Of Maus and Gen: Author Avatars in Nonfiction Comics (original) (raw)
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This chapter considers questions of intellectual property, copyright and attribution as they pertain to comics and graphic narratives, aiming to offer the reader a context for consideration of these questions, and a vocabulary for continuing the discussion. An initial overview of corollary concepts in the related fields of literature and film provides several applicable theories, including notions of the “author-function” from literary criticism and “auteur theory” from film criticism. The remainder of the chapter explores the special case of comics—a dual-mode medium composed of both text and image, ultimately arguing for distinct and differentiated concepts of authorship for single-creator, joint-creator, and multi-creator texts.
Autofictographics: Exploring Truth and Identity in Autobiographical Comics
2018
This exegesis documents my investigation into autobiographical sequential art narratives, surveying both the studio work of my doctoral candidature and key contextual research I undertook, and articulating the interrelations between theory and practice in this field. The prime contention of this research is that autobiography is inherently fictive, as it relies on fallible memory and fractured personas in order to convey narrative. Furthermore, the medium of sequential art as a vehicle for autobiographical narratives brings with it slippery interactions between image, word, and meaning, which are subject to variations of interpretation across different readers. Through my research, I have observed the indistinct lines that separate truth and fiction, both within genre and medium, while exploring methods of authorship that adhere to principles of an emotional rather than a literal truth. In this exegesis, I seek to define methods by which an author can put this ambiguity of 'trut...
Media Representation and Transmediation: Indexicality in Journalism Comics and Biography Comics
Beyond Media Borders, Volume 2
This article analyzes the ways in which journalism comics and biography comics create indexicality through intermedial relations. These strategies include media representations of different qualified media types (journalistic report, biography, and autobiography) and of specific media products (such as familiar images of people and places). The article starts with a short history of comics. It then offers a theoretical discussion of intermediality, media representation, and transmediation, with specific focus on the tactics that journalism and biography comics use to represent reality indexically through media representation and transmediation. Furthermore, the authors analyze intermedial relations in the comic albums The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, and Frederic Lemercier; Il mondo di Aisha—Storie di donne dello Yemen by Ugo Bertotti; Maus by Art Spiegelman; To the Heart of the Storm by Will Eisner; Dotter...
Transcending the panels: varieties of experience and selfhood in comics
In this dissertation, I argue that the typical formal features of comics in the American tradition over the past century have influenced the types of narrative content that tend to be communicated by said medium. I argue that the types of reader experiences that are afforded by the comics form, in part, shape the types of stories told through comics. The experiences that result from the ways we engage perceptually, cognitively, emotionally, and conceptually with comics imply a certain view of selfhood that is potentially subversive in the context of American cultural religiosity and spirituality. The formal features of comics, and the resulting reader experiences, imply an understanding of selfhood as being conventional, narrativized, and made possible by active interpretation. The view that selves are constituted by narratives also can be found in the work of various philosophers of self. Narrative understandings of selfhood stand in stark contrast to the traditional entrenched Western view that selves consist of the unified and continuous essences of individuals. Because comics' formal features highlight the actively interpreted and constructed nature of the selves of characters in comics, they are fitting for the communication of narratives that engage with traditions of thought in
Unsettled Narratives: Graphic Novel and Comics Studies in the Twenty-First Century – A Preface
Dialogues between Media
Comic art and graphic narrative constitute a varied and multifaceted chapter in the cultural history of the contemporary age. When comics gained a foothold on the mass-media scene, they appeared as an object that was new, and indefinable. As is often the case when facing a novelty, there was a reactionary response. In fact, the slippery nature of the emerging medium resulted in widespread rejection by the establishment and a variety of negative connotations. Labelled for much of the twentieth century as a genre intended for children, or as second-rate cultural products, or even as morally harmful, in recent times, comics have begun to be re-evaluated by academics, particularly in the West. Even though today there remains a tendency to emphasize the literary value of individual works rather than their nature as sequential art, many negative connotations of the past have given way to an increasing need to understand how the comics medium works and what makes graphic narration so peculiar.
From comic book to graphic novel : writing, reading, semiotics
2006
This dissertation discusses how changes within the authorship, reading practices and criticism of contemporary American comics can alert us to more general questions raised by the inclusion of popular culture in literature. It employs a cultural materialist methodology, researching the first decade of the DC Vertigo imprint (launched in 1993) and considering these texts both as the culmination of trends that can be traced throughout the industry's history, and as modern literature that sustains elements of certain literary genres. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Bristol University Alumni Foundation. And finally, my love to all the friends and fanboys who offered so much help, advice and encouragement ... especially Mark, who got me started on comics and Matt, who fed the habit. iii Declaration I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the Regulations of the University of Bristol. The work is original, except where indicated by special reference in the text, and no part of the dissertation has been submitted for any other academic award. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author.