Comic Genre Research Articles

The Utopian Potential of Aging and Longevity in Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah (1921)

George Bernard Shaw’s five-part play cycle Back to Methuselah (1921) has not been fully appreciated for its utopian criticality, a criticality that offers a profound reframing of longevity and old age. That it is a utopia in dramatic (rather than prose) form, deploys an unusual mix of largely comic genres and styles, pursues eccentric ideas of Creative Evolution, and is exceptionally long and unwieldy in production has led to a mostly limited and perplexed scholarly reception from within both utopian and Shaw studies. Against this context, this article unearths the utopian potential of Back to Methuselah, where aging and longevity serve to make possible the emergence of superior human capacity, which is uniquely able to establish and sustain a better world because of the qualities acquired through extended life. In particular, it argues that taking account of the play as a utopian text—with its radical representation of old age as cumulative value—expands to include age in addition to existing progressive narratives familiar from utopian literature since Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), which fundamentally rethink identities of class, gender, race, and sexuality.

Cinna and Crassicius

Abstract This paper argues that an anonymous epigram about the commentator Crassicius marrying Cinna’s Zmyrna is a satirical poem playfully evoking the incest of Zmyrna in order to make a more pointed critique of the genre of commentary. The poem suggests that like Zmyrna herself, the Zmyrna is libidinous, an unfaithful and Catullan mistress who cannot be trusted by her commentator. The poem therefore invites the reader to think more broadly about the relationship between author and commentator and about issues of textual ownership. In antiquity, poems are often imagined as sexual partners, while conversely sex itself is conceptualised as a grammatical activity. Sexuality therefore becomes a site for thinking about grammar and literary criticism and the relationship of commentator to text.

The syntax of interjections in isiXhosa: A corpus-driven study

CITATION: Andrason, A. & Matutu, H. 2019. The syntax of interjections in isiXhosa: A corpus-driven study. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 58:1-16. doi:10.5842/58-0-833

Images and Narratives of Law and Order in the Manga KOBAN

While law and justice issues are well represented in the vast and diverse world of Japanese Manga, the medium’s predilection for fantasy tends to produce futuristic or overblown fiction far removed from everyday life. Fantastic treatments may also reflect relatively low awareness of legal matters in a society of low crime and litigation. One law and order institution that most people are familiar with, however, is the network of community police boxes that covers Japan, and this has spawned a gag-ridden yet somewhat more realistic genre of justice-related comics. This article focuses on Ishikawa Chika’s KOBAN, whose humour revolves around the contrasting personalities and petty squabbles of two cops in their dealings with mundane police work. The characters, plots and conversations are visually supported by juxtaposing the weaponry and equipment of law enforcement with childlike facial features and cute mascots, thereby constructing the police box as a halfway house between local neighbourliness and state bureaucracy.

ESTILO E MARCAS LINGUÍSTICAS: duas faces de um mesmo enunciado

Esse artigo objetiva analisar o estilo do gênero comentário online numa perspectiva sociológica. Neste contexto argumentamos a favor de que o estilo se concretiza nas escolhas linguísticas orientadas tanto pela forma, quanto pelo conteúdo e, especialmente pela posição axiológico-dialógica do comentador. Para Bakhtin (1976[1926]), dependendo do conteúdo e da imagem que se faça do ouvinte, o falante faz suas escolhas linguístico-estilísticas, definindo o estilo do enunciado. Assim, questionamos de que modo as relações de interação direcionam o estilo no gênero comentário online. Adotamos como corpus: comentários sobre notícias online, que tratam do processo de impeachment da presidente Dilma Rousseff, a partir de uma notícia retirada do portal Terra, cuja manchete é: Dilma se reúne com juristas contrários ao impeachment, publicada em 07/12/2015. Como resultado, percebemos que o estilo no gênero comentário online se constitui a partir das relações dialógicas e do posicionamento axiológico do sujeito falante, que faz as escolhas dos recursos linguístico-estilísticos (gráficos, lexicais e gramaticais), orientado pelo contexto extraverbal e pelo gênero discursivo.

Di/Visibility: Marks of Bisexuality in Philippine Cinema

Since the earliest overt depiction of bisexual characters in Philippine cinema in 1954, filmmakers have been attempting to provide various images of bisexuality, initially for comic or melodramatic genre entries, and more recently for serious realist and fantastic social discourses. With the absence of any comprehensive queer-film report that focuses on bisexuality, this article will provide a survey and look at basic trends over two time periods (before and after the current millennium) as well as differences in male and female imaging.

O peregrynacjach artysty i jego dzieła. Przypadek "Efektu melodramy" Feliksa Pęczarskiego

Artykuł poświęcony jest obrazowi Efekt melodramy należącemu do zbiorow Państwowego Muzeum Sztuki w Niżnym Nowogrodzie w Rosji. Blisko 60 lat temu Andrzej Ryszkiewicz zidentyfikował go jako dzieło warszawskiego malarza z połowy XIX wieku, Feliksa Pęczarskiego (1804/1805–1862). Tym samym badacz ten przyczynił się do poszerzenia wiedzy o nielicznie niestety zachowanym dorobku niezwykle ciekawego, głuchego artysty, ktory w swoich czasach zasłynął nie tylko jako autor biedermeierowskich portretow, ale przede wszystkim komicznych scen rodzajowych wykorzystujących karykaturalną charakterystykę fizjonomii postaci i groteskowo przerysowaną mimikę. Atrybucja zaproponowana przez Ryszkiewicza została w pełni przyjęta zarowno przez środowisko polskich badaczy, jak rownież rosyjskich muzealnikow opiekujących się kolekcją w Niżnym Nowogrodzie. Jednakże dotychczas nie została wyjaśniona kwestia sposobu, w jaki obraz trafił do odległej rosyjskiej prowincji.
 Niniejszy artykuł stanowi probę rozwiązania tej zagadki. Według notatki XIX-wiecznego pamiętnikarza Franciszka Ksawerego Preka, ktory znał Pęczarskiego osobiście, ten ostatni podczas kilkuletniego pobytu na Lubelszczyźnie (gdzie powstał omawiany obraz) portretował bliżej nieokreśloną generałową rosyjską. Do zbiorow muzealnych Efekt melodramy trafił w 1924 roku z zamku we wsi Jurino. Przeprowadzona analiza, bazująca na kwerendzie w dawnych inwentarzach kolekcji zamkowej oraz badaniach historii dwoch arystokratycznych rodow związanych z majątkiem, Szeremietiewow i Skobelewow, pozwoliła wskazać osobę, ktora potencjalnie mogła być pierwszym nabywcą obrazu.

ПРОЯВЛЕНИЕ СУБЪЕКТИВНОГО МНЕНИЯ АВТОРА В ЖАНРЕ ВОЕННОГО КОММЕНТАРИЯ (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ АНГЛОЯЗЫЧНОЙ ВОЕННОЙ ПЕРИОДИКИ)

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the military commentary genre from the viewpoint of the manifestation of subjectivism, the author’s personal opinion in it. Communicative purposes, strategies and tactics of this genre are examined. The commentator’s intentions are interpreted through the linguistic means used in the analysed texts. The typical features of the military commentary are identified. Special attention is paid to a compositional, semantic, linguistic and stylistic analysis, which justifies the manifestation of the anthropocentricity phenomenon in the military commentary genre.

A Transtextual Hermeneutic Journey

Gérard Genette’s transtextuality theory serves as the basis for a hermeneutic inquiry into Horst Rosenthal’s Mickey au camp de Gurs. Multiple levels of meaning emerge from transtextual links to other literary genres and works of Western culture, from Disney’s early animations to fairy tales and satire, concluding with Dante’s Inferno. This article analyses Rosenthal’s transtextual discourse and shows how his use of the comic genre to depict the horrors of the Gurs internment camp involves readers in what happened there and produces a text that speaks to all. Using Mickey Mouse, the international cartoon hero, alongside referencing the Inferno, a cornerstone of the Western canon, turns Rosenthal’s experience into a universal one and permits author and reader to focus on the emotional level that transcends all rationality.

The Comic in the Republic of Machado de Assis

This article analyzes the tale “A Sereníssima República” (The Most Serene Republic), by Machado de Assis, approaching the rhetorical artifices of this narrative as constitutive of the conventions of the comic genre. Understanding that this genre consists in a textual unit formalized by images that subvert the common places of realistic enunciation, it points out to the presence of wonder, the fantastic in this fiction, whose conventions amplify the comic and grotesque character of the enunciation. Formed by oxymorons, paradoxical sentences and ingenious metaphors, this narrative satirizes, taking the metonymy as an interpretative procedure, the current values ​​of politics, moral and justice present in the scenes of the nineteenth-century Brazilian republic.

Covering Regional Blind Spots: Commentary journalism in the regional public sphere

Abstract A significant trend within journalism is the growth of the commentary genre. Another trend is the regional withdrawal within news journalism. News media are closing down district offices, which raises concerns over media shadows and blind spots in coverage. This article addresses both of these trends through a case analysis of the Norwegian newspaper Nordlys. Launching its commentary innovation Nordnorsk debatt, Nordlys aims to exceed its geographical area within these columns, facilitating a regional public sphere in the Arctic region. The article discusses the role of opinion-based journalism in the regional public sphere, within the theoretical perspective of media ecology and institutional theory. We argue that covering the regional level in society is a vital part of journalism’s institutional role. In addition, from an ecological perspective, the role of being a regional voice is important in the national public sphere.

Od fanów dla fanów. Komentarze serialowe jako nowe zjawisko komunikacyjne

The article addresses the question of the Internet activity of anonymous amateur translators and fans’ translations of subtitles for series using the example of Korean dramas. The authors focus on analysing the genre of commentary in the audiovisual narrative – TV series. The authors put forward the thesis that the synthetic model of communication in the Internet stimulates communication activity, which affects the transformation of language patterns. Series commentary has been considered to be a new type of genre pattern functioning in the media. What is novel is the kind of cultural text within which a given commentary appears. It may be compared to a commentary which is an explanation, a supplement to the text it refers to. It may also be compared to a more recent pattern – the Internet commentary.

The Greatest Comic Book of All Time: Symbolic Capital and the Field of American Comic Books, Arresting Development: Comics at the Boundaries of Literature, We Told You So: Comics as Art and Spurgeon with Michael Dean

The Greatest Comic Book of All Time: Symbolic Capital and the Field of American Comic Books, Arresting Development: Comics at the Boundaries of Literature, We Told You So: Comics as Art and Spurgeon with Michael Dean

Drawing the Body In: A Comic Essay on Trans Mobility and Materiality

This comic essay engages trans embodiment and temporality, representation and identity, passing, and drawing as a form of thinking. Although uncommon, comics have been established in academia as a genre worthy of literary study as well as scholarly inquiry in the broader humanities, social sciences, and the arts (Bukatman, 2012; Chute, 2010; Howard & Jackson, 2013; Cox, 2016). Recently, scholars have also studied the use of comics making as an analytical tool in qualitative research (Katz, 2013; Sousanis, 2015; Weaver-Hightower, 2013; Flowers, 2017; Henningsen, 2017; Johnson, 2018). This comic essay invites communication scholars to consider transgender embodiment and mobility through a visual medium that can illustrate complex problems of precarity, passing, and the crossing of both material and symbolic borders and boundaries. As a genre, comics allow for dense and layered information to be conveyed very quickly, and its affordances lend themselves well to portraying the tensions in and between trans and gender-nonconforming experiences. The speech bubble and the thought bubble, for example, can juxtapose in a single panel what two characters are saying to one another and what they are thinking and feeling as well as how they are interacting and communicating non-verbally. This graphic scholarship demonstrates why the unique genre of comics is particularly apt in rendering instances of microagression or passing. I argue that comics as a form enable a shift from abstract concepts back into the body, the materiality of which can get lost in academic discourse.

Rhetoric, Humor, and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen Colbert

Rhetoric, Humor, and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen Colbert

The Soviet Vaudeville and the Controversy between 1932-1941

This paper is devoted to study the soviet vaudeville and the controversy between 1932-1941. The Soviet vaudeville debate was focused on the theme: How and in what way do the entertainment and laughter, produced by Vaudeville, would respond to the norm, value, and function of Soviet literature? In 1934, the Stalin government established socialist realism as a only literary theory and principle. While the Union of Soviet Writers did’t take control of literary hegemony completely, the freedom and diversity of literary creation remained for a while and the vaudeville debate has also developed in various ways: The complete rejection of vaudeville, the eclectic combination of vaudeville and satire, and the full recognition of vaudeville as an entertainment genre. The Grand Purge of 1936-1938 was expressed in the realm of culture as anti-formalism campaigns, which The Arts Committee led; vaudeville was criticized as a genre representing the formalism of the play. The opponents regarded the vaudeville techniques for laughter and entertainment as a formalism: They were accused of resulting in the disappearance of the contemporary, serious theme about the Soviet reality, which the Soviet Cultural policy demanded writers to describe in their works. From the anti-formalism campaign until the outbreak of World War II (1938-1941), Soviet critics such as Akimov, on the one hand, demanded full recognition of the light comedy, including Vodeville. On the other hand, there was position, that vaudeville was the main reason for the regression of the Soviet comedy. In 1932-1941, although Soviet vaudeville was discriminated on the level of theater policy, theory and performance, the popularity of vaudeville remained constant; the government’s cultural policy makers and their critics could not ignore the demand of vaudeville advocates, that all comic genres including vaudeville be given the same rights. Between 1932 and 1941, vaudeville, which was not entirely exiled from the Soviet stage, was still possible.

THE CHANGING SCENE OF THE NIGERIAN STAGE

The world has witnessed phenomenal changes, even development, in the last few decades. What with the internet and the social media with their attendant plethora of opportunities for both positive and negative minded individuals, corporate bodies, institutions and even governments, to bring their reaches within their grasp! Theatre practice in Nigeria has not been left out. However, unlike other areas of the profession, the live stage has not fared so well. Where the others have progressed, the living stage has retrogressed to the point that there appears to be a shift from the production of stage plays to other forms of performance, notably, the one man comic genre which makes appearance on the live stage on occasion, but which is otherwise, a product of the cinematic genre. This paper takes a retrospective historical glance at the reasons for this shift in order to proffer suggestions for a revival, if possible, of the conventional stage production of plays. The writer is of the view that all the stake holders in the industry among whom are governments at all levels, culture ministries and parastatals; academics and professional theatre practitioners, are all liable and as such, should contribute towards a revival because the main of the theatre revolves on collectivism rather than individualism towards which the profession is presently tilting in the name of stand-up comedy. The paper concludes on the note that though stand-up comedy is a theatrical form, it lacks that aura and spirit on which a nation’s cultural and theatrical pride traditionally depend and by which a nation is recognized universally and accepted.

Prayoon Chanyawongse’s Cartoon Likay: Amalgamating Likay Theatrical Form and Comics into a Unique Thai Genre

By launching in 1938 a series of adaptations of folktales in comics form, Thai cartoonist Prayoon Chanyawongse established the Cartoon Likay genre which places the reader as a member of an audience attending a Likay performance. The local theatrical form frames his graphic narratives where scenes of a play performed on a stage continuously alternate with sequences taking place in the vast realms of epics set in the Ayutthaya period. By introducing key Likay conventions such as recurring humorous interruptions and asides, Chanyawongse could effectively address contemporary social issues and political topics within traditional folktales. This paper explores several Cartoon Likay narratives in the context of the Likay theatrical form and the local folktale repertoire to discuss the nature and development of Chanyawongse’s signature comics genre.

Framed Memories: The Politics of Recollection in Mana Neyestani’s An Iranian Metamorphosis

This essay examines the graphic memoir An Iranian Metamorphosis, by the acclaimed cartoonist Mana Neyestani, in the context of Iranian diaspora literature, particularly the genre of comics. Neyestani’s book is analyzed for its engagement with the politics of exile literature, and its attempt at challenging a two-dimensional view of the political discourse, in which the ethical boundaries of pro- and anti-government are overtly simple. The essay focuses on the book’s narrative techniques that exhibit a complex awareness of what is anticipated from a representative work of Iranian exile memoir, and the way it negotiates its own narrative politics. To clarify the arguments, several comparative examples are drawn from two well-known graphic narratives by Iranian diaspora authors, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and Amir and Khalil’s Zahra’s Paradise.

Dissenting Voices?

The installation of the Franco dictatorship sparked an inadvertent boom in the production of comics. While many cartoonists hailing from Barcelona’s rich satirical tradition went into exile or clandestine publication, still more turned to the children’s comics market that had become firmly rooted in the Catalan capital since the 1920s. Until the 1950s, comics remained relatively free from censorial intervention, and the development of characters such as La Familia Ulises, Carpanta and Doña Urraca offered cartoonists an outlet for covert critique. However, in 1952, the Junta Asesora de la Prensa Infantil was established to police children’s publications for ‘inappropriate’ content, marking a turning point in the history of Spain’s comics genre. This article discusses the implications of specific legislation for editors, artists and their comic strip characters, focusing on the publications Pulgarcito, TBO and DDT.