Comics & Media: A Special Issue of Critical Inquiry Ed. by Hillary Chute and Patrick Jagoda

Abstract

and edited by Hillary Chute and Patrick Jagoda Special issue, Critical Inquiry 40, no. 3 (2014). 284 pages The very first thing one notices about and Media, aside from its unmistakably Robert Crumb-drawn cover (in which a brawny drag queen and an effeminate youth hold hands in application for a marriage license), its size, its materiality--appropriately enough, considering collection's emphasis on materiality and embodiments of comics and, more broadly, media at large. In introduction to this collection, editors Hillary Chute and Patrick Jagoda describe size of this special issue of Critical Inquiry as unprecedented in journals history. Indeed, there much about and that somewhat unprecedented, particularly its unique blend of scholarly essays, panel transcripts and interviews, and original artwork by nine leading cartoonists. holds these disparate units together Chute and Jagoda s editorial emphasis on embodied practices of reading and creating, particularly amid the intertwining of theory and evident in and (2014,2). and had its inception at University of Chicago's May 2012 Comics: Philosophy and Practice conference, proceedings of which are printed in this edition. According to introduction to and Media, conference (organized by Chute) aimed to create generative exchange between arts practice and critical and theoretical (1). One might even push this claim a step further and argue that a key concept in and precisely arts practice as theoretical practice. In this sense, and continues work of Chute's Graphic Women (2010), in which she highlighted centrality of cartoonist's hand to intimacy of comics. What feels so intimate about comics that it looks like what it Chute argues; handwriting an irreducible part of its instantiation, as distinct from typeface in which a work of prose can be printed (Chute and Jagoda 11). Among sources informing Graphic Women were a number of interviews with five comics artists under consideration; in and artists themselves take floor and speak with each other, with interviewers, and as presenters. The contents of and can be divided into three categories: conference transcripts, original artwork, and critical essays. In first of these, text transcribes eight panels and interviews from May 2012 conference, and a few words should be said about contents of these eight transcripts. In lieu of a keynote lecture, Art Spiegelman and W.J.T. Mitchell address question What %$#! Happened to Comics?, considering recent elevation of comics studies as a line of serious inquiry. Spiegelman suggests that mongrel hybridity of word and image, of legitimacy and vulgarity present in comics has found acceptance thanks to contemporary pervasiveness of polyvocality, of using two different languages (29). Other public conversations reprinted include Joe Sacco on his work as leading comics journalist, Aline Kominsky-Crumb on trajectory of her career, Francoise Mouly on relationship between editing underground comics anthology RAW and working as art editor for New Yorker, and Alison Bechdel on her fascination with photography and archival material. In wake of Roland Barthes's declaration of death of author, foundational work in field of comics studies was conducted on largely formalist grounds, with figures like Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, and Thierry Groensteen theorizing comics by way of assessing and defining mechanics of medium. Comics and Media does not quite insist on resurrecting author, but it does allow these authors opportunity to talk back to academia, as when Bechdel admits that academic criticism of her work is kind of enlightening [and] I enjoy being analyzed (215). …