Refiguring comic book imagery in a post-digital moment: conspicuousness, hybridity and ontological strangeness

Abstract

ABSTRACT While today’s mainstream comic books confront us with the replacement of hand-created images with computer-driven techniques and styles, the aesthetic dimension of the use of digital tools in the creation of comic art has received limited critical attention. This article addresses this lack by reflecting on a tension between conspicuous uses of computer colouring and hand-colouring. Furthermore, I discuss a hybridity that relativises distinctions between ‘digital’ and ‘traditional’ comic book art. Drawing upon the writings on media scholars Lev Manovich and D.N. Rodowick and examples from works associated with comics auteur Frank Miller, I argue that digital tools have augmented comics creation with new properties. Furthermore, I propose that these properties test our confidence in knowing what these images ‘are’ from an ontological perspective. The analysis is set against the backdrop of how thinking in terms of ‘digital’ versus ‘analogue’ has become secondary in a present post-digital moment. I conclude by suggesting that we need to move the discussion beyond the ‘newness’ of the digital to build a better understanding of the ontological uncertainties and the genealogies surrounding digitally created comic book imagery.