book page
panels; rather, they are d evoted to a series of variegated paintings, fu11-
page or less. that are m ore impressionistic than realistic. While the artist
was aiming~ he has stated. for the illustrative quality of "the old Howard
Pyle school."4 his attempt to capture as many layers of Melville's text as
possible has led to a series of character studies and scenes which arc
richly symbolic and more suggestive than explicitly detailed. In fact, ab-
straction, cubism, cQ11age, and surrealism figure into the series of pages,
as well as realism, to create a veritable anatomy of modern at;t and its
movements.

4. Cited in McPherson, Dar.vin (J 989). 'A Classic in the Remaking: Classics Illus-
trated Returns for the Firs t Time'. In: Amazing Herocs, No. 174 (December 1989).
p. 46. On the artist's intentions, see also Ervoiino, Bill (1 990). 'Drawing on the
Classics' . In: Emcrlaimllellllf4?ekbo, March 9. pp. 52-55.
FROM AHAB TO PEG-LEG PETE: A COMIC CET OLOGY 163

Wh ile the text keeps the reader's attention focused on the narrative
movement and plot d evelopment, the pictures serve to lead the reader's
thoughts off into the netherworlds of Abab's and Melville's deep and
d isturbing imaginations. Yet practical matters, like the cetology and the
symbolic history of the whale in world mythology, are retained along
with many of the novel's major scenes. In on e brilliant juxtaposition,
Father Mapple's sermon (cap tured in only 22 words) is portrayed
alongside Ishmael's thoughts on Queeueg's pagan god , the one in effect
commenting on the other but locating the basic roots of all religions in
obedience to God and compassion for mankind .
One critic has noted that Sienkiewicz's M oby Dick "is without qu es-
tion the finest example thus far of what ... comics in gen eral can aspire
[0."5 It is true that he surely pushes the boundaries of what comic book

art has been traditiona lly. A question remains, however, of whether or

not the volume can properly b e classified as a comic book. Given the
fact that Sienkiewicz abandons word balloons and the usual panel
structure, and h e keeps the reader's eye moving mainly from top to bot-
tom in a series of vertical drawings rather than left to right horizontally,
one can argue that he has moved in another direction away from the
comic book. Since the words and pictures are not always integrated and
painting has replaced cartooning, what we may have is an illustrated
conden sation of the novel- a brilliant one and perhaps a work of art in
its own right, but not exactly a version of the pictorial narrative we have
come to call the comic book or more recently the graphic novel. At a
deeper level, it may be considered even a critical reading or interpreta-
tion of M oby-Dick, perhaps the first piece of criticism done mainly in
pictures. 6
Another problem is the extent to which the artist's vision was h eavily
influenced by the 1956 John Huston film adaptation of Moby-Dick . A
few of the pages appear to have captured im ages from the film, and in
several of them (pages 25, 38, and 41 ), it is clearly Gregory Peck who
stands in the role of Ahab. This is a tribute to the power of the screen
images created by Huston, who like Rockwell K.ent before him has d e-
fined for several d ecades the novel's visual terms, but this pictorial in-

5. Peanic, David ( 1990) . 'Cl a ~sics lJIustratcd #4: Moby Dick'. AmQzil1g Heroes, No.
178 (April 1990),92.
6. Por an analysis of both Ijle Zansky lmd Sienkicwicz versions through the use of
cOlllemporary critical theory, see BcrulOld, Michael C. ( 1993). 'Color me Ishmacl:
Classics Illustrated Versions of Moby-Dick'. In: WPm' & Imag(!, 9 (January 1993). p.
1-8.
164 M. THOMAS INGE

tertextuality disturbs the integrity of Sienkiewicz's otherwise singular

and independent vision. Probably futu re artists will in (urn find it diffi-
cult to escape the power of Sienkiewicz's visu al influence, which places
him in the company of Kent and Husron.
In addition to the direct adaptations of M oby-D ick to the comic book
format, any number of comic book stories over the years have used parts
of the novel, its ideas, or its plot structure as a source of inspiration.
The concept of a half-crazed authority figure in pursuit of an ambiguous
brute force to a d isastrous conclusion holds a basic or elemental appeal
for the popular imagination. Only a few examples can be discussed here.
M an Comics number 3 (1950) features a srory about a whitcbearded
whaler chasing a "killer" sperm whale, although the whale is grey rather
than white. One story in which the pursued beast communicates with
its pursuer is " Dreadful Discovery" in U"canny Tales number 53
(March 1957), drawn by Angelo Torres. Two scientists in search of in-
formation about the brain capacity of the wh ite whale receive telepathic
communi cations from one which warns them away before it threatens
destruction. In an interesting atomic-age conclusion, they decide
against revea ling the whale's intellectual superiority for fe ar it will dis-
courage man's efforts to maintain dominance through scientific inqui-
ry. The Legion of Super-Heroes take on an intergaJactic Leviathan in a
colossal battle in outer space in the year 2965 in "The Super-Moby
Dick of Space" in Adventure Comics number 332 (May 1965), with story
by Edmond Hamilton and art by John Forte.
In "Waters of Darkness, River of Doom," Ka-Zar, Lord of the Hidden
Jungle number 6 (November 1974), with art by John Buscema and story
by Gerry Conway, a Tarzan-like warrior named Ka-Zar defeats a giant
b ehemo th which earlier had maimed a barbari an and sent him on an
insane search to revenge the loss of an arm and an eye. Kamandi, The
Last Boy 011 Earth number 23 (November 1974), written and drawn by
Jack Kirby, is but one chapter in an epic struggle in the 2 1st century
which fea tures a character named Ahab who is destroyed by a black
killer whale. A more direct use of Melville occurs in "Ca ll Me Ahab,"
written by D on F. Glut and Drawn by Frank Bolle, in Grimm's Ghost
Stories number 24 Ouly 1975). Ken H enrick, a contemporary adven-
turous boater, goes out too far, encounters M oby Dick, and is rescued
by the spirits of Ahab and hi s crew on the Pequ od which linger near the
whale. H enrick is persuaded to complete the task of slaying Moby Dick
so the spirits can rest, which he accomplishes, and when the ship fades
FROM AHAB
FROM PEG-L~G PETE:
A H AB TO PEG-LI2G PETI2: A COMIC CETOLOGY 165

away, he stays alive by clinging to a wooden leg tossed him by the

ghostly Ahab .
The influence of the Moby Dick primal pattern of man against sea-
beast extended in comic books as far as England with the appearance of
a feature call ed " H ook Jaw" in the first issue of a new comic book for
boys called A ction on February 14, 1976 (not to be confused with the
U. S. A ction Comics which introduced Super man in 1938). Action was a
decidedl y d iffe rent prod uct from the usual bland British fare in comic
books with an emphasis on violence, anti-heroes, and gritty rea lity
which attracted a fanat ic following among young readers but also the
attention of wary ad ul ts and the guardians of public virtue. Political
and economic pressure soon led co a radical change in contents before
the year was Out and its u ltimate demise in J 977.
Its most prominent feature, and the one with which it became most
closely identified, was rhe continuing sto ry of a murderous giant white
shark named Hook Jaw. Most of the other featured insta llments in the
early issues of Action banked off recently popular motion pictures and
television shows - such as Dirty Har,.y~ The Fugitive, and in this case
Jaws. Of course, Spielberg's fil m itself owed much of its inspiration to
M oby-Dick, but in the case of H ook Jaw, there was a d ifferent plot twist.
As M anin Barker has observed in his history of A ction, " In the film the
Great White Shark is an anonymous threat, almost unknown to us ex-
cept when h e rears up out of the sea for a m oment to bite someon e.
That is no way true of H ookjaw who was the 's tar of the stor y.'''7 D e-
spite his killing instincts, we sympathize with the shark and see many of
the even ts from his point of view, especially in contrast with the greedy
and evil men usually o ut to kill him because he imerferes with their cor-
rupt goals. The writer for the series, Pat Mills, ca lled it "eco logica l" in
that, as Barker notes, "Right from the start, Hookjaw is given a reason
to hate humans. The gaffe stuck in his snout was an eternal reminder of
fa t humans and their interference with his legitimate hungers . ... Only
the humans are the pollutants. And the shark is the innocent party. 8
Instead of one crazed pursuer, there are several insa nely aggressive
opponents - an oilman, an island property developer, or a (hief after a
sh ip full of gold, all of whom p lace a higher va lue on material posses-
sions and m oney than on h uman life and loyalty. The on ly revenge exer-

7. Barker, Martin (1990). AClioll: The SIOlY of a Violelll Comic. London:·ri!an Books. p.
45.
8. Barker, p. 13.
166 M. THOMAS rNGE

cised is by a wounded shark against human beings, so the roles of Ahab

and the whale are reversed. Even the one moral character in sympathy
with the shark, Rick Mason, is finally decapitated by Hook Jaw. But the
basic theme of man against nature and the inevitable triumph of natural
force over human aggression remain relevant in an arresting and violent
tale which remains a milestone of comic book storytelling fondly re-
membered by the more than 180,000 British readers of Action.
The most ambitious and original use of the plot pattern and themes
of Moby-Dick in an American comic book narrative may be found in the
eight-part series "Abraxas and the Earthman," wriuen and illustrated
by Rick Veitch and published in sequential issues of the adult comic
magazine Epic Illustrated, beginning in issue number 10 (Febr uary
1982) and ending in issue number 17 (April 1983). The parallels with
the novel, the circumlocutions of the plot, and the number of charac-
ters are too complex for a brief summary. Basically it concerns two
earthmen who are shanghaied by a Captain Ratwang to assist in his
pursuit of Abraxas, the great red whale, to which he has lost a limb. Fi-
nally, however, the story concerns the mystic unity of the universe, and
while Ratwang goes down to defeat, "the gap between the mortal and
immortal realms of existence" is bridged. In response to a series of
questions from this writer, author-artistVeitch has written:

Is "Abraxas and the Earthman" an extension of "Mo by Dick" either

philosophically or thematically? - Both, of course, because I see
the philosophy and theme intertwined in the archetypal conflict
b etween Ahab and the whale. I think anyone who has taken a
freshman lit course must be consciously aware that there is power-
ful symbolism evident here, so powerful in fact that even little
children instinctively recognize tilere is more to "Mohy Dick"
than just a battle between man and beast. There is a crippled Ahab
that walks tile decks of all our psyches, screaming vengeance
against whatever it is (God? creativity? our untapped potential?)
that lives hidden beneath the waves of the unconscious, and is
personified in the great white whale! My story means to·say that in
the century since Melville constellated tilis archetype the relation-
ships between tile captain, the whale, and the witness (Ishmael in
Moby Dick, Isaac in my story) have gained considerably, to the
point that the whale and the witness at the end become joined in
a symbiotic union. The message is that in this day and age if we
can transcend our Ahab tendencies then whatever it is that the
FROM AHAB TO PEG-LEG PETE: A COMIC CETOLOGY 167

whale symbolizes becomes accessible to us (though dangerous in

many ways). !'

Veitch's full-calor artwork is impressive. and while it draws on a wide

range of sources from fantasy and comic art, he brings to the comic
page a vision uniquely his own but one that is respectful of Melville's.
A similar striking and visua lly powerful use of the Moby-Dick plot
and structural pattern appears in the September 1998 issue of Heavy
Metal magazine. A 54-page story called "Leviathan" is one of a series
featuring a highly sexual and physically attractive heroine called Larna
by the Italian author-artist Alfonso Azpiri. Lama 's mission in this case
is to rescue her two robot companions. known as Arnold and the initials
A. D. L, which have been kidnapped by a droid recruitment agency to
do slave labor on a stormy, water-covered planet called Aquatdat.
Following a gloomy sermon about Jonah in the Fath er MappJe style,
Lerna arrives on the planet disguised as an entertainer-prostitute and
meets with l shmael and the tanoo-covered Queequeg. H er evening of
pleasure with b oth of them leaves no doubt about their often ques-
tioned heterosexuality in the Melville text. Despite warnings from a
crazy dockside prophet named Elias, sh e joins the crew of the about-to-
depart Pequod on which the robots are held hostage.
She works her way up through physical and sexual force to the bed
of the insane Captain Ahab who holds the key to the lifeboats she will
need ro rescue the robots. Ostensibly hunting giant sea creatures called
dikmoks (an anagram for Moby-Dick of course). Ahab is really set on
killing a murderous dikmok called Levi athan which had taken Ahab's
leg and disfigured him earlier.
In a calamitous and beautifully rendered finale, Leviathan is sighted.
he anacks the ships, and Ahab goes down one more time lashed to the
side of the hated beast. but Loma manages to escape and rescue her ro-
bots. This time, however, not even Ishmael manages lO survive. leaving
only the odd trio of two mechanical creatures and a lusty woman. Is
this perhaps a feminist statement on the tendency of men to obliterate
themselves and leave behind a technology unable to procreate with the
surviving force s of fertility? Whatever its intent. the story is a remark-
able and imaginative b lending of the traditional S[Qry of Melville's great
whale with the posrmodern themes of science ficrion and fantasy best
told in rhe format of the graphic novel.

9. Letter to the author from Rick Veitcn, )une 7, 1983.

168 M . THOl\tAS INGE

The most recent appearance of Moby-Dick as a leitmotif, rather than

as a structural influence, is in the extremely popular comic book series
called Bonc, written and drawn by Jeff Smith. The series concerns three
cousins - Fone Bonc, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone - who have been
run out of Boneville because of some unexplained and probably nefari-
ous activity_ They find their way into a forested valley alive with human
beings and terrifying creatures which alternately threaten and help
them in their efforts to survive. The Bones themselves are pure crea-
tures of fantasy, to appearance a sort of cross between characters from
the Pogo comic strip by Wait Kelly, figures from fu nny animal comic
books and animated film s, and the Shmoos from the Li'l Abller comic
strip by Al Capp. E. C. Segar's Popeye, Will Eisner's The Spirit, Carl
Bark's adventures of Donald Duck in {he Disney comic books, Chuck
Jones' animated cartoons, and J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series
are other sources of inspiration [or Smith's strikingly original character
and plot conceptions.
In what becomes a running joke from the first issue of Bone in July,
199 1, the central ch aracter, Fone Bone, makes it clear that his favorite
book, and one without which he never travels, is Moby-Dick. The
minute Fone begins to l'alk about the novel, however, everyone within
hearing distance falls sound asleep. So profound is his devotion that in
issue number 13 for March, 1994, Fone find s himself in the midst of a
retelling of the novel with Phoney Bone playing the part of Ahab, only
to wake up and find that it has been but a dream. Jeff Smith maintains
that his use of Moby-Dick is not just a joke but is a re{]ection of his own
passion for Melville: «I love Moby-Dick. It really is my favorite book,
and every time I talk about it, people's eyes glaze over! Nobody wants to
hear about M oby-Dickr' he has said. 1°This serves to underline, then, as
does so much of our popular culture, the p aradoxical artitude of Amer-
icans towards the classics and tradition - a combined respect and dis-
dain for the revered artifacts of our culture.
Although an adaptation of Moby-Dick to the pages of the funny pa-
pers would seem an .unlikely idea, it has been tried a few times. Coulton
Waugh's Dickie Dare (originated by Milton Caniff in 1933 before Terry
and the Pirates) was an adventure strip about th e young Dickie's in-
volvement with pirates, spies, criminals, and gun-runners on the high

10. Kelly, Brian (l994). 'Hangin' on lhcTelephone with Jcff Smilh'. In: Alex G. Mal-
loy, Comic Wllues Allllual: 1995 Edition. Radnor, PA: Wallace-Homestead Book
Company. p. 494.
PROM AHAB TO I'EG-UG PETE: A COMIC CETOLOGY 169

seas. In a sequence published September 2 1-27, 1954 (by then actually

drawn by Waugh's wife Mabel Od in Burvik), D ickie's older soldier-of-
fortun e companion Dan Flynn retells in brief the story of the novel,
and then in 1956 the comic strip featured a fuller version which lasted
for four weeks or twenty-eight daily episodes. The Im agirlaryAdvemuI"es of
L ittle Ol"vy by Rick Yager (longtime writer and artist for the Buck Rogers
series) was a humorous Sunday feature about a youngster who daydreams
his way into various adventures. In a sequence during March and April
of 1960, Little Orvy dropped in on the Peqllod and helped Ahab chase
M oby D ick.
While such adaptations are rare, references to and appearances of
Moby Dick and Captain Ahab in humorous comic strips and pan el car-
toons are qu ite common. Very often, the narrative structure of the novel
is employed with familiar characters adopting th e roles of Ishmael or
Ahab, in pursu it of a whale or some similar beast. In the first released
Mickey M ouse anima ted short of 1928, Steamboat Wl1/ie, Wai t Disney
cast as Mickey's antagonist a huge black cat with a wooden leg named
Peg-Leg Pete, presumably created under the inspiration of Caprain
Ahab and Long John Si lver. Pete had appeared as a villain in the pre-
Mickey Disney films as early as 1925, but the identification with Ahab
was made clear in a sequence of the M ickey M ouse comic strip which
ran from February 12 to July 7, 1938, as d rawn by master Mickey car-
toonist Floyd Gottfredson.
Mickey and Goofy are drawn aboard a whaling ship which announc-
es its goa l of capturing a destructive whale. In the comic strip, the
mouse was always a sucker for adventure, the more dangerous the bet-
ter. A whale named Barney has threatened the local fish ing industry,
and a rewa rd has been offered for his capture. Although several paral-
lels are drawn between the plot of the novel and the comic strip, finally
Mickey succeeds in befriending the whale and attracting him away from
the fishing area with the help of a lady whale bu t not before outwitting
and d efea ting the evil-intended Peg-Leg Pete, bent on outright destruc-
tion of Old Bamey. The ou tcome, then, has been changed in keeping
with Mickey's moral universe, but the strip did conta in a message
abou t respect for the environment an d the creatures of the deep some-
what in keeping with Melville.
Another popular adventure strip of the 1930s was Captain Easy and
wash Tubbs by Roy Crane, the cartoonist who brought a realistic style
and swashbuckling heroism to the pages of the funny papers. In a se-
quence that began in late April and rau through August, 1933, Crane
170 M. THOMAS INGE

allowed his Southern soldier-of-fortune, Easy, and his companion Wash

Tubbs to be shanghaied aboard a whaling vessel which left on a Moby-
Dick inspired journey under the direction of Slugg, a first mate who has
a hook for a hand rather than a wooden leg. The maniacal and cruel
skipper seeks no particular whale or revenge but rather to totally domi-
nate the crew of the ship who are overworked and underpaid to his per-
sonal profit. After Slugg murders the ship's captain, Easy and Wash
Tubbs rebel and escape, but not before Crane includes numerous se-
quences about the nature of whales, the capturing and processing of the
sea beasts, and the whaling business in general - much in the tradition
of Melville's novel and beautifully rendered by the artist's skilled pen
and brush. The sequence was so popular that it was reprinted as a Big
Little Book in 1938 as Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy Hunting for Whales
by Whitman Publishing Company.
The most popular comic strip in U.S. history and the one where
Melville references have most frequently been found over the last 45
years is Peanuts by Charles Schulz. Often these references occur in se-
quences having to do with Snoopy as aspiring writer, author of It Was a
Dark and Stormy Night and other unpublished novels. On April 29,
1975, for example, Schroeder hands back a manuscript to Snoopy and
says, "Your novel starts too slowly ... you need a more powerful begin-
ning." In the fina l panel, Snoopy types, "Call me Ishmael." Two weeks
later, on May 12, Schroeder tells him, "You know what Herman
Melville said? He said, 'To produce a mighty book you must choose a
mighty theme.'" After absorbing this advice, Snoopy types the title for
his new novel, "The Dog."
References to Moby-Dick are likely to appear in comic strips with a
classroom setting. In a sequence in Shoe by Jeff MacNeUy. May 4,
1983, the Perfesser's nephew, Skylar, is at his school desk' writing:
"Book Report: Moby Dick by Herman Melville. For one of the all-time
classics of literature ... this is a surprisingly good book." The next day,
May 5, SkyJar continues: "Moby Dick is the story of one man's obses-
sion with finishing off a mysterious, huge, white whale - something this
reviewer can really identify with." In the February 11. 1984 sequence of
Elwood, an entire class has their hands up. The teacher responds,
"Okay, okay, okay ... everybody can go see the school nurse!" Then she
thinks to herself, "That's amazing! In all the years I've been teaching,
that's the first time I've seen a whole class get sick at the same time."
On the blackboard is the following: "English Final Exam: - Conjugate
all the verbs in 'Moby Dick' (you have 50 minutes)."The assignment is
FROM AHAB TO PEG-LEG r ETE: A COMIC CETOLOGY 171

nonsense. of course, but presumably just the mention of Moby-Dick

will strike fear into the hearts of students everywhere.
Other references occur in a variety of contexts. On January 27,
1984, Johnny Hart's B.c. sights a whale and shouts "Thar she blows!"
The ugly broad says. "Why is it always 'Thar she b lows' and n ever
'Thar he blows'? B.C . responds, "'Cause I'm writing a book called
' M oby Jane'!" A gravcdigger inTo K. Ryan's comic western Tumbleweeds
on November 17, 1982, writes in his log, "2:30 p.m . - At half fathom
d epth - Course: due South - Weather holding - smooth shoveling - All
clear fore, aft and abeam - ." Claude Clay. the undertaker. thinks, "I
wish I'd never loaned him 'Moby D ick.'" Tom Wilson 's Ziggy visits a
book store where the salesman holds up a book called "Moby Disk"
and says, "It's the story of an epic struggle between man and computer"
Guly 18. 1984). In Gary Larson's absurdist panel The Far Side. a child
looks gleefully into an aquarium on May 14, 1983, where six black and
one white tropical fi sh swim about at a pet shop. Says the doting moth-
er, "Well, little Ahah ... which one is it going to be?" In another Far
Side panel of February 7. 1984, a struggling writer sits at his desk with
a pile of abandoned fir st pages for a novel M oby Dick scattered around
him, some of which read, "Call me Bill," Call me A l ." "Call me Larry,"
"Call me Roger," and "Call me Warren."
Both Melville and Moby -Dick have inspired thousands of gag car-
toons in such magazines as The New }0,.kerJ Playboy, Punch, and Sawr-
day EWIl£ng Post, among the best known. T here are tOO many to be
summarized here, but usually they have to do with Melville receiving
edilOrial advice or working on h is novel, with Ahab entangled in the
lines of the harpoons around Moby Dick (in the fa shion of Gregory
Peck in H uston's film), or with the difficulties of reading the book. In
many of the men's magazines, the cartoons often take an erotic or sala-
cious turn. An entire anthology could be compiled of depictions of
M elville and hi s works in popular comic an, editorial canoons, gag car-
toons, and caricature. If scholars have taken M elville too seriously, then
America's comic artists have compensated by finding inexhaustible uses
for him in their h umor and satire. It largely is a comedy of appreciation,
however. rather than ridicule. The joke is often on the reader unable to
come to terms with the magnitude of the writer and his ideas.
Why Melville and his mammoth novel have had such a powerful ap-
pea l for the ordinary American to such an extent that they so heavily
populate our daily amusements, such as the comics, as well as our pop-
ul ar culture in general. is an intriguing question . Perhaps it has to do
 172 M. THOMAS INGE

with the deep strain of romanticism that persists in American thought

and that tends to sympathize with the misunderstood and the alienated,
both elements in the mythology about the man and the meaning of his
work. Perhaps the towering reputation of his major novel, M oby-Dick, a
work in the Am erican grain which pushes mankind to the outer limits
of rhe universe, the la st frontier indeed, is what grips the imagination of
a nation unused to th e geographic and economic limits of modern soci-
ety. Perhaps hi s creation of a solitary, irredeemable egomaniac in Ahab,
determined to flin g a challenge in the face of God, appeals to the folk
mind as have other superheroes who populate our mythology - Davy
Crockett, Daniel Boone, John Henry, and more recently Superman and
Barman. Whatever the reasons, if we are to understand them, we must
turn to popu lar culture rather than the book itself or biography. That is
where M elville continues to have a striking vitality which has taken on a
life of its own. To do so may be a step towards understanding ou rse lves~
our dreams, and therefore the things that make Americans distinctive. 11

The illustrations of Rockwell K ent for the 1930 Lakeside Press edition
of M oby Dick heavily influenced all subsequent attempts to illustrate
the novel, incl uding the 1942 Classics Comics adaptation by Louis Zan-
sky, as the fo ll owing four examples demonstrate, see figures 1-8. The
drawings on the left by Kent are reprinted with permission and copy-
righted © 1930 by R. R. D onnelley & Sons Company. The panels on
the right by Zansky are reprinted with the permission of Richard Berger
and courtesy of First Classics, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, USA. All rights
reserved.

11 . Some ofthc mntt:rial in this essay has been adapted from my chapter on " Melville
and Popular CU1Nr<:" in Bryant,John (ed.) (1986). A companio/l to Me/vi/le Swdies.
Westporl, eT: Greenwood Press. pp. 695-739.
FROM AHAB TO PEG-LEG PETE: A COMIC CET OLOGY 173

F ig. 1 Rockwell Kent. Moby Dick. 1930.

Copyright: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company

Fig. 2 Louis Zansky. Moby Dick. C lassics Comics,

No. 5. 1942. Copyright: Court t!sy of First Classics,
Inc., Chicago, lIlinoi ~
174 M. THOMAS INGE

Fig. 3 Rockwell Kent. Moby Dick. 1930.

Copyright: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company

Fig. 4 Louis Zansky. Moby Dick. Classics Com-

ics, No. 5. 1942. Copyright: Courtesy of First
Classics, Inc., Chicago, Illinois
 FROM AHAB TO PEG·LEG PETE: A COMIC CETOLOGY 175

F ig. 5 Rockwell Kent. Moby Dick. 1930.

Copyright: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company

Fig. 6 Louis Zansky. Moby Dick. Classics

Comics, No. 5. 1942. Copyright: Coun esy
of First C lassics, Inc., Chicago, Illinois
 176 M. THOMAS INGE

'I
I·

Fig. 7 Rockwell Kent. Moby Dick. 1930.

Copyright: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company

Ir ~AN'r BE. ".. NO, IT'S

""" MI,6?AGF - BUT IT
MI./ST_ . . IT MI./ST 6'£--
... Jr 15 ... .. .. A S"HIP.'
:.4 S!-IIP!

Fig. 8 Louis Zansky. Moby Dick.

Cla~si cs Comics, No. 5. 1942 .
Copyright: Courtesy of First
Classics, Inc., Chicago, H!inois
Weird Signs. Comics as Means of Parody

OZe Frahm

There is no science of comics. There are no university departments where

such a science has been developed in a systematic way. To consider
comics a subject worthy of academic interest or theoretical consideration
appears to beg some serious effort of legitimation . Comics always appear
to have lacked something. Against this, researchers of comics have n~ltur­
ally insisted on the richness and complexity of the form. Bur it has rarely
been disputed that comics lack in one quality at least: reality.
Scatt McCloud's Undemanding Comics - The invisible Art, a very im-
portant book of recent years, may serve as an example here. I take it to
be an outstanding graphic novel, with the comic being its protagonist.
It surely would merit (and reward) thorough analysis. H owever, the
aesthetic model on which McCloud builds I find questionable . To illus-
trate my unease with it, let me quote from it: "comics panels fracture
both time and space, offering a jagged staccato rhythm of un connected
moments. But closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally
construct a continuous, unified reality" (McC loud 1994: 67 /2).
McCloud here opposes fracture and unity, comics and reality. Com-
ics appear as fragmented and heterogeneous, while 'closure' is achieved
only in our mind to compensate for the lack of unity. The persisting
metaphysical notion that underlies this understanding of how comics
are read, in m y opinion, is problematic. There are epistemological rea-
sons for this, for which to elaborate this is not tile place. But there are
also aesthetic reasons. In the following essay, I would like to show that
the reading of comics is precisely not about reconstructing unity (of
whatever) but ratherl to appreciate the heterogeneous signs of script and
image in their pe~uliar, material quality which cannot be made into a
unity. McCloud illustrates h is thesis with a number of panels (hat carry
no written text, and this not by accident. In the following, I sha ll argue
that comics parody precisely the kind of metaphysics on which M c-
Cloud relies, and do so in the very constellation of their heter9geneous
signs. These constellations of signs peculiar to comics make them paro-
dies of the common notion of how signs and reality, signs and refer-
ence, relate.
178 OLEFRAHM

In brief, therefore, I shaH try to develop the outlines of an aesthetics

of comics as parody. To begin, I shall compare theories of parody and of
comics in order to establish a notion of parody as it can be applied to
comics (I). I shall then examine this notion in the light ofthree examples
relating to different forms of publication, namely the comic strip (ll),
the comic book (Ill) and the comic book's European co unterpart, the
'album' (IV), In conclusion, I shall offer some remarks on what possible
consequences an aesthetics of parody could have on a non-existent
branch of science.

1. Parody and Comics

One can notice an extraordinary correspondence between studies trying
to establish a theory of parody and studies trying to establish co mics as
an object of mainstream academic research. First of all, both kinds of
studies try to come to grips with the problematic definition of their re-
spective subj ect matter. This, of course, has m ainly to do with delimiting
it from other form s or genres. For parody, these are satire, quotation,
burlesque, travesty, and pastiche, while for comics, there are the 'Bi l-
dergeschichte" cartoons and animated cartoons, caricature, and illus-
trations. They are similar, but not interrelated, phenomena. To "discover"
a new one therefore requires identifying it as being distinguished from
all others in at least one respect. Highly differentiated terminology
se~ve s the purpose of setting one's definition apart from as many others
proposed by fellow researchers as possible.
All general definitions of a subject m atter, be it comics or parody,
also sh are the problematic ambiguity of transcending historical time
and being m ade valid for all time while, simultaneously, bearing their
own historical signature and thus forfeiting their claim on eternal valid-
ity. For science is always about present intervention. In this regard, all
efforts to claim for the comics the quality of an anthropologica l con-
stant going as far back as prehistoric cave painting do not reveal any
historical continuity .or truth, but, rather, reflect on recent decades
where the need was felt to legitimize one's occupation with comics.
These efforts originate in the assumption that comics are seriously un-
derrated in our present-day bourgeois culture. Frequently their authors
seek to advocate a fundamen tal re-evaluation of comics among 20th
century arts. Apparently, those elaborating a theory of comics feel the
need to legitimize their dealing with a presumably trivial subject.
 WEIRD SIGNS. COl'vlICS AS MEANS OF PARODY 179

The same is true for the theorists of parody. Sin ce Scaliger, in 1561,
predicated it as ' ridiculous', parody has been, in subsequent debates on
literature, underrated and considered oflitrle value, T h eorists of parody
therefore often consider their work as an effort to advocate a rc-evalua-
tion of parody among the genres of 20th century literature.
Both theorists of parody and of comics appear to suffer from their
respective subject'S being treated with contempt. They suffer from their
subject's lack of someth ing. \Xlhat do these academics make of their suf-
fering from their 'comic' subject, their strange scien ce, their being held
contemptible? They argue for seri ousness! Their own ser iousness, the
seriousness of their subject and their scien ce. They maintain that parodies
do not necessarily ridicule their matter, that comics need not necessarily
be comic. They show that parody does not only mean "Gegengesang"
(counter-song) but also " Beigesang" (accompanying song - Rose 1993;
49). Already in ancient Greek, the term "para odia" in its prefix "para"
oscillates ambiva lently between "counter" or "against" and "beside"
(Hutcheon 1986: 32). Unfortunately, in order to achieve the same for
comics they wou ld have to be renamed, and this one has indeed tried to
.eo: b ecause of the name being not quite so time-honoured, it still
seemed possible to substitute it for others, like 'graphic literature' or
'sequential art', to allude to the earnestness of comics (M cCloud 1994:
7; Eisner 1990).

What do these similar problems of theory building tell us about the

possible similarity of their subj ects?Would it be far-fetched to call comics
parodies?Would not the same be true for, say, fables? Maybe. H owever,
let me, for the sake of my limited space, maintain that there are indeed
. more profound similarities between parodies and com ics which make
their similarity more than coincidental. It may even be permitred, and
quite in the spirit of parody too, to maintain this similarity in order [Q
,
know more about what th is proposition may teach u s about comics.
If I say that comics may be read as parody, the first question must be,
parody of what? FO}, parody necessarily refers to an original. What do
comics refer to?What do they parody?To what are they a "counter-song"?

I shall argue that comics parody the very notion of an original and
therefore of something preceding "beyond the signs". They are a paro-
dy on the referentiality of signs. They parody the presumed relation be-
tween signs and objects. And they make fun of the recurrent notion
that, in some cases, a proximity b etween object and sign actually exists
180 OLEFRAHM

that can be called truth. In this way comics achieve for the notion of the
original what the philosopher Judith Butler in her book Gender Trouble
observed, when she deconstructed the concept of gender identity as a
travesty of "gender parody": "The parody is of the very notion of an
original [... which] reveals that the original identity is itself [... ] an imi-
tation without an origin" (Butler 1990: 138). Parody, as Butler under-
stands it, therefore is not a matter of content. Rather, it is about, as
Butler quotes Fredric Jameson: "Parody that has lost its sense of hu-
mar" Gameson 1983: 114 f.) . This parody we may call structural,
which, in the case of gender identity, "implicitly reveals the imitative
structure of gender itself - as well as its contingency"(Butler 1990: 137).
In the case of comics, the structural parody reveals the contingency
of the relationship between sign and reality. By what means? The con-
stell ation of signs of different kinds in comics does not only show that
typographical and graphical signs are related. In their heterogeneous
materiali ty the signs in constellation are already self-referential. We may
even say that the signs, because of their being self-referential, imitate
each other in their claim to signify a thing beyond the signs (an "origi-
nal"; Butler 1993: 30). The structural parody of comics thus shows us a
constellation of script and image in their material difference, being jux-
taposed and integrated at the same time. It parodies precisely that
claim for a truth beyond the signs, and directs our attention to the con-
stellation of signs itself. Because comics offer us a system of signs in its
own right which seems to integrate the heterogeneous script and image,
the structural parody calls into question this apparent unity.
"Parody is [... ] repetition with critical distance, which marks differ-
ence rather than similarity"CHutcheon 1986: 6). What has been defined,
in rather general terms, as "modern parody" by the Canadian literary
theorist Linda Hutcheon in her book A Theory of Parody refers to a
structural principle that makes comics a modern m edia . For this "repe-
tition with critical distance" gives an outstanding description of how
image and script are related. It is one of mutual repetition without an
origin. It is not the o,nly kind of repetition that occurs in comics. Char-
acters are repeated from panel to panel, the very structure of panels is a
structure of repetition. And tile different forms of publication of com ic
strips, Sunday pages, books and series - also seem to be subject to the
principle of "repetition with a critical distance".
Not all of these quite different kinds of repetition are necessarily
parodistic, and the investigation of their relationship would exceed the
limits of this lecture. But the double-voice of the parodistic repetition of
 WEIRD SIGNS. C OMICS AS MEANS OF PARODY 181

image and script in the comics is valid, I think, for all its different form s
of publication. Surely, there is not the structural parody, as there is not
(he origina l, the comics, or the identity. But surely too, there are no
comics without structural parody. This is not the place to develop the
history of comics along the notion of parody or the relation of signs . If
it were, this would certainly be a history of various kinds of constella-
tions, which at the same time would do away with some of the most
current and accepted genera lisations. Let me instead present to you
three examples. which. although not generally representative, in their
quality as constellations bear allegorical witness to my argument .

2. The price of white space

(Sidney Smith: Old Doc Yak, 1917 - Blackbeard 1 Williams 1977 : 72 f.
[103-1071 see figure I).
Twice "The tight fisted old landlord"{107/ 1} comes to Old DocYak to
threaten him with eviction. In 1917 Old Doc Ya/~ by Sidney Smith was
the Chicago Tribune's only daily strip with a recurrent character (Harvey
1994: 64). Until 191 2 it had appeared in the Chicago Examiner under
the telling name of Buck Nix (Horn 1996: 228. Blackbeard I Williams
1977: 69). Then the Story focused already on the anthropomorphous
goat being short of money. In our example, Old Doc Yak has not paid
the rent for his and his son's room for three weeks. He is in debt and
Out of work. By the knock on the door Old Doc Yak. who is reading the
paper of that Tuesday February 6th of 1917, can tell his landlord who
has come for the rent [ 103/1]. Old DocYak feels ashamed. H e seems to
want to hide between the panels (l 03/2]. But there is not enough space .
. Only a line. Such a "d ead beat" is he that he doesn't even know how to
disappear. "The price of white paper is too high" the landlord explains
to him the following day with his fist raised above his head. The price is
so high, apparently, that there is no white space between the panels at
all. If Old Doc Yak had tried ~Otiisappear from the page the other day,
he now realizes that he will be forced from the page for good (or bad) if
he does not come up with the rent: "or out you go" [104/3]. Old Doc
Yak breaks down in tears [104/4-5J.
The day before, he had still been more confident, clenching the n o-
tice to quit and scorning the landlord: "Big Stiff" [103/5]. From this
blockhead of a landlord springs strange notions (which makes one think
of Karl Marx remarking on commodity fetishism) when the landl ord
explains to Yutch: "if he doesn't pay the rent for this space by Saturday,
182 OLEFRAHM

Fig. 1 Sidney Smith. Old DocYak. 1917.

WEIRD SIGNS. COMICS AS MEANS OF PARODY 183

I'm gonna throw you both off this page" [1 03/3). Obviously the pun.
while summing up the graveness of the situation, is all about the ambiv-
alence of the term "space": it refers to the place to live in as well as the
place on the sh eet of paper. It signifies th e space (depicted on paper)
where the blockhead raises his fist to the ceiling as well as the blank
space on the pape r where Old Doe Yak hides under the wooden b ed-
stead. Thus "space" relates to the self-referentiality of dle strip within
its logic (the room depicted) as well as beyond it (the white space on
the printed page). But this "beyond" of the material condition of the
strip can be accounted for and, what is more, has actually to be paid
for- just as the readers of Old Doc Yak had to pay for the newspaper be-
fore they could read it .
T he Big Stiff holds Old Doc financia lly accountable n ot only for the
house in which he lives but also for the panels in which the story of his
poverty is told . And Old Doe Yak can not afford his existence in this
d ouble sense. H e cannot pay the price for the white space in (or on)
which he lives. It is this double reference that constitutes the weird real-
ity of characters in comics. T heir reality is not only in the logic of the
story told, but also in the logic of their conditions of publication: the
mass reproduction of printed characters on white newspaper sheets
which are repeated differently fro m panel to panel, day to day, next to
profitable advertisements. Old Doc Yak appears in all of the panels of
the last four strips before his fi nal disappearance. This marks the mate-
rial quality of his 'wooden identity> as a comic-strip character. As the
blockhead repeats his threat, its textual ambivalence reveals to us Old
Doe Yak's double existence. A comic-strip character's iden tity exists
only in its material repetition. This material identity is inevitably dis-
rupted. Although dle character is called by the same name, it is, owing
to material repetition in space, from panel to panel and from drawing to
drawing, as well as in time, from day to day, not the same but an other
alike. Being another, the character has to be repeated to preserve its
continuity. Identity therefore exists only from repetition to repetition, it
is, to borrow from G ilIes Deleuze, a " mask" that hides no rea l identity
bu t is itself identity (Deleuze 1968: 28).
Old D oe Yak is meant to pay for his volatile, repetitious existence in
space and time, pay for the white space he occupies with ink. O ld Doe re-
peatedly violates this law by not paying the rent. H e is threatened with
"real" but not with "symbolic" deadl (Zizek 1989: 135). H e is threatened
with terminal d isruption of the daily repetition of his identity. H e is
184 OLEFRAHM

threatened with permanent disappearance into the non-discrete white,

and ultimately, for all of his volatile appearance, with falling into oblivion.
The threat comes real, and the point of the strip is that it would have
become real anyway, even if Old DocYak had paid up [107/5] . But Old
Doe prefers to run away ~ and it may be for that violation of the law, for
that revelation of his double existence dlat, after all "now far away" he
did not fall into oblivion: "to be continued" says the last panel, and the
new tenants, Old Yak's successors in the place, arc later to become the
famous Gumps. In their first strip (of February 12, 1917), the place is
said to be "haunted" (Blackbeard I Williams 1977: 70 [96]) - and we
may be sure that it is Old Doe Yak who haunts the white space from
time co time.

3. Who is the Alien?

(AI Williamson: The Aliens. Weird Fancasy No. 17, 1952)
The AliellS started with me world coming to its end. Three extra terrestrials
watch the exploding planet earth, the inhabitancs of which they had
come too late to warn of the destructive capacity of atomic power. This
was not an untypical beginning for a story to appear in Whrd Famasy -
this one drawn by Al Williamson under the direction of Al Feldstein. Its
course of action, however, is less than typica l: the reptile-like aliens
land on one of the planet's fragments. They come in search of the key to
this civiliza tion which is strange to them - only to discover a copy of
Wiird Famasy: "Strange Markings and Pictures on Each Sheet".
Readers soon discover that the aliens have come across a copy of the
same comic book that they are reading themselves. Not surprisingly,
therefore, the al iens, when turning to page 3, find themselves confront-
ed with the first page of the story and consequently with a picture of
themselves (first repetition). At the bottom of page 4 they have reached
page 3 of the story (see plate 10). At the top of page 5 (also plate l a),
they discover themselves reading the first page of the story, as depicted
in the first panel of page 4 (repetition of the first repetition). Still these
intelligent beings are too surprised to rea lize that this story, which is all
about the future, is identical with the story that is happening in their
present. When fina lly they come round to it, one of them asks the deci-
sive question: "but how does it end?" The one reptile that has already
rea lized the infinity of what is happening does not understand: "how
does what end?" But the first one insists: " the stor y! the original story!"
WEIRD SIGNS. COMICS AS MEANS OF PARODY 185

Page 6, the last page of the story, shows the origin of the s(Qry and
provides the key to civilization on ear th (see plate 11 ). It shows the
present, where the predicted and the actua l present are absol utely iden-
tical: there is n o beginning, there is no beyond, just the endless repeti-
tion of signs duough signs: "Sq ua Tront!"
What is weird abou t £his? It is more than obvious how this is a paro-
dy on the claim to the original stor Yi but it is less than obvious how this
is achieved using the means of the comics. As the aliens talk about
themselves being depicted talking, the referential nature of comics is
consequently denied. Other balloons confirm [he reality of the text in
the ba lloons. The reality of the strip becomes clearer with every panel,
because the story is becoming more and more self-referential. It takes
just a look from page 5 to the opposite page to recogn ize the repetition
within the story. When an alien jumps up, in the last panel, and cries
out "so turn the page! ", no reader will hesitate to obey the call . The
readers themselves turn into alien Si they go through the same process
of discovery and alienation as the aliens, and reach the same resu le.
T here is nothing original about their lives ei ther. The signs which com-
pete in their cl aim to signify an original object only refer to one another.
It is especially on the verbal repetition of graphic images - a featu re
typica l of E. C. comic books and frequent ly remarked on as tedious -
that Al Williamson bui lds his allegory of the relation of signs: because
they appear to signify the same, they remain alien to one another.
The Aliens - the title of the story also refers to its signs. They seem
strange because their usual referentiality is ex tended into the future. If
word and image can signify an alien beyond, they can also signify the
fu ture. That is the gist of this weird parody on the notion of an original,
real smr y. In it, the material appearance of the signs in the comic book
takes on a special function: although the story, in fa ct, has a beginning
and an end, it really has - fr~m the alien readers' point of view - no be-
ginning (or when did the discovery of atomic power occur?) and no end
(it can be read and re-read for ever, even by aliens after th e destruction
of the planet earth). The comic book thus guarantees its ghostly tradi-
[ion int'O the future. If the parodiscic constell ation of signs on the comic-
book page provides the key to the meaning of human civilization, then
there is also hope for aliens that through a repeated read ing of th is
constell ation the world may be saved from fu ture d estr uction.
186 OLEFRAHM

4. The signs are others, always

(Martin tom Dieck / Jens Balzer: Salut Deleuzel 1997)
One only dies once. Only on ce does everybody, according to Greek and
Roman mythology, cross the river Lethe running through the under-
world. The dead come with a penny under their tongue to pay for the
services of Charon, the ferryman of the underworld. But rarely is that
obolus, as Lukian tells us in his many-voiced Dialogues of the Dead, suf-
fi cient for Charon to in turn pay Mercury who keeps his boat in repair.
And so the ever-defau lting ferryman can only hope for plague and war.
In the recently published Sa/ut Deleuzef, a comic album by Martin
tom Dieck and Jens Balzer, Charon takes GilIes D eleuze, the French
philosopher who died in 1995, five times across the river Lethe (see fig-
ure 2). Five times the same drawings are repeated . Five times D eleuze
stands in front of Charon's house, five times he boards the ferryman's
boat, five times they swap places, and five times they reach the other
bank of the r iver. There, other philosophers wait for their friend
Deleuze: Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes.
Deleuze then bids farewe ll to Charon who returns and takes to reading
at the philosopher's suggestion .
Salut Deleuze! was originally published in the m agazine S lrapazill as
only the first of the five repetiti ons (Dieck 1996). There, the story ends
with the ringing of C haron's doorbell. After his talk with the philoso-
pher, the ferryman of the underworld appeared to be unwilling to open
the door to the next who dies. The dying seemed to have come to an
end . In the album version, h owever, it is D eleuze himself who rings the
bell. And while the second dialogue between the already d eceased
Deleuze and C haron is different from the first only in few details, the
following dialogues develop a story of their own. Although the Lethe is
known as the river of oblivion, they both remember the previous cross-
ings: when Deleuze reca lls their second crossing during their fourth
crossing, Charon remembers their conversation but refuses to acknowl-
edge that it was D eleuze he was talking with then: "But surely that
wasn't you I was .talking to? I never talk with anybody twice. I always
talk with another. If it had been you I was talking to, then you were
someone else." (Dieck 1 Balzer 1997: 36/4). And Deleuze confirms,
quoting the poet Arthur Rimbaud: " But I is another, always." (Dieck 1
Balzer 1997: 38/ 1; "M ais je est un autre, toujours.").
The word "I" is already other than the drawing. The word "I" re-
peats the drawing as "another", and vice versa. The difference of each
identity is as apparent here as is its need to be repeated with different
WE IRD SIGNS. COMICS AS MEANS OF PARODY 187

Fig. 2 Martin tom Dieck and Jens Balzer. Sa/ut, Delew~e! 1997 . Copyright: Martin tom
Dieck and Jens Balzer
188 OLEFRAHM

signs. In other words, identity constitutes itself in the very repetition of

the different signs. And further, even if Deleuze and Chafon were de-
picted in identical form throughout the nine pages, their characters
would always be "others" because they appear in different constella-
tions of the story. Each page carries its own distinct number.
Theodor W. Adorno understood repetition as the technical repro-
duction of unchangeable sameness. Repetition thus generates the "pat-
tern of mass culture". Therefore, repetition is at the bonom of his cri-
tique of the culture industry (Adorno 1981: 30 1). In his book Difference
and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze tried to sh ow that repetition, by its very
nature, does not belong to the general, every repetition being a particu-
lar (Deleuze 1968: 4f.). Salut Deleuze! illustrates this argument in that
it stresses the particularity of each panel within the constellation of the
album. Even when reproduced identically, they remain others. From
panel to panel, one character looks like the next, but they are not the
same. If pronoun and character, name and character, character and
character taken together make up one signified, one unified identity,
then this denies the signifiers' heterogeneous, parodistic materiality so
significant for comics. The signs are others, always.
Between its irreducible particularity and its being easily repeatable,
the materiality of the signs remains paradoxical. Generated by the mir-
acle of identical technical reproduction, this paradox helps to explain
how Deleuze was able to cross the river Lethe more than once. The five
repetitions of the crossing anticipate several rereadings of the album,
none of which is quite like the other. And this holds also for each repro-
duction of "always the same" album, its technical reproduction and dis-
tribution to its readers. No album is like another because each one is
published and read in different constellations. History will guarantee
the philosophy of De leuze a permanent place, well after his death . And
yet, for its particular constellation as an event, death is irrevocable. The
end of the album leaves Deleuze in the underworld. Real death in this
case is followed by symbolic death - for "There have to be graves to
witness resurrecti01"!s" (Dieck I Balzer 1997: 49/4; "Nur wo Griiber
sind, gibt es Auferstehungen" - Friedrich Nietzsche).

5. Weird Signs
In all three examples - Old Doe Yak, The Aliens, Salut Deleuze! - the heter-
ogeneous signs, despite their differences, are at the same time bearer of
the action and, for their materiality as being borne on a sheet of paper,
WEIRD SIGNS. COMICS AS MEANS OF PARODY 189

they maner. In all three examples, this ambivalence is treated as ( 1)

repetition of the heterogeneous signs by each other; (2) repetition of
characters from panel to panel; (3) repe tition of panels and disruption
of this repetition; (4) repetition of the form of publication; (5) repeti-
tion of reading (not least with regard to tradition). These different kinds
of repetition overlap; they exist simultaneously and sometimes they can
only with difficulty be distinguished from one another, as our examples
have shown .
The parody of comics, therefore, is to be found in the constellation
of. on the one hand, the stabilising of a common object of reference of
the signs and, on the other hand, its destabilising character because of
the material heterogeneousness of the signs. Because of their own identi-
ty of"gignness" which refers to nothing but further repetitions, the repe-
titions both confirm and diffuse one identity. We can read the different
repetitions. for the sake of their each being different, as confirmations of
a common object of reference, or as transgressions of referentiality: a
reading of comics always works both ways. It is this paradoxical simulta-
neity of stabilising and destabilising repetition that comics and parodies
have in common. On this paradox Linda Hutcheon has remarked "In
fact. parody is by nature. paradoxically, an authorised transgression"
(H utcheon 1986: 10 1). And Judith Butler adds. "To enter into parody is
to enter into a relationship of both desire and ambivalence" (Butler
1997: 266). The ambivalent constellation of signs both creates and frus-
,
trates the desire for identity, the original and the truth beyond the signs.
There is always and inevitably th}s precarious, parodistic dissonance.
A reading of comics as propo:sed by Scon McCloud provides a good
example of how this productive dissonance of the two voices can easily
be harmonised. For it is always possible to attribute the heterogeneous
repetitions to a common origin, or to understand them in relation to a
homogeneous reality. But this unity of origin and reality will be haunted
by the spectres of what had to be excluded at first in order to achieve
this unity (Butler 1993: 52j see Derrida 1994). The spectres of the
signs' weird materiality diffuse the unity of origin on a comics' page. T he
spectres of the repeated signs are an excess of meaning which naturally
suggests reduction to achieve reality. Let m e repeat: it is the ambivalence
of repetitions which makes comics seem weird. Ambivalence between
the simple. material surface of the signs and the overdetermination of
the white space caused by their repetition, ambiguity between identity
and difference: there is little in this to make us fee l easy about it as a
subject of serious academic research .
190 OLEFRAHM

The fragility of the constellation as a singular, yet reproducible pheno-

menon, the ghostly materiality of the repeated signs the double-voiced
j

repetition resulting from the mutual reflection of the signs - it is these

facto rs that make the signs of the comics weird. Weird signs are always
aliens. They occupy space. Their weirdness cannot easily be disregarded.
And comics are not easily dea h with, for that matter. They reflect a dy-
namic that always implies a disputed balance of power: in the case of
Old Doe Yak who is thrown our of his place because of his poverty; in
the case of planet earth exploding; in the case of G illes Deleuze crossing
the river Lethe. In all of these cases. a struggle for power is reflected by
the repetition of signs. Through their structural parody, the weird signs
inspire hope for an am biva lence of power, its becoming diffuscd and
eventually d issolved. T hat is what makes them part of 20th century cul-
ture.
A science of comics that would explore this correlation more thor-
oughly does not exist, and rightly so: it would be a weird science, all
about the reading of weird signs. But then, to u se the words of
Friedrich Nictzsche, through their constellations might shine to us
" new universes of joy".

Translatioll: M ichael H ein

WEIRD SIGNS. COMJ CS AS MEANS OF PARODY 19 1

References

Adorno, Theodor W. (1981). 'Das Schema der Massenkultur - Kulturindustrie

(Fortsetzung)'. In: GesalllllleIte Schriften 3, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
pp. 299-335.
Blackbeard, Bill and Williams, Martin (ed.) (I977). Th e Smithsrmian Collectio~1
of Newspaper Comics. Washington, New York: Smithsonian Institution Press,
Harry N. Abrams.
Butler, j udith ( 1990). Gender Trouble. New York, London: Routledge 1990. -
(1993). Bodies that Malter - On the discursive Limits of Sex . New York, Lon-
don: Routledge - (1997) . 'Merely Culll/ral'. In: Social Text 52/53, vol.. 15
(1997) Nr. 3/4. pp. 265-277.
Deleuze, Gilles (I 968). Difference et Repetition . Paris: Presses Universitaires.
Derrida, jacques (1994). Specters of Marx: nle State of the Debt~ the WOrk of Mourn-
illg aJld the Law of the New Imemalional. LondonINewYork: Routledge.
Dieck, Martin tom (1996). 'Salut Deleuze' . In: Strapazin Nr. 45 (December
1996). pp. 27-30.
Dieck, Martin tom and Balzer, Jens (1997). Sa/ut Deleuze! Bruxelles: Frt!on
editions.
Eisner, Will (1990). Comics and Sequential Art. 6th expo ed. Tamarac (Florida) :
Poorhouse Press.
Harvey, Robert C. (1994). The Arc of the Funnies. An Aesthetic H istory. jackson:
Mississippi University Press.
Horn, Maurice (1996). 100 11:ars of American Newspaper Comics. New York:
Random House. ~.
Hutcheon, Linda (1986) . A 'fheOlY of Parody. The Teachings of Twentieth-Century
,
Arc Forms . New York, London: Methuen .
jameson, Fredric (1983). ' Postmodernism and Consumer Society'. In: Ha!
Foster (Hrsg.): Poscmodern Culture. London. pp. 111-125.
McCloud, Scott (1994). Understallding Comics. The Invisible Art. New York:
Harper Collins.
Rose, Margaret A. (l993). Parody - allcient, modern and post-modern. Cambridge,
New York, Victoria .
Zizek, Slavoj: The Sublime Object of Ideology. London, New York: Verso 1989.
The Semiotics ofC. S. Peirce as a Theoretical
Framework for the Understanding of Comics

Anne M agnussen

1. Introduction
Figure I is an example of a comic (CaJpurnio 1996 - translation in note
1) ,1 It is the story of Fatman Ben challenging C uttlas the Good to a
duel the American ~stern way and, in accordance with convention.
C uttias is asked to choose the weapons. In selecting two pistols for him-
self and a comb for Ben, he contravenes the convention that states that
the weapons shou ld (of course) be identical. Whether Cuttlas makes
the mistake on purpose or because he is not fam iliar with this conven-
lion, Ben is the one that ends up being ridiculed. It is a simple story,
easily unders[Qod, and most people will find it amusing - or will at least
be able to recognise the humour in it.
The story is told in a combination of drawings and text which, fo l-
lowing European semiology, forms a mixture of heterogeneous signs,
namely iconic and symbolic signs. However, in this comic they com-
bine into one easily understandable story by interacting in a way that
questions the existence of a clear distinction between iconic and sym-
bolic signs. In the words pCB. Peeters, there is a flu id transition from
the verbal to the iconic ifl. comics (Peeters 1998: 85), and P. Marion
furth er describes the phenomenon when he states that image and text
in comics are not simply added to each other, but enter into a dynamic
fusion that creates new meaning (Marion 1993: 2).
This specific interaction between different sign types is interesting
from a rheorerical poinr of view, when considering a 'semiotics of comics'.
In this article I wili' try to show that when we describe the signs of comics
according to rhe way in which !.hey inreract, in other words when it
comes to inrerpreting a comic, a dichotomy of iconic and symbolic
signs is not adequate. Instead, I suggest rhe semiotics of Charles Sanders
Peirce be used as the theoretical framewor k for the u nder st a~ding of

!. Title: Cuttlas the Good V$ Fallnan Ben. Panel 1: Stop right there, Cuttlas! Panel 2:
I challenge you to a duel. Panci3: You choose the weapons. Pancl4: For both of us?
I Of course. Panel 5: A ... comb? f Say you r prayers.
 194 ANN!! MAGNUSSEN

DE CUTENO
ELBU
CON
TLAS
TRA
BEN EL GORDO
,-: ,
,ALTO AHI
CUT TLAS I .. ...Jl..

0E
tr RIOTO A
.ITv,
j(
ESCOGES'
~ DUELO...,) ~S ,ARMAS'J., fJ)
V V •

{t I trl
DEi)
(iLi \S
LOS DOS?
I /I.VN ...
PEINE?
VGV~
$ 0 '\ -
~~~
~i ~-

CultlaJ (published by El PaislAguilar),

*
Fig. 1 Calpurn io. 'El Ducno de Cuttlas contra Bl!n cl Gordo' , 1996.
p. 7. Copyrighr: Caipurn io
In: El BUel/o de
THE SEMIOTICS OF C. S. PEIRCE 195

comics. I will use the comic of Cuttlas and Ben to demonstrate how
th is could be achieved.
When fo rming an interpretation of the comic, the differen t sign
types contained interact not only in a spatia l d imension, but also re-
quire that the panel 'spaces' be interpreted sequentially. A considerable
part of the article will therefore be a discussion of the way in which the
sequential dimension of the comic can be described. For this d iscussion
I draw on parts of the discourse comprehension model of the pragma-
tist linguists, T. van D ijk and W. Kintsch (1983).

2. The sign of C . S. Peir ce

T he sign is constituted by an irreducible triad of a Represenramul (or
'Sign'), an Object and an Imerprelam. The representamen represents the
object with reference to a certain idea or 'ground' (Peirce, 193 1- 58:
2.228).2The triad is shown in figu re 2.

Rc presenta men
' S ign'

Interprcta nt ~ Object

Fig. 2 The Peircean sign

Pcirce did not himself apply the semiotics to the study of communication,
but other researchers have done so (for example Jensen, 1995). When
the Peircean sign is used in the study of communication, the existence
of the interpre tant as an integral part of the sign means that a sign is to
be considered a~ ways in the context of an act of com mun ication. T he
single and heterogeneous signs in, for example, the first panel of figure
I are not interpreted au tonomously, but in th e context of each other. As
a consequence, focus is on the way the signs interact, thereby creating a
bigger, more complex sign, that of the panel itself. The panel-sign is
seen in the con text of its position on the page and within the. sequence.

2. Peirce does not always include the concept of 'ground' in the dcfinition of thc sign
:md its status is much discusscd among Peirce scholars. I wil! nOt include it in the
lIse or the Peircean sign in th is article.
 196 ANNE MAGNUSSEN

The panels interact, creating an even larger sign, the comic. This comic-
sign in turn is to be seen in the external context of the act of communi-
cation or interpretation, that is, the social reality of which the comic is
parr, including other comics and texts. In the analysis of the comic
about Ben and Cuttlas below, I will discuss the two first levels, the in-
teraction of heterogeneous signs within the panel and the interaction be-
tween the respective panels.
Three trichotomies describe respectively the Representamen in it-
self; the relation between Representamen and Object; and me relation
between Representamen and Interpretam. Instead of using a distinc-
tion between iconic and symbolic signs, I will use the trichotomy of
Icon, Index and Symbol relating the Representamen to the Object to
describe the different types of signs in comics and the interaction be-
tween them. According to the Peircean definition, a sign is not inter-
preted exclusively as an icon, an index, or a symbol. In most -cases;-a-
~gn J s interpreJs.~on th~basis . o~~nic and indexical and symbolic re-
lations, although in differ~nt deg;~es or proP9rtions. --
An icon represents the object becaUSe it of its s·imilarity to that ob-
jectj an index represents the object by being affected by itj and a symbol
represents the object because of a convention (Peirce, 1931-58: 2.243).
The icon is further sub-divisible into three sign types: image, diagram
and metaphor. The image represents its object through simple qualities or
material likeness. The diagram represents the relations of the parts of one
thing by analogous relations in its own parts, that is a relational likeness.
The metaphor depicts the representative character (of a representamen)
by expressing a parallelism in something else (Peirce, 193 1-58: 2.277). 3

3. Comics, sequ ence and narrativity

Different definitions of the term comics (or bande dessinee, or historieta,
etc.) seem to agree on one definitory aspect: A comic is a sequence of
images between which some kind of unity of meaning is created. Using
a semiotic term, a co.m ic can be considered as one complex sign which
means that a global coherence is sought in the interpretation of it. Two
other characteristics seem to be in general agreement. Firstly, that im-
ages can be of a variety of types, though at least some of them need to

3. Larsen, Svend Erik ( 1991 : 99) defines the image as a " partial material identity
between sign and object .. .' and the diagram as 'relational identity between parts of
the object and parL~ of the sign '
THE SEMIOTICS OF C. S. PElRCE 197

be drawings. This characteristic precludes photo-novels being defined

as comics. Secondly, although text can be integrated in the sequence of
images, this combination of text and images is npJLessential to the basic
definition -_wordless com ics are possible. The fact, though, that text often
makes up parr of the images in the form of, for example, speech bal-
loons, onomatopoeia is the reason that I prefer the term '(sequence of)
panel s' to '(sequence of) images'.
Differences arise when it comes to defining the structure of possible
global coherences in comics. In S. McCloud's definition, this aspect is
not specified more than by stating that the sequence of images is "in-
tended to convey information andlor to p roduce an aesthetic response
in the viewer". (McCloud 1993: 9). According [0 other defini tions, the
definitory aspect of com ics is the fact that the global coherence is a sto-
ry, as expressed in the following examples: "La bande d essinee est [... )
I'an de racomer au moyen d'une suite de dessins formant f(!cit. .... (T.
Grocnsteen in Marion 1993: 2), or, "[the comic strip] is a narrative in
the form of a sequence of pictures ... " (Sabin 1993: 5), or, "I'un des
traits plus characteristiques de la bande dessinee est de proposer la
mise ensemble d'une narration par images fixes et d 'une segmentation
de la page."(Peeters 1991: 34). In yet another group of definitions the
story is in cluded, if not as a definitory aspect, then as a frequent char-
acteristic: "la BD c'est avam tout un dessin qui evolue d'image en im -
age [... ] a fin alite le plus souvent narrative." (Marion 1993: 2), or, "Los
comics pueden d efinirse, en senrido amplio, como una secuencia espa-
cia I (... ] con la fina lidad de articular una descripcion 0 una narracion."
Gubern 1992: 2). The reason for quoting these definitions is that the
discussion of comics and n arrativity is relevant for the way in which I
apply the Peircea n sign to comics, and specifically to the sequence of
panels. I will therefore outline the consequences of including the story
as part of the comic's definition.
According to narrative theory, the term 'narrative' covers the story
as such, as well as. the narrator's identity and position (for example Bal,
1990). I will not go into th e discussion of the narrator's possible posi-
tions in comics, but con centrate on the story as the basis for global co-
herence. In the following the terms, narrative and story are used synon-
ymously. \Vhether a story is fiction or non-fiction is not relevant in this
context, as it makes no d ifference either for the structure of the story,
or for the possible subject matter. The only difference is whether the in-
terpretant considers the indices of the story as representing reality or a
fictional u niverse (Peirce, quoted in Johansen 1996: 276).
198 ANNE MAGNUSSEN

A story is about human actions. This means that a series of factors

form a basic structure in order for a sign to be considered a story. These
factors are the actions themselves and the actors performing them, the
time(s) at which the actions take p lace, and the pJace(s) in which these
are performed. A further specification is that a story has a setting, a de-
velopment and a resolution, which means that it is finite, in other words
one complex sign. This definition of a story is conventional and may in
some respects vary from culture to culture, but it seems appropriate in
the context of the western culture of which the comics scholars whose
definitions are referred to above, as well as myself, form a part (Dijk &
Kintsch 1983: 56-57).
The conventionality of the story-structure means that it works as a
'narra tive schema' which is activated when something (a text, a comic,
etc.) is expected to be a story, and it guides the interpretation process
(Dijk and Kintsch 1983: 55ff). The reader will try to create a global co-
herence between single elements or signs in accordance with the story-
structure. In the case of comics, the search for a global coherence based
on a story-structure m eans that [~ local coherences between panels
I
will be created by inferences in relation to the factors mentioned above
(actions, actors, time and place). As stories are about human actions,
some inferences between panels will be based on the knowledge of general
action-structures . In the local coherences it is not possible to distinguish
clearly between the cases where general action-structures are at work
and when the more specific story-structure is (Dijk & Kintsch 1983: 57).
The reason for considering local coherences between panels is that
the panel constitutes the smallest unit of time and place (Gubern
1992:2). The panels are here parallel to the propositions set out in T.
van Dijk and W. Kintsch's discourse comprehension model, between
which local coherences are made . They use the term 'bridging inferences',
where I prefer to use the term 'inferences'. It sho uld be noted that I
compare the panel (0 the proposition only in respect of their parallel
position in a (larger) structure. The interaction between signs in a panel
and a proposition calVlot be compared directly as linguistic signs make
up the proposition whereas the panel is formed by an image, sometimes
in combination with other types of signs.
For a comic not to be a story, it should be possible to create a globa l
coherence on the basis of something other than a story-structure, and
in which the local coherences are made on inferences based on parame-
ters other than actions, actors, time and place. According to T. Groens-
teen, this is, if anything, only a theoretical possibility, as there will always
THE SEMIOTICS OF C. S. PElRCE 199

be a narrative effect in a sequence of graphic images (Groensteen 1988:

46). This statem ent is interesting when compared to S. McCloud's def-
inition according to which no delimitation of possible structures and
global coherence is made. Essentially, the only requirement, according
to S. McCloud, is that the images should be in deliberate sequence. In
principle, a series of sketches by Pablo Picasso presented chronologically
in a book could be called a deliberate sequence of images - conveying
information about an artistic development over time. It is nevertheless
very unlikely that m any people would call such a book a comic.
The difference lies, I think, in the attitude towards the importance of
convention for the tiefinition- of comics. S. McCloud's definition of
comics may-be-intenti onally broad in order to incorporate any possible
variations made up by sequential images, which could be called comics.
It may be an effort to define comics as a medium of their own regardless
of content. H owever, as a consequence his definition comes to include
texts that would not, conventionally, be called comics. r..
Groensteen,
on the other hand, seems to base his definition not only on form (the
sequence of images), but also on the socio-historical development of
comics in the 20th century, that is based on what is actually in existence
and on convention. T. Groensteen calls the comics (ba nde d essinees) a
genre (Groen steen 1988: 46) which could point 10 the understanding of
the comic as a narrative genre alongside the n ovel and the short story:'
The problem of defining the comic as an independent medium andlor
genre(s) is far from straightforward and there is a need for a thorough
discussion of the problem including definitions of the terms medium
and genre. Even though I ca lled the comics a 'unique medium' in the
opening session of the conference on Comics and Culture (Copenhagen,
24-26 September, 1998), my position on the subject is somewhat am-
bivalent. In this article I delimit the discussion to clarify my point of
view on comics as narratives/non-narratives. This clarification is necessary
for the analysis below but does not settle the discussion of the position
of the comics bet\'leen m edium and genre.
Even though non-narrative comics are possible and might well exist,
they go against the conventional idea of what a comic is in western society.

4. S. McCloud calls Ihe comics a medium (McCloud 1993: 6), which could point [ 0
the cxis[ence of 11 distinction between either considering comics an independent
medium and not nccessarily narr.ltive, or considering them a genre and narrative.
However, the distinction does not hold, as some researchers seem to consider comics
as a medium in thcir own right while at the same time being narratives (e.g. Sabin
1993, Peeters 199 1).
200 ANNE MAGNUSSEN

When empl oying two pragmatist theories like the Peircean semiotics
togedler with part of the discourse model of T. van Dijk & W Kintsch
as the framework for the analysis, it is essential [0 accept th e convention
of comics being narratives in order to aid the interpretative process. In
this sense, I agree with T. Groensteen that comics should be furth ermore
defined on the basis of their historical specificiry, and that the definition
ofS. M cClou d is too broad to be of any practical use.
The con sequence of taking this stand is that any analysis of a text
considered to be a co mic takes as its starting-point the assumption that
it is a story, in other words that a narrative schema will be activated. If it
turns ou t in the interpretation process that it is impossible to create a
global coherence on the basis of a story-structure, there are (at least)
two options we could choose when referring to the discussion above: to
disregard th e text as not being a comic or to treat it as a non-narrative
comic.

Until now I have been exc~sivelY concerned with the sequence of images.
In reality the interpretatio? of the sequence is in constant interaction
with the visuality of the whole page. Even before beginning a sequential
interpretation, an impression of the fu ll page, or double-page, has been
made. 5 A first overall scan is not merely confin ed to following for exam-
ple a sequence of actions but is free to be attracted by salient features
like shape or colour, or by the com ent of relatively large panels. The
particular drawing style and format will also attract the attention of this
first glance and, in som e cases, these aspects will indicate a specifi c cat-
egory of comics, as for examp l e-_the~ligne c1aire' of European comi<;s.
The broader context of the comic, such as the kind of magazine in
which it is published, can likewise be the basis for a further specifi ca-
tion of the category or type of comic. As I argue above, comics are by
convention u nderstood to be stories, and a narrative schema will be ac-
tivated as soon as a comic is recognised as such. This means that the
fir st sign in the interpretation process, the initial browse, includes th e
expectation of there. being a stor y. If the style of drawing is moreover
recognised as pointing to a specific type of comic, the story-structure

5. "Ine idea of an overall scan of the page coming before the sequential interpretation
is expressed ill tht! following quotation: "Nous savol1s tous qu'i1 y a d'abord une
premiere lecrure globale: on se laisse imprl!gner par I'ambiance, par le sens general
qui s'offrc sur les deux planches. Ce regard rapide circule a panir du haUl it gauche
et se poursuit ven le bas it droite. Puis vient le moment recl de la lecrure". Qean-
Claude Forest quoted in Peeters 1991: 15) .
THE SEMIOTICS OF C. S. PEIRCE 201

can be further specified in relation to types of action or characters (ro-

mance, superheroes etc.) beyond the general story-strucmre. as de-
scribed above.
Ifwc accept that the interpretation is a process in which the creation
of coherences by inferring between panels is an ongoing feature (Dijk &
Kintsch, 1983: 44), we can consider the initial scan of the page to be
the first sign in the process. Taking this first sign as the point of depar-
ture, the sequential interpretation begins, following the conventional
reading pattern of the culture of which a specific comic forms part.
New interpretations include former interpretations by building upon
and modifying them, or, in some cases, by questioning or even negating
them.

4. Cuttlas the Good vs. Fatman Ben

The comic, CUll/as the Good vs. Fatman Ben is a creation of the Spanish
artist CaJpurnio. It is part of a series of comics all having the same pro-
tagonist, Cuttlas . The Cuttlas stories were first published in 1982 in the
author's own 'fanzine', El Japo, and the series has been published in
several magazines since then (Makoki Ja 1983, La LUrla de Madrid 1984,
EIVibora 1987, Makoki 2a 1989. From Cuadrado (1997). Since 1994 it
has been published on a weekly basis in a Friday youth supplement to a
major Spanish newspaper, El Pais, called El Pais de las Tentaciones.
As I mentioned above, the first sign is the initial scan of the page.
Figure 1 is interpreted as a comic because the reader recognises the
panel set-up with drawings inside the panels. If I am right about the
strong narrative convention, part of this interpretation is the expecta-
tion of a story. The style of drawing is very simplistic: there is no back-
ground and the drawings of the characters are extremely simple. As far
as genre or type is concerned, this comic lies close to newspaper comic
strips because of the simplicity of these as opposed to longer comics-
stories. Comic s.trips tend to have a humorous punch-line in the last
panel, to which 2-3 panels build up. There is neither room nor need for
elaborate descriptions of characters and settings, and the simple drawings
avoid the focus being directed away from the joke. The context of a
newspaper, likewise, supports simplicity in that comics are read as a pa-
renthesis in between news stories and need ·to be easily and quickly un-
derstood. The simplistic style of this comic as well as its original context
(a newspaper supplement) engender an expectation of a funny punch-
line, even though it is not a traditional strip-format, that is, not all the
202 AI\.'NE MAGNUSSEN

panels are on onc line. (o The black and white reproduction here is a dis-
advantage. In the original comic, the fatter of the [WO characters is yel-
low, and the other chnracter is whi te like the background . This means
that rhe fat, yellow character, repeated five times, catches the eye.
Western cultural reading conve ntion d ictates th at rhe sequential in-
terpretation of the pa nels begin in the uppe r left corn er. T he next sign
in rhe process is in this case, as it is very often, the tirle. The title in it-
sel f is symbol ic, as knowledge of the specific language code is necessary
to understand it. As a conventiona l sign type, titles are expected l a ex-
press what the comic is about, which makes it a sym bolic sign . Th e fa ct
that the title is necessa rily placed at the beginn in g of a text makes it an
iconic-diagrammatic sign . It is fu rthermore an indexica l sign because it
points to the stor y. The difference in letter-size and colour makes Ben's
name stand out as opposed to Cuttlas's. In the comext of other Cuuias
stories that all have Cuttlas as the main cha racter, the relational impor-
tance given to Ben in the title suggests that the fo cus is to be on the per-
son the main protagonist is up against. D rama is created in that Be n is a
threat to Cuttlas. Ben is fat, as his ni ck-name suggests, which leads to the
interpretation that the b ig letters mirror him as being fa t as opposed to
CUl llas not being fat. Co nsidering the way the fat yell ow character caught
the eye in a first globa l loo k, we easily in fe r that this <.: haracter is Fatman
Ben. The differences in letter-size as well as the size of the characters
are iconic-diagramma tic.
The interpretation of panel 1 is that Fatman Ben on the left is shout-
ing to Cuttlas on the right that he is [Q stop. This interpretation is due
to an inference between the interpretation of the title and panel I . The
combination of ind exicality, sym bolicity and iconicity of the title men-
tioned above - that it indicates what the sror y is about - makes it plau-
sib le that the two characters referred to in the title lire the ones in panel
1. The main charac ters of a story are not necessarily introduced in the
first panel, but in a short com ic such as thi s, there is no room for intro-
ducing characters that arc not central to the story. From panel 1 itself
we understand who . is who, as the man on rh e left is shouting 'Cuttlas'
to the man on the right. His shou t, togerher with his body posture are
indexical signs pointing to Cuttl as, and Cuttlas's raising of the ha t is an
ind exical sign meaning that he acknowledges having heard the shout .

6. What would be obvious in the newspaper is that the comic i~ no longer than this
one page. Th i~ is less clear both in this puhliclltion, and in !he collection of comics
b)' the same author from which the example is takeo (Calpurnio 1996).
THE SEMIOTICS OF C. S. PEIRCE 203

The hat raising is also a symbolic sign as it is a variation on commonly

used visual metaphors along the lines of 'his hair stood on end', with
probably a slightly different meaning here showing surprise rather than
fear. When Cuttlas is on the right, Ben can only be the one on the left,
which is underlined by the fact that this character is visibly fatter than
Cuttlas.
The identification of the characters could also be described the oth-
er way around, in that the initial scan along with the title designate the
man on the left to be the fat Ben, leaving the man on the right to be
Cuttlas. The repetition of diagrams, together with the colouring of Ben,
creates an abundance of signs all pointing to tile same interpretation. If
we refer back to the introduction to this article where I discussed the
importance of considering the different signs in relation to their inter-
action, th is is an example of how signs interact as a network in which
relations are created between different signs and interpreted more or
less instantly.
Above it was described how the two characters are icons (diagrams)
in relation to each other: the fatness of one character in relation to the
other designates who is who. But the two characters are also icons indi-
vidua lly. The drawings of Ben and Cuttlas are of great simpl icity, but
they are still recognisably human beings. They are iconic signs accord-
ing to a material likeness with the object (human beings) although in an
extremely simplified form. Very little c.Quld be left out before the draw-
ings would not represent human beings - probably only the hats and
maybe rhe feet. The simplification of drawings means that they are sym-
bolic signs also. In a case of extreme simplification such as in figure 1,
the features or elements necessary to represent a human being - or a
radio or a house- may vary from culture to culture.
Before I continue the sequential analysis, I would like to comment
on another of the individual signs of tile comic, namely the speech bal-
loon. A comic is a 'mute' medium in which a series of symbolic signs
have been developed to depict sound, and one of them is rhe speech
balloon. Part of the above analysis is based on the interpretation of Ben
talking, which is understood because of the pointer of the speech bal-
loon pointing to him. This makes the speech balloon an indexical sign
as well as a symbolic sign. That he should be shouting is an interpreta-
tion based on both the exclamation marks (symbolic) and these being
bolder than the rest of the text (iconic-diagrammatic) . Ben's speech
balloon in the last panel is a good example of a speech balloon being a
diagram. The pointer is different from the pointers of the rest of the
204 ANNE MAGNUSSEN

speech balloons and is an iconic, diagrammatic sign for the words ('A
". comb?') being said in another tone of voice than the rest of the dia-
logue. Taking into account the situation or context Ben is in, we inter-
pret this as surprise possibly tinged with fear. Being a diagram, it says
as much about the tone of voice of the rest of dlC dialogue - it is 'nor-
ma!' or at least not surprised - as it says about itself. The interpretation
of the shaky pointer as an icon for the [one of voice is only possible, of
course, because it is based on the conventions of visualising sound as
mentioned above.

Returning to the sequence, the interpretation of panel 1 includes the

expectation of what is going to happen in the following pane1(s), which
is due to this interpretation being guided by a narrative schema or story
structure. These expectations are more specific at this point, partly be-
cause the specific fictiona l universe is more apparent. The cowboy hats,
together with the American sounding names and nicknames (the Good,
Fatman), help create an American t.%stern universe in the mind of the
reader. A series of actions and themes are conventionally associated
with a western universe and these guide the expectations as to the story.
The expectation of what is about to ensue is also based on the specific
action in panel 1. With reference to P. Fresnault-Deruelle, B. Peeters
describes a panel as an 'image in desequilibrium' between that which
precedes it and that which follows (Peeters 1998: 22). The drawings in
a panel will engender an expectation of'something more' as it is not in-
terpreted as autonomous . Panel 1 is already in the middle of an ac tion
and expectations of what comes after it are based on knowledge of hu-
man actions in combination with the specific expectation of the story.
There are only so many possibilities as to what will happen next. If Ben
turned around and walked away in panel 2, it would be contrary to any
human action-structures, as well as being contrary to narrative conven-
tion and the interpretation of the title. It does not mean that it could
not happen, only that it would be against the expectations based on story-
and action-structures.
As an aside it is wordl mentioning that panel I shows that a time-span
within the space of a panel is accepted practice: both Ben's action - the
shouting - and the reaction - Cuttlas's hat-raising - are understood
within this one space. The phenomenon is described by R. Gubern who
calls the panel 'un instante durativo' (1992: 2), and by T. Groensteen
when he says that 'La vignette [... ] "condense" une durc~e elastique et,
parfois, propose une representation simultanee de moments consecu-
THE SEMIOTICS OF C. S. PEIRCE 205

tifs". (Groensteen 'Le suppOrt et le style': 53). The fac t that images in
comics are still-images of actions but interpreted as the whole action
can be described as metonymic or indexical, in the sense that one still-
image points to the whole action. It is a d iffe rent kind of indexicality,
though, from that at work in, for example, the hat raising above or the
speech balloons. This d ifference would be acknowledged in a furth er
specification of indexicality in comics.
The anticipation of a confrontation is satisfied in panel 2, where Ben
challenges Cuttlas to a duel, and the confli ct referred to in the comic's
title is made clear. The duel supports the interpretation of the universe
being an American l-\7;1stern universe. The expectation as to what is going
to happen next will be of some sort of reaction from Cuttlas to · Ben's
challenge. In the n ext few panels it becomes apparent that Cuttlas does
not understand what Ben is talking about: he is not familiar with the
conventions of duels - that the person challenged should choose weapons
- which we assume to be common knowledge for a cowboy. The expec-
tations here turn away from who will win the d uel and towards C utt-
las's lack of understanding. By inferring between panel 4 and panel 5,
the time-span during which Cuttlas has gone to get weapons is accepted.
H e has chosen a comb for Ben and two pistols for himself. Our suspicion
is confir med that Cuttlas does not know the convention of duels - or
perhaps that h e is just a lot smarter than Ben is.
Finding the comic humorous requires knowledge of the convention
of American western duels and it is this knowledge that makes it possible
to see the comb as an entirely inappropriate, out of context element.
The humour lies in Cutlass mocking Ben who represents an institution
inside the American t.%stern universe: the honourable duel. In this sense,
the interpretation draws on an experience or knowledge about other
texts - fi lms, novels, com ics- without which the comic would not be
funny.

5. C onclusion
In the introduction to this article, I suggested that the Peircean sign
cou ld offer a more precise and fu H description of the comics signs than
could the dichotomy of iconic and symbolic signs of European semiology.
The use of the Peircean sign led to a focus on the interpretation process
and the interaction between different sign types, and between the panels.
W hen considering the inte rpretation of a comic, it was relevant to
d iscuss the kinds of global coherences created between signs. More spe-
206 ANNE MAGNUSSEN

cifica lly, I discussed whether or not comics were to be defined as narra-

tive. I argued that if we take into account the specific historical and so-
cial context of which comics are pare, th e convention of comics being
narratives was, if not dcfinicory, then at least the point of departure for
Our interpretation of them . 1 proposed the use of parts of the discourse
comprehension m odel of T. van Dijk and W. Kintsch to describe the
way in which global coherence was created in comics.
After the introductory discussions of terminology and definitions I
analysed the comic Cuu/as the Good vs. Ben, the Facman and showed
how Peirce's distinction of icon, index and symbol could be used to
solve some of the problems of describing 'problematic ' signs according
to a dichotomy of text and image, for example that of the speech bal-
loon and the phenomenon of linguistic signs possessing features that
cannot be described satisfactoril y as symbolic.
At a general leve l, I raised the question of the image-text dichotomy
in relation to all the signs in this comic, including those signs that, in
line with European semiology, would fit m ore easily into a distinction
of iconic and sym bolic signs, for example the drawings of human be-
ings. These could be described in a more precise way using the symbol
and the index as well as the icon. The concept of the index proved use-
ful both in the description of single signs, such as the speech balloon,
and in the interaction of the different signs.
T here is still work to be done concerning the application of Peircean
semiotics to comics. A specification of the use of the index in comics
was hinted at in the analysis, a specification that could lead to the con-
clusion that even though they consist of symbolic and iconic signs in all
kinds of combinations, comics are primarily indexical.
T HE SEMIOT ICS OF C. S. PEIRCE 207

Refere nces

Bal, Mieke (1990). TeoJia de la 'laJ" rariva. M adrid: Ediciones Caled ra. Translat-
ed from " De Theorie van vertellen en verhalen (1 980, 2nd rev. ed .)
Calpurnio (1996). El B I/eno de CUlllas. Madrid: El Pais Aguil ar
Cuad rado, Jesus ( 1997). Diccionario de la hutoriela espmio/a. M adrid: Com-
pailia Literaria, S. L.
Dijk, Teun A. van & Ki ntsch, Waiter ( 1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehen-
sion. London: Academic Press Inc., p. 54ff.
Eisner, Will (1 99 1). Comics & Sequemiul A rt. Florida: Poorhouse Press.
Frcsn a ult- D cruell ~, Pierre ( 1994). 'Comics '. In: Thomas A. Sebeok (cd .), E n-
cye/opedic D ictiOllary of Semiotics. Berlin, New York.
Gl'Ocnstccn, T hierry ( 1986). 'Le support et le stylc. In: Posilll, JuillctlAout.
Paris: Edition Opta
Grocnsteen, Thierry ( 1988). 'La narralion comme supplement. Archeologie
des fondarions infra-narratives de la bande dessinee'. l n:Thierry Groensteen
(cd .), B ande Dessinie. Ricit et M oderniti. France: F uturopolis. p. 45-69 .
Gubern, Roman ( 1992). 'Un Icnguaje original y complejo'. In: Pautas, No. 6.
M adrid. p. 2-4 .
H ansen, H ans Lauge (1996). Jkollicitetm(s) Sprcekker. En lam ing af Raf ael A /-
ber,is 'Cal y Canto'. Ph.D. thesis (unpublished) . University of Copenhagen,
Copenhagen. p. 35ff.
Jcn sen, Klaus Bruhn (1995). The Social Semiotics of Mass Communication. Lon-
don: Sage Publications LLd.
Johansen, J0rgen D ines (1996). 'Arguments about icons'. In : V. M . Colapietro
and T. M . Olshewsky (eds.), ?circe's Doctrine of Signs. Theory, A pplications,
and Comleceions. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 373-282.
Larsen, Svend Erik ( 199 1). 'M anet, P icasso, and the spectator: identity or ico-
nicity?'. In: Face. Numcro especial, 1:93- 113/agosto 199 1. p. 93- 112.
Larscn, Svend Erik ( 1996). ' M etaphor - A Semiotic Perspective'. In: Danish
~arbook of Philosophy, Vol. 3 1, p. 137- 156.
M arion, Philippe ( 1993). Traces en Cases. Travail graphique,figllration lIarrative
el participation du lecteur. Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia.
McCloud, Scon (1993). Understanding Comics. The JntJisible An. Northampton
MA: Kitchen Sink Press Inc.
Peeters, Beno!t ( 1998). Case, plallche, l'iciL LU-e la bal1de dessinie . Paris: Casterman.
Peirce, C harles Sanders ( 193 1- 1958) . Collected Papers. Vots 1-8. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard U niversity Press.
Sabin, Roger (1 993). A dult Comics. A n Jm roduceiofl. London and New York:
Routiedge .
What if the Apocalypse Never Happens;
Evolutionary Narratives in Contemporary
Comics

Abraham Kawa

It is now almost the stuff of legend how, in the eighties, twO works by
creators F ran k Miller, Alan Maore and Dave Gibbons brought a new
level of narrative sophistication and thematic maturity to mainstream
American comics. Their works brilliantly illustrated the medium's often
n eglected ability to explore philosophical, cultural and political themes
and to present fascinating accounts of its age and cultural setting. But
to achieve this, these and a few other creators had to produce works
which "partly if not wholly attack the basis" of their own genre, I creat-
ing a very tough act for their successors to follow. More importantly,
the sombreness of their work, original and justifi ed in its time, was cop-
ied and abused by creators and theorists alike, giving the impression
that mainstream comics have reached a creative impasse and can only
feature more violence, pessimism and psychotic nationalists in tights
until they sink to boredom and oblivion.
Both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen feature the apocalyptic
threat that was undeniab ly in vogue in the eighties, nuclear war. In The
Dark Knight Returns, a Soviet nuclear warhead, although diverted by
Superman, causes an electromagnetic pulse which throws the entire
North American continent into d isarray. Yet in the last pages, Bruce
Wayne, no longer in need of his alter ego, the Batman, goes underground
and organises an army to bring sense to a world plagued by corruption
and anarchy. His vision may be interpreted as the dream of a new golden
age, or a fascist nightmare, but the decay and death of humanity is not
an option.
In ~tchmen, the ending is left more open and ambiguo us, and it is
up to the reader to decide whether the repercussions of the characters'
actions will result in world peace based on an enormous decept~on, or in
the total annihilation of the human race due to uncompromising hon esty.

1. Rcynolds, Richard (1992). Supe/' Heroes: A Moderll M y thology. Unive rsity Press of
Mississippi. p.96
210 ABRAHAM KAWA

Since both these works are usually seen in the context of the grim
and gritty era of eighties superhero comics, few people have noticed
that even their near-apocalyptic narratives end with a glimmer of hope
for the future or, at least, an ambivalence as to whether Armageddon is
com ing. While it's true that they deconstr ucted and criticised nearly fif-
ty years of comics history, and stretched the boundaries of the genre,
people who prefer to judge them as the last key superhero texts, rather
than the first of a new maturity to the genre, tend to forget that they
both revel in their interpretation of the classic superhero trappings, and
bring new meaning to its stock formula .2
Another positive aspect of the revisionist wave of the eighties was
that, through those seminal works, the genre fully entered its postmodern
period. Comics creators were inspired to use, recycle and recapitulate
cultural themes, motifs and images from both the rich history of comics
and the entire cultural spectrum available to them. Always an ideal
form for visual collage, "comic books become vehicles for self-con-
sciously gathered samples of brand names, media identities, and cultur-
al icons from the present, the past, and an imagined future", reflecting
the collage-like essence of contemporary times. 3
Evidence that creators were willing to use this new-found freedom
with cultural signs to move away from pessimistic eschatology and into
stories stressing the possibility of rebirth for the human race firSt surfaced
with Moore's next proposed project, the unpublished series called Twi-
light O/The Superheroes. Having since reappeared as an Internet site, the
proposal, although still displaying traces of the grim attitude towards
the superhero genre Moore later rejected, uses as its template motifs
more reminiscent of the Norse myth of Ragnarok than the Christian
Revelation. In many respects, appropriating the mythical motif of a war
between god-like beings that does not end the world, but introduces a
new age, and using it as a cultural m etaphor to describe contemporary
society was vastly innovative, having only been attempted in comics by
, in his 1970s New Gods series.
the visionary artist Jack Kirby
Moore set Twilight OJThe Superheroes in the first decades of the 2P\
century, where the superheroes of the DC Comics Universe, divided in
various clans, have taken over the Earth as the last anchor of stability in
the face of accelerated social change . Moore intended to avoid the

2. Ibid.,p.117.
3. Rushkoff, Douglas (1994). Cyberia: Life In The Tir!llches Of Hyperspace. Aamingo
Original. p.234
WHAT IF THE APOCALVPSE NEVER HAPPENS 211

nuke-blighted future cliche, as he felt it had outlived its usefulness as a

motif. Following predictions made by futurologists like Alvin Toffler, he
constructed a world which, having lived for decades with the terror of
inevitable nuclear Armageddon, faces the possibility that there might
not be an apocalypse, and that mankind might be fac ed with the intim-
idating prospect of dealing with a future rather than getting rid of that
responsibility with a convenient mushroom cloud. Every aspect of soci-
ety is rapidly decentralising into an entirely new form which, although
in a constant state of flux and chaos, might be u ltimately bener suited
to survival in the 21'1 century. Indeed, the stabil ity offered by the major
hero clans is seen by the less powerful heroes as a hindrance to this fu-
ture, and the plot of Twilight outli nes their conspiracy to make the major
heroes wipe each other our in a last battle, thus allowing human society
to complete its change. At the conclusion of the p lot, humanity, stand-
ing on the verge of Utopia, free of government and the interference of
super-powered dictatorship, can start over.
Due to its vast influence in the development of the ambitious,
Wmchmell-type superhero tale, and to an erratic publishing schedule
spanning eleven years, M iracleman, another Alan Moore project, is an
ideal title for us to witness the change of tone in superhero comics fro m
the eighties to the nineties. In [his reinterpretation of an obscure British
superhero, Moore tackled the immediate paradoxes of the genre, such
as its status as "a popular art-form known for its apparently hcgemonic
and sometimes overtly authoritarian texts". 4 Working from this tem-
plate, he created a well-thought out and remarkably realistic science fic-
tion story about a genetically engineered Nietzschean superhuman
whose very existence changes the course of human history as he is inex-
orably led into assuming absolute comrol of the Earth.
Miraclemali began on a dark and sombre note, much in tune with
Moore's take on superheroes at the time. To subtly tell the story of how
past British, and implicitly Western, society'S childhood dream of the
future turned into a nightmarish grown-up reality, Moore revises a lot
of the mainstays of the superhero genre and popular culture in general.
Mirac1eman's original 1950s stories and origin (themselves closely
modelled on those of Captain Marvel) were revealed to be artific ial
memories used to better manipul ate him and had been implanted by
his creator, a Captain M arvel comics-reading scientist who used [ 0 be the
villain in MiracJeman 's old adventures. The reawakened MiracJeman

4. Reynolds (1992). lbid., p. 7.

212 ABRAHAM KAWA

has to use comic books as reference in order to understand his powers,

while the experiment that created him was called project Zarathustra,
and, echoing contemporary concerns, was based on advanced genetics
technology acquired from a crashed UFO.
H owever, as Maore's tenure on the title progressed through the late
eighties, the tide was already turning away from the grim n' gritty, Cul-
tural references gradually become more ambiguous, expressing faith in
icons of hope for the future. Violence and death are redeemed by love
and the act of creation. "Scenes from the Nativity", the chapter where
Mirac1eman's daughter is born, is loosely patterned on the birth of
Christ, with the distressed couple forced to have their baby under the
stars, while Mirac1eman himself appears surrounded by an aura that
makes him look like a free-floating Jesus on a cross of light (see figure
1). Significantly, Mirac1eman's ultimate battle with his equally super-
powered adversary does not bring the expected destruction of the
Earth, although it does result in the complete devastation of London, a
bloody disaster of such monstrous scope that it is fittingly and ironically
filmed as a documentary by Stanley Kubrick, director of the potential of
human society for disintegration (in D,: Strangelove) and for evolution
(in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Instead, as ruler of the Earth, Miracleman
accomplishes all his daunting tasks admirably, and leads humanity into a
true golden age of prosperity, peace and progress, uninhibited by oppres-
sive social mores.
This is a complex and controversial issue, given the superhero's Ni-
etzschean descent and fascist associations in public opinion . Neither
Moore nor his successor as writer, Neil Gaiman, let us forget that Miracle-
man, even as a benign dictator, places himself above mortals. The char-
acter suffers the loss of his humanity, even as the terms 'normality',
'adjustment', and 'convention' are being erased from the dictionary.
This is not an uncomplicated Utopia. Bur a Utopia it is, and Mirac1eman
is elevated to godhood, a quality that, together with other religious and
cultural components, is retrofitted and redefined in the series to acquire
an added resonance fQr our particular times. Such reinterpretations
allowed Gaiman to transcend the standard structure of the superhero
narrative, explore the world Mirac1eman creates, and craft stories about
the people who live in it, mourning and coming to terms with the past
of humanity in order to celebrate the possibilities of a glorious future. 5

5. De!any, Samuel (1993). Introduction to Miracleman: The Go/dell Age, collected

edition. Eclipse Graphic Novels.
WHAT IF THE APOCALYPSE NEVER HAPPENS 2 13

Fig. 1 The Superhero as Saviour and Redeemer: M iracleman: Scenes

from the NatitJilY. In 'Mirademan:ll1e Red King Syndrome' col-
lected edition (originally in Miraclema'l # 9) 1990 collecled edition.
Art by Rick Veitch and Rick Bryont (Eclipse Enterprises, Inc., story
copyright 1988 Alan Moorc, an copyright 1988 Rick Veitch.

As ml.llticultural god/overseer, working to remodel humanity in his own

image and encourage it forward into its future, Mirac1 eman comes
complete with a towering palace named Olympus. It is depicted as a
chaotic melange of architectural styles, fill ed with ar tefa cts from dino-
214 ABRAHAM KAWA

saurs to World War I biplanes to otherworld ly human-plant hybrids, a

three-dimensiona l picture of history and evolution. MiracJeworld is not a
monotheistic culture, since various new Miracle cul ts emerge, including
one worshipping his monstrous adversary, and there are even designated
days to rem ember dead gods and lost mythologies. Miracleman still
studies comic books lO understand the humanity h is presence inspires.
Superhero comics other than Miracle Family fictions are almost ex-
tinct, their protagonists abandoned metaphors for the empowerment of
the oppressed, but they survive into the next century as evolutionary
metaphors, as proven by !heir use by a new generation of heroes. Ensuring
the rapid growth and biological evolution of humanity, Miracleman, at
the request of childless couples, has donated hi s sperm to father many
children, who grow up to resemble the superbeings of yesteryear (see
plate 12). Both super and normal children are empowered to run the
world on their own once a year, with the adu lts charged only to keep an
eye on them and 'pick them up when they fall' , a process that mirrors
Mirac1eman's own limited role in human affairs.
In treating a text with such a broad evolutionary and cross-cuirural
content, Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham use various storytelling
and illustrative techniques like photocopying, pa inting, computer
graphics, photography, juxtaposing realistic with cartoony art, and pro-
ducing text imitating children's books, spy novels and hallucinogen-
generated stream of consciousness. It is perhaps in "Notes from the
Underground", a story set in a Miracleman-founded community peo-
pled with android copies of dead artists, that the interactive relationship
between comics and culture and between cultural recycling and human
evolution is fully expressed. In the story, Andek, an AndyWarhol repli-
ca (one of eighteen copies, of course) has a conversation with the tem-
porarily resurrected scientist creator of Miracleman. While the sciehtist
despairs with his predicamcnt, Andy, as in life, relishes his post-human,
cyborg status. H e delights in having evolved into a living camera and
tape recorder, and in living in a comic-book world where nothing is im-
possible. Buckingham ep.hances the effect of the text by creating " a so-
phisticated pastiche ofWarhol's serial lithography" , right down to past-
ing multiple pictures of Warhol on his own art and drawing a Warhol-
style painting of Miracleman. The creators also acknowledgc the irony
of having Warhol's techniques reincorporated into the repertoire of the
WHAT IF THE APOCALYPSE NEVER HAPl'ENS 215

low culture form that originally inspired them, and of pop art helping to
take comic book art to a whole n ew level of compl exity (see plate 13).6
D espite the obvious differences, Miracleworld is eerily reminiscent of
OUI contemporary culture. This is made explicit in the text by Gaiman 's
reference to a speculative novel Mirademan writes, in which he describes
a society that never encountered supermen and where history developed
as it d id in our world . While the two societies are contrasted, it becomes
apparent [0 the reader that Miracleman's allegorical fi ction describes
both his and our world, a perfect, yet imperfect, changing world seek-
ing a reputed miracle in the mid st of an age of miracles, and finding
only more humanity. A con stantly evolving society which, like our own
posuTIodern Western cul ture, is a complicated amalgam molded from
various materials, and where there is a place for everybody's vision of
the world, even those who are opposed to any current status quo.
At the same time, post-nihilistic comics creators like Grant Morr i-
son, M ark Waid and Alex Ross take the "forw ard-looking, inspirationa l
sensibility" of sixties' tides like Justice League of America and place it
into a nineties context in order to " restore the sense of nobility and
grandeur to the super-hero concep t" and to conStru ct and promote
narratives with an evolutionary, non-apocalyptic content. 7 Like media
analyst Douglas Rushkoff, they believe that humanity may have been
misreading the symptoms of a possible renaissance as those of civilisa-
tion 's doom. 8 Like Miracleman, today's Justice League allows mankind
to climb [0 its own d estiny, and are there to catch them if they fall. But
after Miracleman and the Watchmen, nineties superheroes can never be
like their untroubled sixties counterparts in anything but name . Despite
its classic membership (including Superman, Batman and Wonder
Woman), "the new Justice League has to justify its existence in a more
sophisticated world", where it treads a thin line between imervention
and domination) and where "the emphasis on heroism and hope is
tinged with end-of the world paranoia" (see plate 14).
Under writer Grant M orrison) the scale is nothing less chan cosmic,
and every day is the end of the world in the pages of Justice League.
Readers and characters alike are swept into shifting realities of constam

6. As noted by Soon Bukat.man in 7ermi" al ldcmity: The Virwal Subj~1 i" Powllodern
S cienet He/ioll. Duke University Press, 1993, pp.371 -372
7. Morrison, Gram ( 1996). Introduction to the .'f1lS/ice League: M idswmlle,·'s Nigh/-
/IIare, collected edition. DC Comics.
8. Rushkoff, Douglas ( 1997). Chil",.en of Chaos: Sm"tJivillg Tile end Of The WOrld As 1\'tI?
Know Ir. Flamingo. p.268
216 ABRAHAM KAWA

MilIennial fever, where morc outlandish threats of Armageddon are ris-

ing every month than alllhe explosive disasters in an entire summer of
blockbusters. Orwellian anti-life dictatorships rise, where the people
worshipfully surrender all thought, self and responsib ility. Old Testa-
ment-style angels invade the Earth, while rhe m oon is deflected towards
the planet. The nacural laws of probability break d own, causing a chain
reaction of disastrous coincidences.
But we never reach the end of everything. The "extermination of the
real", as encountered in the form of a comic book apocalypse, is little
more than a plot device, a suspenseful and ultimate ly rongue-in-cheek
twist d esigned to keep heroes and readers in a state of anticipation, al-
ways on the ready for the next issue, the next thrill and challenge. 9

There is always a greater dan ger) another chance to up the stakes In

what is ultimately a ga me of survival for the heroes and their titles, a
struggle for their society, as well as the one that their scories reflect, to
evolvc against adversity and decay. Along the way, Morrison drops hints
that the superh eroes are descended from th e gods, and serve the same
funct ion: to fortify the Earth and its people for the chall enges to comc,
and be the forerunners of a shining future filled with possibility. 10
It is no coincidence that the contemporary version of the first and
most influential superhero is a m ember of this Juslice League. Super-
m an was specifica lly conceived as a combination of all the legendary
strong men, from Hercules and Samson to Doc Savage. H e became the
cornerscone of a new genre constantly assimilating a diverse set of cul-
tural sources. Even his first story dem onstrates th is, since the language
of the opening page "mimics the King James Bible", with the incidents
of Superman's father sending his infant son to Earth and the discovery
of baby Superman "echoing the stories of Christ and M oses".lI Al-
though his powers were formidable to begin with, Superman went on
to acquire almost god-like abilities during his career. This was part of
the continuing tendency of superhero comics CO legitimise themselves
by stressing the resem~lance of superheroes to mythical heroes and
gods, with other n otable examples being Captain M arvel and the su-
perheroic incarnation of the Norse god Thor. II In addition, legends

9. Steven Shaviro on Grant Morrison in "Doom Patrols, hllp:/lwww.dhalgren.com/

Doom/ch.O I.html"
10. ln JLA (Juslice1~agllt(lfAmtrica) #15 (rebruary 1998)
11 . Rcynolds (1992) . Ibid ., p. 9, 12, 14 .
12. Ihid., p. 53.
WHAT IF THE APOCALYPSE NEVER HAPPENS 217

provided creators with inspiring material for their mythologizing of

their own society as a stab le world in progress towards Utopia, assisted
by the superheroes. '1
Yet society is always in transition, and the stability of the first half of
the century was replaced by a varied and contradictory world. Super-
man has reflected this change by evolving quite differently in the last
decade or so. He has married Lois Lane, and revealed his identity to her.
Taking a leaf from Jesus and the Norse god Balder, he has been killed
and brought back to life. These and further unprecedented changes,
while seen by many as signs of a terminal crisis, do not frantically try to
preserve him as "a static icon of adolescence". Instead, they make the
character "more troubled, accessible, and capable of d evelopment", I~
in short, more suitable as a metaphor and cultural icon for the 2 1st
century. Like the most enduring of the mythological figures that in-
spired his creation, Superman survives by growing - and growing up -
into the context of each new age of humanity.
The Batman is changing as well. While for the eighties and most of
the nineties, he has been influenced by the grim parameters set by The
Dark Knight Returns and the Tim Burton films, in Justice League Mor-
rison plays up his sci-fi, high-tech aspect. Unlike the camp fiftie s and
sixties version and the Joel Schumacher films, however, the late nineties
Batman is consistent with his earlier portrayal: still obsessed, troubled
and dangerous, he is the brilliant tactician and awe-inspiring gadget
master in the Justice.League, with the slightly condescending sense of
humour one would expect from a man of his ridiculous wealth.
Morrison's other ongoing project is The Invisibles, a series intended
to incorporate all the major concerns of the current generation of hu-
manity as it approaches tlle Millennium. In a world where every para-
noia and conspiracy theory you have read about in Foruan T£mes or
seen in The X-Files is not just real, but ultimately prosaic compared to
the truth, the Invisibles, a loose-knit terrorist organisation composed of
small groups of "!narchists, are nothing like the villains they would be
deemed by socially acceptable standards. The actual villains are the
forces of law, order and control over the potential of individuals, aided
and abetted by extra-dimensional beings called Archons, who stand for
social stagnation and conformity, the very enemies opposed by Morrison's
Justice League. From its title to its themes, this comic appropriates an

13. Ibid ., p. 24.

14. Ibid.,p.123,124.
218 ABRAHAM KAWA

amazing number of cultural elements. Its premise refers back re the

classic concept of the superhero team book without the superhero para-
phernalia, while its sub ject matter basically updates sixties TV series
like The Prisoner and The Invaders, real-life and fictional seventies anti-
establishment icons such as the Baader-Meinhof gang and Michael
Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius, the novels ofThomas Pynchon and WiUiam
Burroughs, and theories on the nature of society, the media and reality
like those introduced by the Siruationist International, Marshall McLuhan
and Jean Baudrillard. The gods of various religions from Voodoo to Pre-
Columbian Aztec all seem to be involved in different aspects of the
struggle in which the Invisibles are involved. Guest stars include John
Lennon as a ghost from the sixties and as a psychedelic god-head, Byron
and Shelley during a debate on man's capacity for freedom, the Marquis
de Sade, and intelligently disguised versions of various fictional person-
al ities such as M from the James Bond movies, the cast of seventies cop
shows The Sweeney and Jasofl King, and Bruce Wayne. All are seen in a
different light, though never incompatible to their own characteristics,
and are reinterpreted in order to gain a new significance for our times.
The surprising new context these cultural loans are given reveals T~e
Invisibles as a comic of ideas. Byron and Shelley's debate is juxtaposed
to the French Revolution's terror and Sade's fictions to comment on
the aim of the Invisibles, to ma ke a Miracleman-style reality out of every-
body's private vision of the world, even that of the enemy. The casting
of pop culture's good guys like M or Wayne as probable villains raises
questions about the relativity of evil. Other ideas broached include the
importance of disobedience and the nature of space and time.
All of these concepts are combined to gradually reveal the Archons
and the Invisibles, as competing in a race to respectively control or free
the world as it approaches the next stage of its evolution. Morrison,
based on observations by psychedelics and shamanism researcher Ter-
ence McKenna, as well as calendr ical predictions of the Maya, deter-
mines that that stage will come sometime around 2012j at that time,
the accelerating pace .of change our civilisation is experiencing will
reach its climax, signalling the transcendence of the human race be-
yond the teleological vision of history and into a hyperspace of pure in-
formation, reminiscent of virtual reality, where humanity, cybernetics
WHAT IF THE APOCALYPSE NEVE R HAPPENS 219

data and new form s of visua l language will flow together. reconfiguring
the very notion of rea lity. I'
Yet even ideas are subordinate to form in the series. as Th e InvisibLes,
in a more overt, yet also similar manner to Miracleman and Justice
League, is a series portraying the evolution of com ic book art and
themes, as well as a comic about evolution . Words. ideas and images are
joined in a comics equiva lent of a stream of consciousness, with m ean-
ing often residing in the spaces between the panels. M orrison and The
Invisibles treat read ers like new initiates to the gang. battering the pro-
tective shell of their mind s made of years of cultural conditioning to re-
vea l chaotic visions of society and reality that may hide unseen truths.
The series is a disjunctive ride through different centuries, opinions
and genres. all recapitulated at once) by way of their co-existence in the
same pages. 16
Such a sweeping cross-cu ltural structure allows fo r phi losophical im-
plication s on our evolUlionary capacities. A striking example of this is
the various vision ary episodes the protagonists have throughout the se-
ries. involving grey aliens and UFO abduction imagery. The initially
unexplained aliens are later given a new cOntext when it is revealed that
they are, and always have been, antibodi es. Morrison combines ideas
from shamanism) the views of Terence McKenna and the theories of
Jacques Vallee in the book The Invisible College [Q interpret fl ying saucers
and aliens as either images from the collective unconsciou s of the hu-
man race or psychological m anifestations from a higher dimension.
They essentially functio n as agents of cu ltural change, appearing at an
urgent point in h uman his[Qr y in order to break the control of oppres-
sive dominant ideas and to remind us that our narrowly explanatory
culture is only a stage in our evolution. 17 Jesus, who had also served a
simi larly confounding function against Greeo-Roman empiricism, ap-
pears as a religious variation to the alien as agent of evolutionary
change in the series. It is important to stress here that, as aliens, gods,
or m etahuman precursors of the future, Superman and the other super-
heroes may also be seen as psychological manifestations of an evolving
human consciousness.

15. McKenna,Terence ( 1991). TheA,'Chaic Revival:Speculmiolls on Psychedelic M ush-

1'00111$, rhe IImuzolI, Virtllal Realicy, UFOs, Evolutioll, Shamanism, the Rebirth of lhe
Goddess and the cild of History. HarperSanFrancis<:o. p. 101 .
16. Ha ~ted, Nick ( 1996). 'Everything All At Once:Thc Invisibles' . In: 'nle ComicsJOllr-
lIal# 186 (April 1996). p. 40-44.
17. M<:Kenna ( 1991 ). lbid.,p. 59, 76.
220 ABRAHAM KAWA

At its m ost exaggerated, Morrison 's postmodernist reinterpretation

of ideas and motifs reaches a level of complexity bordering on the in-
sane, as when he has one character analyse the film Speed as a metaphor
for human evolurion, in which the bus, fi lled with ever y nationality,
represents the world, heading towards the apocalypse in th e form of the
big gap in the highway construction; the ape-faced driver is the brutal
evolutionary heritage of the Cro-M agnon, rushing the world to d isaster
while everybody argues; and fina lly, after the subway train trip at the
end, the film's protagonists burst out into the street in front ofa cinema
showing 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is all about hu man evolution. I
can only agree with the other characters and say that this kind of analy~
sis merits psychi atric help, but what is even more bizarre is that, if you
think about it, it makes perfect sense.
Back in superhero territory, and set in an unspecified near future
where Superman has distanced himself from the human race both literally
and emotionally, yet is forced to com e Out of retirem ent to lead the oth er
superheroes aga inst an ultra-violent, newer generation of superbeings
with the fate of the world at stake, the limited series Kingdom Come sig-
nificantly uses and revises not only com ics icons and history, but also
the original apocalyptic narrative of the Revelation . Creators Mark
Waid and Alex Ross reinterpret the characters inventively, retaining the
defin ing features of their psychology while playing with their archetypal,
religious and cultura l symbolism, as well as the readers' expectations.
All the cultural elements they appropriate take on a whole new sense:
the biblical overtones are introduced by the constant p resen ce of an an-
gel, who used to be the superhero called Spectre, and who now behaves
more like a modern version of the ghost of Christmas future. Arthur
C urry, formerly Aquaman of the Justice League and king of Atlan tis, is
now known as I{jng Arthur. Starting from the fac t that E lvis Presley
was such a big fan of Captain Marvel that the stage costumes of his later
career were insp ired by that hero's costume design, Ross extrapolated
that Captain Marvel Jr. , now an adult, reappropriares the design as fil-
tered through Pres!ey, and becomes an Elvis im personator superhero
by the name of I{jng Marvel (see figure 2) . In a comment on the intrin-
sically commercial nature of popular culture, Plane t Krypton goes from
being the n ame of Superman's homeworld to becoming the name of a
chain of theme restaurants, where the decoration and staff are all made
to resembl e actual props and characters from superhero history.
Projects like Kingdom Come have come under severe criticism from
some quarters regarding their excessive fixat ion on such background
WHAT IFTHE APOCALYPSE NEVER HAPPENS 221

/ ,=,.
(

-.
Fig. 2 The superhero's recycling
potential: King MarveL In: 'King-
dom Come: Revelations'. 1997
(limited collected edition supple-
ment). Art by Alex Ross. Copy-
right 1997 DC Comics.

detail and their inclusion of even obscure trivia from sixty years of su-
perhero stories, which may result in a series of superhero in-jokes only
the most committed fans will get. However, those mostly anti-superhe-
ro critics (who have no such qualms about the pop culture references of
The b zvisibles, for instance) do not seem to realise that, like other genres
in a postmodern phase, comics do not mine and recapitulate only the
accumulated cul tural history of other arts, but also their own. Kingdom
Come, like The lnvisibles and the other series examined so far, is particu-
222 ABRAHAM KAWA

lady adept at featuring continuous cuIrural asides and subplots, often

expressed wordlessly in the background of panels. This technique
achieves a multi-layered feeling, and is successful on two accounts.
Firstly, it can be appreciated by the connoisseurs of the genre . Second-
ly, by way of the narrativeless recapitulation of past cultural history and
images which, as Rushkoff argues, is a prerequisite in our fast-forward
moving culture, this technique can instantaneously express to the 000-
committed reader a set of ideas resonating and relating to each other
and to other cultural elements, without the need of a time-consuming
linear story in order for them to be comprehended. III The creators are
thus free to pur them in new contexts.
The prophetic visions of a priest, in which Armageddon is brought
about by the war of the superheroes, motivate the narrative, yet early
on, the biblical is spliced with the superheroic and subverted in a man-
ner much similar to Moore's Twilight proposal. The conflict, rather than
being the final battle between the older forces of good and the younger
armies of darkness, is a lot more complicated, and the roles assumed by
the protagonists are ambiguous. Instead of joining his old friends, Bat-
man sides with and eventually leads a band of young renegades. While a
ruthless new hero appropriately named Magog is initially set up as the
Adversary, his position is subsequently filled by the Batman, Captain
Marvel, and even the angel/saviour/Christ archetype, Superman him-
self, who nearly destroys the world single-handed. The conclusion,
though not anticlimactic, is not the end of the world and of history, but
once again, a new beginning, with the surviving heroes more human
than ever, and working to help humanity into its next great adventure.
But what is all this evolutionary hype getting at, you might ask? What
does it all mean? Both evolutionary creators and theorists are still grop-
ing in the dark, but from what we know so far, we can suppose that
"evolution is a journey toward dimensionality. From the two-dimen-
sional amoeba to the human": from the two dimensional plots of early
comics to the multilayered stretching and bending of comic art and cul-
ture in contemporary c.omics; from flat art to perspective and holo-
gram; and from literal meaning to metaphor and recapitulation, "higher
levels of dimensionality are the goal of evolutionary development."1 9
Indeed, the very process of cultural recycling and recapitulating may be
the way by which we learn to adapt and evolve within the chaotic cul-

18. Rushkoff (1997). Ibid., p.238.

19. Ibid., pp. 242-43, 12.
WHAT IF THE APOCALYPSE NEVER HAPPENS 223

tures imagined by Toffler and Moore. The point of evolution, then, very
much resembles the point of postmodernism: to step out of the picture
and examine rea lity from a higher dimension, a higher state of self-con-
sciousness.
The postmodernist comics I have discussed here all acknowledge
their adolescent frivolity and are packed with referentia l asides and
quirky surrealism, but this light-hearted treatment of their genre disguises
very important evolutionary concerns. As Morrison himself suggests in
another brilliant series, Flex Mentallo, in which comic book superheroes
are revealed to be part of a higher reality towards which our own in-
complete world is evolving, we have been inhabiting a comic book
world; at this level, characters interact with readers, as we all approach
the millennium, bracing ourselves for the advent of total reality.
This is not a view restricted to comics or even popular culture. It ac-
tually shares many points with the holographic theory, a relatively re-
cent and exciting development in quantum physics which suggests
"that our world and everything in it are hologram-like images projected
from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond space and
time".20 Aspects of this theory, as is the case with all other contemporary
elements appropriated by posnnodern comics, have been foreshadowed
in various ancient philosophical and metaphysical cultures and tradi-
tions such as Tibetan Buddhism, Platonic Idealism, and Shamanism. 21
What I hope this paper demonstrates is how, by dipping into the
pool of the collective unconscious, comics recycle motifs and images,
from shamanic initiations to their contemporary equivalents, the UFO
encounters, and use them to craft narratives of "an evolutionary thrust
toward higher consciousness for all h umanity".22 The superhuman di-
mension the shaman has access to and which affirms the potential for
transcendence in all people is literalised in the superhero, and thus in-
stilled in the heart of our changing culture. 23 Like the narratives of
UFO contact, today's evolutionary comics narratives are seen by their
creators, as well as a number of theorists, as a way to deal with and
make sense of a reality that is "once again malleable",21 a holographic

20. ll.tlbot, Michad ( 1996) The Holographic Universe. HarperCollins Publishers, p.!.
Morrison's version of a higher level of reality in TIu lllvisibles (called the Invisible
College in a nod to }acques Vallee) is also based on this theory.
21. Ibid., p. 286, 287, 289.
22. Ibid., p. 299.
23. McKenna ( 1991 ). p, 165.
24. Talbot (1996). Ibid., p. 300.
224 ASRAHAM KAWA

universe which is being uploaded and reborn into the higher level from
which it was projected. If Ollr world is on the brink of such a profound
metamorphosis, it needs stories that provide it with "small doses of the
omnijective and confrontations with the imaginal", stories that teach its
people to "manipulate such a plastic environ ment safely". 25 It is for this
reason perhaps, that these magnificent archetypal beings, be they an-
gels, aliens, or superheroes, all try to show us the way to learn, survive
and thrive in the face of Armaggedon.

25. Ibid., p. 300, 30 1.

 2000AD and Hollywood:
The Special Relationship b etween
a British Comic and Am erican Film

James How

Together with Deadline a nd Viz, Roger Sabin has identified 2000AD as

one of the three mos t radical newsstand comics to emerge in Bri tain
since the 1960s. Surprisingly, then, all three of these comics attached
them selves [0 other popular media . For a tim e, until it folded , Deadline
anempted to fuse the comic and the British music magazine; Viz still
manages to make mileage out of its parodies of British com ics su ch as
the Beano and the D andy, which its readers had bought as children .
2000AD, the exception, has always appeared to find inspiration and
success in emulation of American films and comics. As a response to
that exceptionality, [his p aper will attempt to discover the nature of the
relationship between 2000AD and popular American fi lm.
The first issue of 2000AD appeared in 1977: the year in which the
Sex Piswls' Never M ind the Boilocks album was released . Never M ind the
BolJocks was a watershed in that it seemed aggressively to d eny the value
of all am ecedents in the histor y of popul ar music. But most par ticularly
it and the punk movemen t as a whole d enied the valu e of Amer ican an-
tecedents: as in Sid Vicious's caterwauling rendition of Frank Sinatra 's
. ' My Way' and the cheers with which punk audiences greeted news of
the death of Elvis Presley.l Roger Sabin argues that ZOOOAD cam e out
of this punk heritage; and he has evidence to back up his argument. For
exampl e plate 15 shows one of a number of covers depicting punk fig-
ures and ac ts of random an ti-social behaviour; and ZOOOAD's shor t
lived and volatile predecessor, A ction, undoubtedly became associated
with punk in the hail of tabloid newspaper opprobrium that it anracted
upon itself with the running of such violent strips as ' Hookjaw' (a bla-

1. In fact punk owed a great deal to the heritage of American popular music: iLS style
and sound wt:re lifted directly from an earlier New York scene headed by the New
York Dolls.
226 JAMES HOW

ram attempt to cash in on the success of the film Jaws). 2 But unlike Ac-
tion 2000AD was able for almost two decades to thrive on association
with an appositional sub-culture - with circulation peaking at 120,000
copies per issue. Why then was this circulation down to 70,000 by
1996? And if 2000AD at its best was appositional then to what exactly
was it in opposition? - for if it merely replicated the punk trashing of
American cultural products practised by Action then we have no expla-
nation as to why it was so popular for so long.
Beyond punk, 2000AD's appearance also coincided in Britain with
the period of the slow demise of Jim CaUaghan's Labour government;
which eventually imploded in 1979 after a series of crippling national
and local strikes. Was 2000AD then in some kind of loosely defined op-
position to the Conservative government that was beckoning as early as
1977, and that Margaret Thatcher steered to successive election victo-
ries in 1979, 1983, and 198?? The eighties in particular are remem-
bered in Britain as a period during which opposition was expressed by
means of public disorder, for example the Trafalgar Square based Poll
Tax riots of the late eighties. And this disorder was indeed mirrored in
2000AD by the 800 million criminally inclined inhabitants of Mega
City One: the enormous twenty-second century American metropolis
ruthlessly policed by 2000AD's most famous character, Judge Dredd. It
has been suggested that readers of the 'Judge Dredd ' strip removed
themselves to a futuristic fictiona l version of America in order to expe-
rience the logical extension of the fascistic police state into which
Thatcher was allegedly transforming Britain. But this is to treat the
analogy between Britain and America as entirely neutral. If this were
the case then why couldn't the writers of 'Judge Dredd' have set the
strip in a futuristic Britain; which does exist in Dredd's world but only
as the entirely marginal Brit-Cit? In many ways such a setting would
have made more sense; as the city blocks of Mega City One - visible be-
hind the wall in plate 15 - are far more reminiscent of housing schemes
in Britain than of housing projects in America. To my mind the strange-
ness of the decision in 1977 to set a British comic strip so determinedly
on the eastern seaboard of the United States - together with the effort
made to imagine that setting - is the central fact of 'Judge Dredd'. After
all, previous British science-fiction strips such as the Eagle's 'Dan Dare'
had made no such decision or effort. In fact Mega City One's city-

2. 'Houkjaw' was scripted by Pal MiUs, who went on to co-creatt: the 'Judge Dredd'
strip.
2000Af) AND HOLLYWOOD 227

blocks and streets are so intricately realised in 'Judge Dredd' that it is

no exaggeration to claim the city as the true hero of the stripi as op-
posed to Dredd himself who is an anonymous clone famously never
drawn with his helmet off. Nor is Dredd the only 2000AD character to
have her or his home in America. Both 'Robohunter' and 'The Ballad
of Halo Jones' are originally set in versions of New York: 'Robohunter'
in a nameless Mega-City and 'The Ballad of Halo Jones' on a floating
hoop moored in the vicinity of the Manhattan Platform.
Perhaps this obsession with the setting of America is merely an at-
tempt to come to terms with the truth of M. Thomas Inge's claim-stak-
ing of comics as "one of the few native American art forms" ( 1990. xv-
xvii). But this would not explain the timing of 2000AD's insistence .o n
the setting of America. For many people in Britain the defining featu re
of the late 1970s and 1980s was the unsettling consummation of the
special relationship that had been blossoming between Britain and
America since the end of the nineteenth century; most explicitly in the
famously intimate relationship between Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
On a politica l level this special relationship allowed Thatcher to wage
war against Argentina in 1982 for repossess ion of the Falkland Islands
without fear of any other country's intervention. And yet ever since the
Suez crisis in the 1950s there has been no doubt as to which country is
the junior partner in the re lationship. This was amply demonstrated in
1986 by Reagan's free use of Britain as take-off point for his bombings
of Tripoli: thus fu lfilling George Orwell's prophecy in 1984 that in the
fu ture Britain would function as America's 'Airstrip One'.
The intimacy of the relationship between America and Britain had
fizzled out by 1992: the chemistry between John Major and George
Bush didn 't catch fire in the same way. In political terms dlis intimacy
had clearly been no more than a matter of a decade or so's expediency.
But what were som e of its cultural effects? In 1987 the makers of
2000AD published a new comic called Crisis. One of the strips in this
comic is entitled 'New Statesmen'. within which Britain is reduced to
rhe fifty-first state of the Union. Was this form of ironic reaction to the
Anglo-American special relationship the source of the oppositional
quality that had so characterised 2000AD throughout the 1980s? - and
was the demise of the importance of this relationship somehow related
to the demise of 2000AD's popularity? I think so. But unli ke Crisis,
2000AD expressed unease at the level of Americanisation of Britain in
the late 1970s and 1980s most often not by means of direct irony; but
instead by means of the postmodern tactic of "complicitous critique "
228 JAM ES HOW

(Hutcheon 1989, 2) of mainstream Am erican culture: embodied as it is

by the Hollywood movie. In an article published in the review section
of The Independenl, 29 August 1998, entitled 'Disneyficarion that im-
poverishes us all') Benjamin Barber refers to "the pictures, information,
and ideas that are the sinews of the postrnodern soul ", It was precisely
by means of such sinews that the Americanisation of Britain was
achieved and the special relationship cemem ed; amid a flood of Ameri-
can cop series and fi lms that played on British televisions and cinemas
throughout the 19805. In our postmodern condition the best way to ex-
press disenchantment with one set of pictures, information, and ideas is
to reproduce them with subtle differences in order to highlight their as-
sumptions and contradictions . So, 2000AD did not reject the settings
and conventions of American popular culture; instead it embraced them.
Why would 2000AD adopt such a tactic? If it was in opposition to
the Anglo-American special relationship and to its cultural products
then why not ju st say so? - as the Crisis comic repeatedly did. Crisis was
a brave attempt to do something different in the fi eld of British comics;
but it tended to work on only on e level and its readers soon tired of rep-
etition of the sam e political and ecological messages. In contrast
2000AD could be read in a variety of ways. Roger Sabin points out that
2000AD's birth was contemporaneous with the release of the films Slar
Wars and Close Encoumers. More specifically he argues that m uch of
2000AD's initial success was founded in its ability to borrow movie
ideas and to imita te American comics, which were fa r more popular at
the time. And indeed the problem with any attempt to provide alterna-
tive aesthetic templates to those of H ollywood lies in the sheer immedi-
acy of American popular culture. The 1977 release of Star Wars in par-
ticu lar inaugurated a period of dominance of film and television that.
far fro m diminishing, has on ly reached new heights with Titanic. I:.ike
the political relationship between Britain and the US this d ominance
has been developing since at least the begin ning of this century, with
the fo unding of the Hollywood m ovie industry; also like the special re-
lationship it reached a p.eak during the 1980s. Evidence of the growth
of this dominance is provided by Janer Was ko, who presents the exam-
ple of the company formed by the 1990 merger of Tim e Inc. and Warn-
er Communica tions Inc., "to form one of the largest communications
companies in the world" ( 1994, 48). The incredible scope of Am erica's
dominance of popular culture only came to a head with the creation of
such mega-companies; in fact it h ad been rapidly increasing throughout
the late seventies and early eighties. This was true to the extent that in
2000AD AND HOLLYW'QOD 229

terms of which films it was possible to see at any given cinema, by

1991: "US fi lms represented no less than 58% in any BC country.
93% in the UK" (1994, 222). 3
2000AD consciously reacted to this dominance by means of the
postmodern tactics of "disruption from within: micropolitics, language
games, parodic skirmishes, irony, fragmentation" (Waugh 1992,5).4 As
I have pointed out, Roger Sabin suggests that some form of borrowing of
ideas went on between the emergent 2000AD and such films as Star
Wars and Close Encounters. But on the level of mood the gung-ho optimism
of Swr Wars and the benignity of the aliens in Close Encou.mers finds no
parallel in the mood of pessimism which prevails within the pages of
2000AD. Star Wars is a tale of morally justified freedom fighters waging
guerrilla war against an evil Empire; a film that culminates only with
the destruction of the Death Star, the Emperor's only once-tested ulti-
mate instrument of death . The Death Star's annihilation of Princess
Leia's home p lanet is witnessed from a great distance as little more than
a momentary flash of light. In 2000AD weapons of mass destruction are
rarely idle; and their effects are more oft en than not freely visualised.
'The Ballad of Halo Jones' concludes its third book with Halo's realisa-
tion that she has been unwittingly complicit in the destruction of the
entire population of the planet of Tarantula by means of ratwar. (Rat-
war is conceived of as the controlled use of vicious rats as a m eans of
spreading human diseases such as bubonic plague and cholera). The
storylines of 'Judge Dredd ', 'Strontium Dog', 'Nemesis the Warlock',
'Rogue Trooper', and 'ABC Warriors' all involve experience of nuclear
holocaust. Up until the mid-1990s mainstream Hollywood tended not
to focus on images of truly mass destruction. Instead it satisfied itself
with occasiona lly depicting a sanitised version of the post-apocalyptic:
as in the erased desert surfaces of Planet of the Apes and Mad Max 2, the
.'
3. It is just thi.~ process which Benjamin Barber (in an arricle referred to in the body
of the text) criticizes for its aim of: "pressing nations into onc homogenous global
culture, onc Mc-World tied together by communications, information, entertain-
ment and commerce."
4. The idea of the posunodern as being characterised by critique from within ratller
than from without was most dearly eluborated by Linda Hutcheon. foor Patricia
Waugh this is all part of the admission IhlLt with the advent of the posunodern:
"there is {now] no position outside of culrure from which lO view culture. There is
no Kantian 'view from nowhere', no concepruai space not already implicated in
that which it seeks to contest" (1992, 5). To read comics in terms of their relationship
with other media - as r am doing by identifying a posunodern relationship between
2000AD and American film - is likely to upset comic purists. And yellO my mind
this particular comic's intimate relationship wilh American film is undeniable.
230 JAMES HOW

untroubled ocean surfaces of Walerworld, and the fleeting glimpses of

Twelve Monkeys and Terminator:, or at most Hollywood depicted the mo-
ment just prior [0 apoca lypse as in Dr Strange/ove.
In contrast 2000AD specialised in depicting both the post-apocalyp-
tic and the actual moment of apocalypse. This was most often true first
in a series of one-off strips labelled 'Future Shocks', which often deah
with the after-effects of nuclear war. And second it was most often truc
in the 'Judge Dredd' strip. The Dredd storylin e 'The Apocalypse War'
details the destruction of half of Mega-City One and the death of 400
m illion or so of its citizens as a result of nuclear m issiles fired by the
judges of Eas[-Meg One. The dark humour of this storyline is emph a-
sised by the fact that the apocalypse war probably saves Mega-City One
from itself; as before the bombs begin to drop its citizens are involved in
a form of mass civil war between rival city-blocks referred to in a previ-
ous storyline as 'Block Mania'. On being asked by the Chief Judge
whether or not he thinks it would be beneficial to inform the citizens of
imminent nuclear war Judge Dredd replies: "The citizens? What makes
you think they'd be interested?" Other Dredd story lines which empha-
sise the post-apocalyptic or the moment of apocalypse include: 'The
Cursed Earth', 'City of the Damned ', and 'Necropolis', in which un-
dead Judges from another dimension, led by Judge Death, invade
Mega-C ity One with the intention of sentencing the whole city [0
death, with the rationa le that only the living commit crimes. Of course
Dredd foils Judge Death's plans but not before untold millions of
Mega-City One's long-suffering citizens have been sentenced and put
to death; and the storyline ends with unsettling images of piles of
corpses being bulldozed into open grave-pits outside the city's walls.
These scenes in Dredd smrylines directly reminiscent of Auschwitz,
Belsen, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mirrored by genocidal themes in
other 2000AD strips. 'Nemesis the Warlock' documents the crusades of
a post-apocalyptic Earth ~ renamed Termite and politically remodelled
on the Spain of the Inquisition ~ against all alien species; with the ulti-
mate aim of the complete exterm ination of aU aliens for the crime of al-
leged impurity. 'Strontium Dog' takes place on a twenty-second centu-
ry Earth bombarded by nuclear fallout; present in which is the isotope
Strontium 90 which has resul ted in the birth of large numbers of mu-
tated babies. Once these mutants have reached maturity they are
hounded into death camps by persuasive politicians, proclaiming what
is specifically referred to as a "final solution" to the mutant problem. In
ZOOQAD AND HOLLYWOOD 231

its obsession with these themes 2000AD reveals sympathy with the pes-
simistic mood of M. H. Abrams' early definition of posrmodernism, as:

the term .. . sometimes applied to the literature and art after

World War II ... when the effects on Western morale of the first
war were greatly exacerbated by the experience of Nazi totalitari-
anism and mass extermination, the threat of total destruction by
the atom bomb, the progressive devastation of the natural environ-
ment, and the ominous fact of overpopulation. (1988, 109-10) .

Hollywood during the same period shied away from the expression of
any such mood.
Nor was the moment of apoca lypse and the post-apocalyptic the only
thing that 2000AD attempted to visualise throughout the 1980s that Hol-
lywood either could not or would not. In a review entitled 'He's not be-
ing funny, he's struggling heroically under the capitalist yoke', published
in the review section of the Observer, 15 February 1998, J. G. Ballard ex-
pressed disappointment with Hollywood's mode of visual representation:

Hollywood's success in defining the global imagination is in many

ways surprising. Most of its big-budget films, to be frank, aren't
that good, and the special effects are often less than convincing -
Titanic seemed to me more cruel tank than cruel sea.

In contrast throughout the 1980s 2000AD became a medium for what

Friedrich Knilli terms "fantastic and dream images" ( 1986, 138) far re-
moved from the essentially realistic mode of the Hollywood film. For
example 'Robohunter' features bold imagination s of total bodily trans-
formation. In the first ' Robohunter' storyline Sam Slade and Jim K idd
are exposed to the effects of unshielded faster than light travel: imag-
ined as reducing the body's age by approximately 35 years. Much later
the cover of PROG 276 depicts the infant Kidd (who has hired Slade to
fi nd our who is trying to kill him) blown up to comic proportions after
he has swallowed a potentially lethal helium pellet. 5 Again, in the Holly-
wood films The Fifth Element and The Empire Strikes Back futuristic cit-
ies are seen from a great distance or in ve r y restricted section; whereas
the bold visualisation of detailed cityscapes is an essential part of 'The
Ballad of Halo Jones' (fi gure 1 shows the floating Atlantic H oop that

5. 2UOOAD refers [0 its individual i~sl1cS as programme~, or PROGs.

232 lAMES HOW

~ i14ftad o,{
mma@ d]@r:J[]@ -.L~
Fig, ll an Gibson. 'T he Ballad of Halo joncs' (Book 1), p. 16- 17. 2000AD, # 376.
1984. Copyright: Egmont Fleetway Limited

provides the setting for the first book of that strip). A recurrent story-
line in the 'Judge Dredd' strip concerns the implications of the genetic
recreation of dinosaurs in the late twenty-first century; dinosaurs which
are imagined by the time ofDredd's twenty-second century as breeding
freely in large numbers in the nuclear wildernesses of the C ursed Earth.
A storyline from 1983 revolves around four dinosaurs which have been
set free from a circus to roam the streets of M ega-City One. Hollywood
was not able convincingly to visualise such scenes of dinosaurs in the
city until 1997's The Lost Ut6dd and 1998's Godztlla; and even then
scenes in which Godzilla runs amok through New York were accused of
looking more like a compUler game than a fi lm. These Hollywood effects
were produced with the perfection of:

techniques called 'morphing' ... [used] to meld film and computer-

generated images through digital composiring, and making
'sticky' to graft the characteristics of one image ontO another.
(Wasko 1994, 3 1)
ZOOOA D AN D HO LLYWOOD 233

And even after this perfection, Wasko points our that Ju rassic Park was
able to include only " about six and a half minutes of digital dinosaur
footage, which requ ired eighteen months of work by fifty people using
$ 15 million worth of equipment" ( 1994, 3 1).
Again, throughout the 1980s mainstream H ollywood appeared to
distance itself from the truly shocking depiction of violence indulged in
by such directors as Sam Peckinpah in Straw Dogs; and to move to-
wards an anaesthetising depiction of violence best exemplified by gung-
ho m ovies starring Arn old Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
There arc very many exceptions to this generalisa tion - for instance in
the films of Martin Scorcese - but it is surely fair to point out that there
never were films like Rambo 11/ before the 1980s and that such film s if
made today would be secn as deeply unfashionable and a long way out-
side of the mainstream . M. Thomas Inge notes that "George Lucas,
and Steven Spielberg have confessed that their cinematic visions were
largely inspired by (heir early love of comic books" (1990, 143); but he
does not reveal what Spielbcrg and Lucas left out of their movies that
was present in com ics. The freque nt shocking depiction of violent acts
and their consequences in comics was noted by Robert Warshow in his
seminal essay on the medium, ' Paul, the Horror Comics, and DrWer-
th am'. 2QOOAD frequently kept this tradition up: as for insta nce in two
separate 'Judge Dredd' storylines. In 'City of the Damned' Dredd loses
his eyes; and in 'T he D ead Man' he is burnt beyond recognition by im-
mersion in acid. In one of the most violent parts of Th e Empire Strikes
Back the camera pans away immediately when Luke Skywalker loses his
hand to D arth Vader's light sabre. Within minutes of the latter film we
see Luke fined with a full y fun ctioning pain-receptive new hand. In
contrast Dredd is left without replacement eyes for several weeks of one
storylin e; and is left with terrible burns for months in the other. Such
vulnerability acts as a direct commentary on the seemingly invulnerable
series of figures played by Stallone and Schwarzen egger throughout the
1980s. All the more ironic then that it was Stallon e who was eventually
chosen by Hollywood to play Dredd.
All of this might seem like circumstantial evidence: certainly 2000AD
in the 1980s had an obsession, which Hollywood did not share. with
certain images; and it m ay well have had a penchant for holding its
frame around scenes of disfigurement that mainstream Hollywood
chose to pan away from. But this does not prove that the comic was
consciously indulging in a sp ecial and perhaps even postmodern rela-
tionship with the aesthetics of American film. H owever 2000AD repeat-
234 JAMES HOW

F ig. 2 fan Gibson. 'Robohunter' (,The Slaying of Slade') . 2000AD, #321. 1983. Copy-
right: Egmont Fleetway Limited

edly attached itself to mainstream Hollywood in a variety of other more

direct ways. On the most basic level the city-blocks in which the citizens
of Mega City One live in the 'Judge Dredd' strip have names such as
'Rowdy Yates'} 'Morgan Fairchild', and 'Mario Puzo' - drawing the
reader's attention to American te levision serials} actresses) and Holly-
wood scriprwriters. 2000AD covers often featured puns on or allusions
to American films or te levision series, as in the following headlines:
lOOOAOAN D HOLLYWOOD 235

'Rebel with a Cause' (PROG 37 1), 'Full Mental Jacket' (PROG 578),
'Hell Street Blues' (PROG 394), and ' High Society' (PROG 364).
Other strips indulged in more complex parodies of H ollywood genres
such as the scene from the ' Robohunter' strip depicted in figu re 2
wh ich satirises the military training genre of such film s as An Officer and
a Genlleman~ Top Gun, and GJ Jalle by replacing the train ees with tiny
infants and the trainer with a robotic nanny named Sergeant Matron
Clench. The 'Judge Dredd ' strip satirised the right wing agendas of
such film franc hises as ' Rambo', ' Death Wish', and 'Dirty H arry' by re-
moving entirely the customar y check on the maverick cop or soldier
that was provided in Dirty H arry by the fig ure of the chief-of-police.
The J udges are police, judge, and jury all rolled into one: by unleashing
the logical consequences of right-wing fantasies such as Dirty Harry
2000AD was able to satirise their conventions. Another strip, 'D.R. &
Quinch ', features in PROG 364 a storyline entitled 'D.R. & Quinch go
to H ollywood', which directly satirises H ollywood mores as D.R. man-
ages to get a film financed by means of a whispering campaign even
though he has no money, no backing, no stars, no script, and only the
third word, "oranges", of the title.
In all of this I am not saying that 2000AD parodied H ollywood in or-
der entirely to rej ect all of its protocolsj rather its special relationship
with H ollywood function ed according to the dictates of the form of
postmodernism that Linda H utcheon identifies as "complicitous cri-
tique." To my mind 2000AD d id indeed take its mood fro m contempo-
raneous Hollywood film: but instead of Star Wars it did so specifically
from th e revival that took place in the 1970s of an earlier genre that
French critics labelled film noir. Perhaps initiated by John Huston's The
Maltese Falcon in 1941 and having its epitaph in Orson Welles's Touch of
Evil in 1958, the original 'lair was seen by French critics, as Foster Hir-
sch explains, as a series of:

thrillers ... ,more som bre in style and more pessimistic in tone
th an the usual American movi e of the thirties. Marked by a start-
ling cynicism and ending often in defeat, the 'new wave' of crime
dramas contradicted the customary optimism of popular American
pictures. ( 198 1J 8-9)

The revival of noir was heralded by Paul Bogart's Mar/owe in 1969; fo l-

lowed in 1973 by Airman's The Long Goodbye; and included remakes of
FarewelJ~ M y Lovely in 1975 and The Big Sleep in 1978 - both starring
236 JAMESHOW

Fig. 3 lan G ibson. ' Robohunu:r' (Slory unnamed), p. 7. RobolUlIIur, # I

(Reissue, originally published in the magazine 2000A D). 1978.
Copyright: Egmonl Flcetway LImited

an inappropriately aged Roberr Mirchum who h ad been one of rhe

great stars of the original noir. Thi s attempt to revive noi,. was quickly
snuffed Out by the far morc popular optimism of Star Wars; but it was
pi cked up and sustained throughout the 19808 by 2000AD as a m eans
of cornolicitous critioue of the Hollvwood mainstream .
l00QAD AND HOLLYWOOD 237

Most obviously this was done in the ' Robohunter' strip, which func-
tions as homage to 17oir. Barring a single letter the hero of this strip,
Ssm Slade, even sh ares his name with Humphrey Bogart's chara cter
Ssm Spade in The M altese Falcon. Both Sams are detectives: only
whereas Spade hunts down missing husbands and wives Slade hunts
down m issing robots. The scene depicted in figure 3, taken from the
very fi rst episode of ' Robohumer' in 1978, reveals involvement with
m any of 1l0ir's conventions. Hirsch points out that "like everything else
Itoir touch ed it tra nsform ed the new role of women into a negative im-
age. Passed through the 1I0ir filte r, the ' new woman ' ... emerged on
screen as a wicked, scheming creature, sexually potent and deadly to
the male " (198 1, 19-20). And here - in a conscious echo of scenes from
both The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep - a woman walks into Slade's
seedy office in search of help and turns ou t to be a fa kej although the
metaphor is taken to the extrem e as the woman is not a woman at all
bu t a robot. It is interesting to note that one of the few mainstream
H ollywood film s of th e eighties that does have a truly noir fe el, Ridley
Scon's Bladerultner, has much in common with 'Robohunter '; although
very little in Scort's source-novel, Do Alldroids Dream of ElecLric Sheep,
suggests nail'. As Slade surveys the cleverly disguised robot we have in a
box at the bottom of a frame the words: "She was a good looker all
righ t. Too good. And something told me that sparkle in her eye wasn't
love's ftame."We are m eant to take this as internal monologue, wh ich in
the form of voice over narration is another of noir's conventions also
taken up in Bladerunner. Plate 16 depicts a 'Robohunter' storyline from
1983 entitled 'The Slaying of Slade.' Slade's tombstone bears the para-
dox of his birth in 2080 and death in 2 147 at th e age of 32. the result of
unshielded faster than light travel. The tombstone is fl anked by Slade 's
two robotic assistants - on e wearing the typica l noir detective's raincoat
and the other actually being the typica l rwir detective's cigarette. The
fir st page of the storyline shows Slade on h is deathbed; and yet on the
next page the voic~ over narration begins as follows: " It ain't often you
get a story told by a dead man ." In fact such stories are a staple of the
d isorienting noir: the cl assic film s SUllSel Boulevard, Laura, and Criss
C''OSS all begin with narrations by characters who are killed.
'Robohunter' is only the most obviously 'lair of ma ny 2000AD story-
lines. Foster Hirsch suggests that "T he central backgrou nd for .noil· ... is
the American big city" ( 198 1, 78); and th is is taken to th e exrreme with
the elaborate presentation of M ega-City One in the 'Judge Dredd ' strip.
Hirsch also suggests that one of the most impor tant of IIoir's conventions
238 JAMES HOW

was the shift away from the straightforward presentation of ga ngsters in

H ollywood movies of the 19305 to "the notions of the criminal as a
complex, divided character and of the crim inal possibilities - [he poten-
tial for violence - with in the most seemingly ordinar y people" (198 1,
205). This was mirrored in the Dredd strip by the fact that the crimi-
nals were inevitably far more interesting than the characterless Dredd
himselfj and by Dredd's seeming desire to put the whole population of
the city in jail. Many of these 'Judge Dredd' criminals - such as the
graffiti-arrisr Chopper and even.Judge D eath - went on to get their own
strips in Judge Dredd: The M egazine. In a Dredd storyline entitled 'The
Big Sleep', which appeared in PROG 466. the criminal is a priV(lte eye
named Flip Marlowe: only here the 'eye' stands for intimidator and
within a few frames D redd has put two bull ets in Marlowe. The rest of the
storyline - organised by a voice over narration - takes place as Marlowe
attempts to find ou t who sel him up before he dies, in a direct echo of
the 1950 noir fi lm nO.A.
In the realm of technique 2000AD also borrowed heavily from noir.
Hirsch notes that an important characteristic of noir is its "complex
treatment of time": a rendency to employ "splin tered ch ronology ...
flashba cks presented from multiple points of view. and ... fl ashbacks
within flas hbacks" (198 1, 72 and 73). In contrast to the uncluttered
chronology of the Star i~rs trilogy's narration of events tha l took place
a long time ago in a galaxy far fa r away. Story lines in 2000AD often
harked back to noir's chronological complexity. Like the hero of the
1947 film Out of the Past, the hero of the "S trontium D og" strip is sud-
den ly undone by a long forgonen enemy who has not forgotten him.
H aving been gunned d own and left for dead Johnny Alpha flashbacks to
a stor yline that takes six months of comic buying to relive; only then
does the reader understand why what has happened has h appened. The
excessiveness of this d elay surely harks back to the difficult genre of
1loir. Again it is only at the begin ning of the second book of ' The Ballad
of H alo Jones' that we realise that H alo has been dead for centuries and
is m erely the object of ~ i scuss i on in an academic debate of the even
more distant future. M . T homas Inge points out rightly tha t "many
standard [film] techniques were first employed in the comics - montage
(before Eisenstein), angle shots, panning, cl ose-ups, cutting, fram ing,
etc." ( 1990, xx); but does not draw attention to the fact that many of
these techniques became intimate ly associated with noir. Foster Hirsch
particularly identifies noir with an excessiveness of "angularity, vertical-
ity ... tight cutting ... Extreme dose-uDs. Iow an!!les which d istort the:
2000AD AND HOLLYWOOD 239

Fig. 4 John Hicklenton. 'Judge Dredd' (In 'Black Widow'), p. 7. Judge Dredd: The M ega-
zille, # 9. 199 1. Copyright; Egmom F1eetway limited

human face and figure ... [all] appear with almost obsessive repetition"
(1981 ,89). These techniques were mirrored with the same level of ob-
sessiveness in 2000AD and its spin-offs. For instance in a Judge Dredd:
The M egazine cover from 1991 a hard boiled Judge is introduced by
means of a disorienting angle shot. And figure 4 depicts a frame from a
storyline entitled 'The Black Widow', in which a threatening overhead
shot warns the reader that this is a case that Dredd will not solve.
2000AD embraced noir at a time when noir's characteristic "perva-
sive aura of defeat and d espair [and] ... sour post war mood" (Hirsch
1981,21) was deeply unpopular in mainstream Hollywood. It did so as
a means of complicitous critique of a Hollywood with which it had a
special relationsh ip. Why then did 2000AD seem to have lost its point
by the mid-1990s? After all, if anything Hollywood has only increased
its dominance of popular culture; and so critique wou ld seem to be
even more relevant now than then. One reason cou ld be the end of the
specia l relationship between Britain and the US and the subsequent
loss of the edge to much of the comic's postmodern politics; whereby
with the aestheticization of the political realm any critiqu e of American
aesthetics becomes ipso facto a critique of American politics. With the
end of the Cold War it is increasingly likely that Britain's future lies in
Europe rather than in America; and so a comic so determinedly set in
America has come to seem anachronistic. Like M argaret Thatcher
240 JAMESHOW

th en, 2000AD's inability lO move on from its specia l relationship with

America in order to embrace some measure of EUfopeanizarion is likely
to be its downfall.
Another reason for 2000AD's declining relevance cou ld lie in Holly-
wood itself - which during the course of the 19905 perceptibly lost
much of the gung-ho brio of the 19805 that 2000AD had so gleefully
satirised. What has been termed H ollywood's maturation through the
work of Steven Spielberg was signalled by the mul ti-Oscar winning suc-
cess of Schindler's Lisl; it had begun tentatively with the same direccor's
Empire of the Sun and has proceeded apace with the release of Saving
Private Ryan as the final instalment of what may come to be seen as a
coherent trilogy dealing seriour;ly with the legacies of the Second World
War. During the course of the 1990s Hollywood also redi scovered the
power of the western as a genre after a decade and a half of spoofs:
mOSt noticeably with Clint Eastwood's Ullforgiven. Throughout the
J 980s 2000AD had filled the hole-in-the-market provided by the un-
fash ionabilty of the western in Hollywood by providing a futuristic ver-
sion of the genre in the 'S trontium Dog' strip. In the 1990s Hollywood
also showed itself willing to invest rime and money in updating noir; as
in rhe cycle of serial killer films best exemplified by Seven. In its con-
centration on the city at night, on violent crime and the criminal, and
in the ultimate defeal of Morgan Freeman and Brad Piu's detectives,
Seven was noticeably noir. But most noticeably in the 1990s Hollywood
was affected by the arrival of th e new generation of computer generated
imaging [hat was first signalled by the release of Terminator 2. Despite
adverse criticism the perfection of the techniques of 'morphing' and
'making sticky' really did allow for the development of a new mode of
representation. Almost immediately a rash of mainstream films were re~
leased showing images of truly mass destruction of recognisable towns,
cities, and landmarks: Twister, Independence Day, Deep Impact, Godzilla,
Armaggedon, The Avellgers, the list goes on. It was precisely the absence
of such images from H ollywood that 2000AD had traded on. In his
book Dark Knights Greg McCue argues that: "The comic~book medi-
um has now reached a level of sophistication that combines Hollywood
effects at pocket-money prices" (1993, x). But to my mind the argu-
ment that the comics medium ca n or should compete on the same level
as that of film is spurious. The evidence provided by the British comic
2000AD is that if the comics medium is to indulge in special relation-
ships with Hollywood then it had better be posrmodern complicitous
critique: imagining either what Hollywood will not or can n ot show.
2000AD AND HOLLYWOOD 24 1

References

Abrams. M . H . (1 988). A Glossary of LiterQlY TerlllS. 5'~ ed. New York: Holt.
Rinchart and \Vinston.
Hirsch. Foster ( 1981 ). The Dark Side of the Screelf: Fi/m Noir. New York: Da
Capo Press.
Hutchcon. Linda (1989). The Politics of Postlllode1'llism. London: Routledge.
Inge. M . Thomas. ( 1990). Comics as C II/lure. Jackson: U niversity Press of Mis·
s]ssippi.
Knilli. Fricdrich et a1 (1986). 'Some Aspects of the Development Toward a
Visual Culture: The Example of Comics'. In: Comics alld Visual Cult/IN;:
Research Swdies f rom Tell COlllUries. Munich: K. G. Saur.
M cCue. Greg S. (1993). Dark Knights: The New Comics in COlllexl. London:
Pluto Press.
Sabin, Roger ( 1996). Comics, COli/ix, alld Graphic Novels: A H istOlY of Graphic
Art. London: Phaidon.
Warshow. Robert (1970). ' Paul, the Horror Comics. and DrWertham '. In: The
Immediate Experielfce: M ovies, Comics, Theatre and other Aspecu of PoplIlar
ClIllUre. New York: Atheneum.
ClIlture.
Wasko. Ianer (1994). H ollywood in the IlIformation A ge: Beyond the Si/vel' Sc/'een.
Ca mbridge: Polity Press.
Waugh, Patricia ( 1992). Introduction to PostmodernislI/: a Reader. Edited by
Patricia Waugh. London: Edward Arnold.
Contributors

AULT, DONALD
(PhD University of Chicago) is Professor of English at the University of
Florida. H e previously taught at the University of California, Bcrkelcy,
and arVanderbiJt University. Since 197 1 He has been regularly teaching
graduate and undergraduate courses in com ics. H e is the author of
Visionary Physics: Blake's R esponse to Newlon (1974) and Nal'ralive Un-
bound: Re- Visioll jllg Wifliam Blake"s The Four Zoas (J 987) and co-editor
of Critical Paths: Blake and the Argumem of M ethod (1987). From 1983-
98 he served as consultant and contributor to The Ca rl Barks Library.
H is work has appeared in Studies in Romanticism, M odem Philology,
Eighteenth-Century Studies, T he Wordsworth Circle, and The K eats-
Shelley Journal, as well as various essay collections. H e was executive
producer of the 1996 video production The Duck Man: An Interview
with Carl B arks. He is currently completing books on Carl Barks and on
comics theory.

CHRlSTIANSEN, HANS-CHRISTIAN
MA in Film Studies ( 1990) from the University of Copenhagen. Lecturer
at the Department of Film and Media Studies) University ofCopenhagen,
199 1-2000. PhD (2000) from the University of Copenhagen with an
interd isciplinary research pro ject in comics with the title "Comics -
Aesthetics and Culture". Ed itor and contributor: M ediekultur, No. 30
(Copenhagen 1999).

FRAHM,OLE
H amburg University. Die Frahm is currently working on a PhD thesis
on Art Spiegelman's MAUS - A Survivor'sTale. In 1990 he was one of
the fou nding m embers of "ArGL" (Research Centre for Graphic Liter-
ature) at the University of Hamburg which is still rhe only public insti-
tu tion for research on comics and related maners in Germany. H e has
published widely about comics history and the aesthetics of comics.
244 CONTRIBUTORS

GROENSTEEN, THIERRY
Editor of Les Cahiers de la bande dessinee from 1984 ro 1988. Director of
the Comics Museum in An gouleme since 1993. Curator of numerous
exhibitions. Editor of the annua l journal ge A rc. Author or editor of 20
books on comics culture, including A nimaux en cases (Futuropolis,
1987), Bande dessinee, reeil et modernitc (Fururopolis, 1988), L' Univers
des mangas (Casrerman, 199 1 and 1996), Couleur directe (Ku ns[ der
Comics, 1993; text in F rench, G erm an and English), Topffe,.: L'in1Jell-
lioll de la bande dessinee (H ermann, 1994, with Benoit Peefers), La
ballde dess/nee (M ilan, 1997), K mzy Herrimall (CNBD I, 1997) and us
amfees Ca ran d'A che (CNBDI, 1998).

HOW,IAMES
James H ow, PhD ca nd idate and teaching ass istant at the University of
Ed inburgh; normally wri ting on seventeenth and eighteenth century
leuers and letter fictions. Also has afC icles appea ring in 1999 in volumes
enti tled Eigllleemh Century Nove/ and BabY/Oil or New Jerusalem? Percep-
riollS of lhe City ill L ireralllre.

INGE, M . THOMAS
The Robert Emory Blackwell Professor of English and Humanities at
Rand olph-M acon Coll ege in Ashland. Virginia. USA. H e is the author
of Comics as Culture (1990) and A nyzhing Can Happell ;11 a Comic Strip
( 1995) and editor of the Handbook of A merican Popular Cuhure. which
will be published in a revised five-vo lume edition in 2000.

KAWA, ABRAHAM
Born and raised in Greece, and is currently working on a PhD on post-
mod ernism in comics in Royal H oll oway Coll ege, U niversity of London.
H e also has degrees on French and English Literary Studies. Postmod-
erni sm and Popular C ulture, and Journalism, briefl y worked on radio
and TV in G reece, and has published numerous articles on comics and
fi lm in [he Greek comics and culture review Babel.
CON'rlUDUTORS 245

LEFEVRE, PASCAL
Pascal Lefevre is a doctoral studcnt at the Belgian U n iversity of Leuven.
He works part-time as a scienrific adviser at the Belgian Centre for Comic
Strip Art in Brussels and he leaches abo ut comics at two Art Schools
(H ogeschool Sint-Lukas in Brussels and Karel D e Grote-Hogeschool
Antwerp). Books: Pour une leclure modeme de la bande dessiwie (with l
Baetens, CBBD, 1993)} A rchitecture dans le lIeuvieme art (NBM-Amstel-
land, ( 996), 50jaar Ne ro kroniek van een dagbladverschijnsel (with Y.
J

Kerremans, Standaard, 1997). With Charles Dierick he edited Forging a

New M edium The Comic Strip illlhe N£neleelllh Century (VUB University
J

Press, 1998). Articles in: ge Art, Olmme, The Low Counrries, CinemAclioll,
etc. D ocumen taries on comics (Winsor M cC ay, Topffer and Hila l).

LEGRADY, GEORGE
Professor of Interactive M edia at M erz Akademie} Stuttgart. His inter-
active installations h ave recently been exh ibited at the Museum of Con-
temporary Art, Los Angeles, the KunstHalle in Bonn, H aus der Kunst,
Munich. Projects Studios One, New York, the Nationa l Gallery of Can-
ada and the Palais des beaux-arts, Brussels. His projects focus on the
intersection of interactive narrative, Interfacc metaphor d esign, cultural
theory analysis, digita l sensing systems, and computer programming as
aesthetic practice. Recent install ations use motion detector sensors and
machin e vision by which to integrate audience presence as an active
component in the narrative development.

MAGNUSSEN, ANNE
MA in Spanish Philology (University of Copenhagen 1993) . Lecturer
and PhD student at the D epartment of Romance Languages, University
of Copenhagen. The subject of th e PhD thesis is Spanish comics and
their representation of the social and political reality in Spain, 1975- 1990.
Articles: "Spanish Comics and the 2 nd trichotomy of C. S. Peircc" In:
PERLES, Extra seriem No. 6 (Lund 1998). ' El comic como texto. U na
lectura de "Cronicas Incongruentes 7" de Miguelanxo Prado'. In:
ElUdes Romanes 44 (Copenhagen, Museum Tuscu lanum . 1999). Editor
and contributor: M ediekultw', No. 30 (Copenhagen 1999).
246 CON""R1Btn'ORS

MURRAY, CHRlS
PhD student and tutorial assista nt in the English department at Dundee
University in Scotland. H e h as presented papers on comics at numerous
venues, notably at the annual Scottish Word and Image Group confer-
ences. He is currently preparing severa l papers for publication. Chris
Murray's research interests include comics, literary and cultural theory,
propaganda, and the perceived distinctions between popular culture
and official d iscourse. H avi ng survived the destruction of his home
planet Chris is nourished by the Earth's yellow sun and secretly devotes
much of his spare time to fighting fo r (rurh, justice and rhe America n
way.

NIELSEN, JESPER
MA. . PhD student at the Department of American Indian Languages
and Cultures, University of Copenhagen. Has worked af the Dani sh
National Museum, and published..various articles on Classic Maya and
Olmec epigraphy and iconography. Author of Under Slangehimlell -
Mayaernes Kulcur og Hislorie to be published autumn 2000 by Asche-
houg Forlag.

SABIN, ROGER
Roger Sabin is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Centra l St. Martin 's
College of Art in London. H e is the author of three books: Adult Com-
ics: All ImroduClt'OIl (Routledge, 1993), The Lasting of the Mohican s (with
Martin Barker, University of Mississippi Press, 1995), and Comics, Co-
mix alld Graphic N(J'lJe/s (Phaidon, 1996). H e is contributing editor of
Hmk Rock, So J,\7hat? (RoutJ edge, 1999), and The M ovie Book (Phaidon,
1999), and a Consulting/contributing Edi tor for The World Encyclopae-
dia of Comics (Routledge, fonhcoming). His London fl at has no more
room fo r comics.
CONTRlBUTORS 247

WICHMANN, S0REN
Assistant professor, PhD, D epartment of American Indian Languages
and Cultures. University of Copenhagen. Wich mann combines an MA
in Comparative Literature and a PhD degree in American Indian Lan-
guages and Cu ltures (both from University of Copenhagen) and is the
author of The RelatiollShip among the Mixe-Zoquean Languages of M exico
(1995) and CUelllOS y colorados en popoluca de Texistepec (1996), as well as
several articles dealing with descriptive linguistics and the relationship
between linguistics and prehistory in M esoamerica, During the latter
part of the 1990s Wichmann has increa.singly been focusing his research
on Maya writing and history.