Demythologizing Honest Abe: Visual Representations of Emotion in Noah Van Sciver's The Hypo

Abstract

This paper examines the depiction of affect in The Hypo, Noah Van Sciver's 2012 graphic biography of Abraham Lincoln, in order to highlight its simultaneous continuation and demythologization of the hagiographic portrayal of Lincoln in American culture. Such a biomythology has been partially perpetuated by the long history of Lincoln graphic biographies, including the portrayals featured in Abraham Lincoln: Life Story (1958) and All Aboard, Mr. Lincoln! (1959). In the first section of my paper, I analyze how Van Sciver's work continues this tradition of hagiography through thematic interests similar to the earlier comics. However, as I show in my paper's second section, Van Sciver contrasts his hagiographic insinuation with a simultaneous depiction of Lincoln as a youth too beset by insecurity to be the superhuman figure taught in American classrooms. The Hypo crafts this portrayal through visual motifs endemic to the grammar of comics. These motifs make Lincoln's emotional struggles visible rather than opaque and inaccessible, which foregrounds the feelings' existence and facilitates public understanding of them. Given that the foregrounding simultaneously counteracts the hagiography of Lincoln, The Hypo demonstrates graphic biography's capacity to counter the lionization of historical figures, since Van Sciver's counteraction happens through visual techniques irreplicable in any other form.