Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War

Abstract

Conflict is one of the most prevalent themes in comics, film and literature; we have been writing stories of war and violence since time immemorial. Comics is no stranger to such narratives and is writing them in ways that are different from (and complementary to) literature and film. This book brings together two distinct areas of research–trauma studies and comics–to provide a new interpretation of this long-standing central theme. Focusing on representations of conflict and war in post-Vietnam American comics, it claims that the comics form is able to mimic traumatic experience in order to represent the events as accurately and viscerally as possible. The textual focus spans the whole form, placing mainstream superhero comics alongside alternative and art comics. The specific comics fit a narrow set of criteria, all being published after 1975 by American creators, discussed in conversation with critical material from a wide range of thinkers, including Sigmund Freud, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Fredric Jameson, as well as contemporary trauma theory and clinical psychology. This book is structured around six key issues in conflict and traumatic representation, with close analyses of the chosen texts to consider the effectiveness of comics, both formally and thematically, in the areas of mourning, dreams, and personal identity. Comics, Trauma and the New Art of War also consider how timescales, temporality, and postmodernism affect, and are affected by, the dual focus of comics and trauma.