Comic Narrative Research Articles

The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging by Rebecca Wanzo

Reviewed by: The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging by Rebecca Wanzo Maite Urcaregui (bio) Wanzo, Rebecca. The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging. New York University Press, 2020. 256 pp, $89.00 HC/ $29.00 PB Click for larger view View full resolution In The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, Rebecca Wanzo explores how African American cartoonists reappropriate stereotypical caricatures of Blackness to question and reveal normative ideals of US citizenship. Taking up a long history of caricature in African American comic and cartoon art, the book provocatively asks, "Can the racist caricature be used in aesthetic practices of freedom?"1 By way of answering this question, Wanzo examines how African American artists formally exploit caricature's racial inheritance to point to the injury of racist images and the structures that produce them. Through their artistic reframing, they invite diverse and divergent affective responses to caricature that open alternative attachments to citizenship. The book explicates how comics, like other forms of popular media, create and uphold narratives of "good" and "bad" citizens. Comic narratives participate in these discourses of belonging through what Wanzo identifies as "citizenship genres": "often masculine categories of representation that the state's subjects are interpellated to inhabit."2 Each chapter interrogates a citizenship genre within comics and the subjects they herald—the revolutionary leader, the soldier, the child, and the countercultural subject. After identifying the normative ideals these genres uphold, Wanzo goes on to examine how African American artists, recognizing the "racialized ideological work of these typologies," strategically play with the formal affordances and limitations of the genre to highlight the grotesque realities of racism and articulate resistant representations of Black identity and national belonging. Chapter One lays the foundation for understanding "broad ranging articulations" of how comics artists utilize caricature across form and genre—including examples from [End Page 119] George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Sam Milai's Pittsburgh Courier editorial cartoons, and contemporary works, such as Jeremy Love's Bayou and Valentin De Landro's Bitch Planet—to critique and negotiate "how African Americans are marked by noncitizenship status."3 Chapter Two "explores the lasting legacy of black subjection in archetypes of heroism in the white popular imaginary" and looks to two graphic biographies, Kyle Baker's Nat Turner and Ho Che Anderson's King, that challenge the image of the frozen-in-time supplicating Black subject. Chapter Three takes up the superhero genre, putting Baker's Truth: Red, White, & Black in conversation with Jay Jackson's World War II editorial cartoons, to argue that Isaiah Bradley, the Black Captain America, simultaneously represents a desire for full citizenship and a recognition of that impoverished promise. Building on Anne Anlin Cheng's "racial melancholia," which explores the psychoanalytic consequences of racialization,4 Wanzo theorizes "melancholic patriotism" to describe African Americans' attachments to full citizenship "as a lost love object that both never was and is continually chased."5 In a powerful reading of Isaiah—who at the end of the arc has survived the war but has lost both his friends and his mind as a result of state-sanctioned medical violence, a fictional evocation of the Tuskegee experiments—in what is left of the Captain America uniform he was incarcerated for wearing, Wanzo says, "Truth constructs an African American love object, a black Captain America whose ambivalent figure represents a threadbare version of the American Dream to which not only African Americans but other Americans cling."6 Chapter Four engages with discourses of infantile citizenship and the aesthetics of cuteness to investigate how the nation pins its democratic hopes on the figure of the innocent White child and their futurity. In contrast, analyzing examples from Ollie Harrington's editorial cartoon Dark Laughter to Jennifer Cruté's life narrative Jennifer's Journal, Wanzo argues that African American cartoonists' use of "the black infantile citizen disrupts this representational regime" by challenging viewers to remember the nation's abuses and failures, "as opposed to the improbable white child ideals that encourage the nation to forget."7 The final chapter explores perhaps the most excessive or grotesque example of racist caricature...

"UM AMIGUINHO DIFERENTE": A REPRESENTAÇÃO DO AUTISTA NA HQ DA TURMA DA MÔNICA

The literary production delivered to the children are an ideal context to produce social representations to child audience identify themselves. For this reason, it is an opportunity to question where the place to the diversity of the identitary representations, in special the ones from people with disability, that claim, legitimately, for more visibility in the field of artistic-cultural productions is. Based on this assumption, the objective of this article is to investigate one number of a Brazilian comic book called Monica‘s Gang, by Mauricio de Sousa, in order to analyze the approach that the narrative gives to the child with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Originally published in 2002 and with guaranteed distribution up to the present day, the aforementioned issue is entitled Monica ́s Gang - a different litlle friend and highlights the character of an autistic boy called André. When examining the constitution of this character, we found that the autist child projection is still lined with stigmas, which are translated by his limited place of speech in the narrative. The theoretical contribution came up from the studies about representation promoted by Hall (2016); studies about Autism carried out by Gaiato and Teixeira (2018); also contemplating the peculiarities of comic narratives in the perspective of McCloud (1995)

The Indonesian Government Imagery in the Instagram Comic strip with Covid-19 Themed

At the beginning of 2020, there has been the spread of the deadly Covid-19 virus to various countries resulted in a pandemic. Indonesia is one of the countries affected, so the government provides a policy that is expected to reduce the number of Covid-19 cases. The policy issued has drawn criticism from various parties, one of which is the cartoon mice comic, this comic is one of the comics that often comments on social life and the Indonesian government with its comic strips posted on Instagram. This study aims to find the image and role of the government depicted in mice cartoon comics in overcoming Covid-19 in Indonesia, therefore there is a need for analysis and research with descriptive methods and critical discourse analysis approaches to see how the image of the Indonesian government in comic mice cartoons. The results of the analysis of the two comics concluded that the image of the government displayed in the comic strip did not only come from the author's idea but also based on the news that emerged from the government's response to the spread of the Covid-19 virus in Indonesia, with an image style that was distinctive from mice cartoon comics. With this research, the researcher hopes that it can become a recommendation in making comic narratives, especially those discussing social life and government, and can be a reference for research that has the same object.

The Visual made Audible – Co-constructing Sound Effects as Devices of Comic Book Literacy in Primary School

This paper analyses and discusses ongoing comics literacy events where two 3rd Grade students and their teachers are working with comic books, focusing specifically on visual representations of sound. The purpose of the paper is to explore how these representations, as multimodal aspects of comics literacy, provoke literacy experiences in the classroom. Visual representations of sound come in different shapes and sizes, but are generally written outside of speech bubbles in bold letters. Using discursive psychology –allowing the researcher to view participants’ verbal and embodied actions as performing actions in social and situated contexts– the current paper analyses how pairs of students and teachers co-construct visual aspects in comic books, translating them into verbal sound and embodied action. Results show that embodied motion, sensation, and audible sound are utilized to interactively display comic sound effects to enhance the reader’s experience of the narrative. This is done as co-construction between adult and child through re-enactment of the visuals as real-life sound and action –also connecting this to other visual aspects of adjacent panels in order to make this meaningful. The paper argues that this challenges both teachers’ and students’ perceptions of what literacy can be and how sound effects –through the shape, colour and font of the graphic text– influence and enliven the comic narratives created in the classroom.

Comics and revolution as global public health intervention: The Case of Lissa

ABSTRACT In this article, we discuss the inextricable entanglement of public health and political revolution, and why comics is a particularly amenable medium to explore how different people come to terms with illness and mortality against the backdrop of political, economic, and environmental crises. We discuss our process in creating a sequential comic narrative, Lissa, that portrays a working-class Egyptian family, informed by hundreds of interviews and ethnographic research in Egypt on the vulnerabilities that expose people to kidney and liver disease and the difficulties of accessing proper treatment. Lissa also draws on ethnographic research and interviews in the U.S. on a seemingly unrelated topic - the social and political calculus of managing genetic risk for breast and ovarian cancer within a commercial healthcare system. We draw out the similarities in bioethical dilemmas between these two disparate clinical realities by composing an unlikely friendship between two fictional characters: Anna, the daughter of an American oil company executive living in Cairo, who has a family history of breast cancer - and Layla, the daughter of the porter of Anna's apartment building, who grows to become a resolute physician struggling for better public health justice and rights in Egypt.

Guajá - Kamixatuhujaxa’amỹ jawajaxa’amỹ hajkaminũ ta xi haraka - O finado dono do jabuti queria transar com o finado dono do jaguar

A narrativa foi registrada em 2016 na aldeia Awa, Terra Indígena Caru (Maranhão), e é contada por Hajkaramykỹa Awa Guajá. Trata-se de um dos episódios do mito que tem como personagem principal Kamixatuhujaxa’amỹna, o dono do jabuti, e se passa em um tempo em que os animais eram “gente” e os jabutis podiam correr. Nesse mito, o jabuti e o jaguar se encontram, e o jaguar acaba enganado e morto. No episódio transcrito, o jaguar morre após ter uma relação sexual com o jabuti. Esta é uma narrativa cômica e é um exemplo de arte verbal dos Awa Guajá.

코믹스의 시각적 내러티브에 관한 연구 - 크리스 웨어의 코믹스를 중심으로 -

코믹스의 시각적 내러티브에 관한 연구 - 크리스 웨어의 코믹스를 중심으로 -

Picture My Voice: Harnessing the Power of Comics in Palliative Care (FR415)

•Identify ways that palliative providers can use comics to share and process powerful experiences in care.•Cite examples of how comics can be used to support patients through illness and provide education.•Participate in creation of a brief comic narrative demonstrating the power of graphic medium in sharing thoughts or experience. Graphic narratives, often referred to as “comics,” are increasingly recognized as a unique and powerful platform to help both healthcare providers and patients in promote education and exchange of stories in illness and care. For Palliative Care providers who are seeking ways to support clinicians and reduce burnout, graphic narrative can be an accessible and rapid means for processing distressing healthcare experiences, and resultant works can be used to provide support to colleagues. For patients, graphic narrative can be a moving method for sharing their illness with subtleties of emotion or experience that are not easily captured with prose, and comic educational materials may be more approachable for a variety of audiences and literacy levels than simple text. Finally, reviewing the graphic narratives of others helps patients humanize their illness and offers healthcare providers a unique window into what their patients are experiencing. Many palliative providers may be unfamiliar with the literature that exists on comics in healthcare, unaware of graphic resources available to patients, and uncertain how to utilize graphic narrative in the care of themselves and those they treat. In this conference session, an interdisciplinary duo will open the pages of “graphic medicine” to participants with case examples and visual representations of outstanding health comics that highlight their potential uses in Palliative Care. Providers will develop a toolkit of techniques for using graphic narrative to care for themselves and their patients, and the session will close with an opportunity for participants to create their own brief comic narrative.

Vizuelni elementi srpskog nacionalnog identiteta u stripu Hijeronimus Boš

The process of globalization has destabilized and changed the existing status of national identity, in consequence of which national art has lost the status of official art practice. Comic strip as a specific sort of artistic expression, offers numerous national codes in its visual and textual narratives, which have a common role -to communicate with the reader. This paper will analyze visual elements of the Serbian national identity in the comic strip Hieronymus Bosch aiming to present and interpret it as these elements are not integral part of the comic narrative. Hieronymus Bosch has been published in several European countries so far. It was created by the French publisher Delcourt, script writers Perez and Ricaume, in cooperation with the Serbian academic painter and illustrator Boban Savic (Geto).

'A king of infinite space’: Shakespearean Spaces in Theatre and Comics

As one of the pillars of the Western canon, Shakespeare has been a source of inspiration for many forms of popular culture: comics make no exception, having often used Shakespearean plays as a base for adaptations whose degree of fidelity to the source text may vary considerably (Kill Shakespeare is a recent example).The trans-medial operation which turns Shakespeare’s plays into comics is complicated by the form of the plays themselves, by the theatrical tradition embedded in and shaping the source text: the textual and spatial norms of comics are certainly challenged by the three-dimensionality of the theatrical performance and by the use of dramatic words, essential to evoke the spaces of the plot but excessively abundant for a comic balloon.Space, however, can also play an important role in shaping a comic narrative which interprets Shakespeare’s plays in innovative ways, devising unexpected approaches to the target medium. Analyzing versions from Classics Illustrated, Topolino, as well as Zarate’s and DeLuca’s adaptations of Shakespearean plays, this contribution aims at disclosing the way comics combine the space of the page and the space of the stage, embracing the theatrical nature of Shakespeare’s plays without forgetting the requirement of the target medium.

Popular Modernism in the Late Krazy Kat Comics: Industry and Innovation in the Color Sundays

ABSTRACT This article reads George Herriman's celebrated Krazy Kat comic as an exemplar of popular modernism, a mass cultural product that works from inside a popular medium to make it new. Analyzing specific color comics Herriman produced between 1935 and his death in 1944, the article illuminates the range of techniques Herriman developed over the strip's final decade as he assimilated for the first time the color protocols of the Hearst newspaper syndicate and retooled his comic's layouts, narratives, and style in response. In time, Herriman articulated a late popular modernist aesthetics characterized by formalism, minimalism, and self-reflexivity.

I Am the Maker of My Image: Marvel’s No Normal and the Comic Book Muslim Woman

In 2014, the editor and writer of Ms. Marvel, Sana Amanat and G. Willow Wilson,1 created an extraordinary new superhero-a young Muslim girl Kamala Khan. She is like any other middle-class girl in New Jersey in many ways, and critics like Noah Berlatsky feel that Kamala’s story is an “assimilation fantasy” (“What Makes”). This essay argues that the story goes beyond the idea of assimilation. It shows how the comic depicts Kamala as a Pakistani-American often battling misconceptions, stereotypes, and racism. Rather than desiring assimilation, the comic book suggests that assimilation is something that each individual negotiates. This essay shows how the new Ms. Marvel series critiques the stereotypes young people like Kamala face. It makes visible her desperate wish to be an American while straddling two cultures, her negotiation of confining gender norms that exist in her home and community, and her defiance of the hegemonic norm of white, male superhero. This essay argues that the new Ms. Marvel series questions and resists American comic master narratives through Kamala’s identity crisis; it creates resistance by breaking cultural and political assumptions about South Asian Muslim women and teenagers in general, and indeed, about Islam.

A study on method of acquisition of modernity in comic narrative;in Byeolgeongon』

A study on method of acquisition of modernity in comic narrative;in Byeolgeongon』

A study on method of acquisition of modernity in comic narrative;in 『Byeolgeongon』

A study on method of acquisition of modernity in comic narrative;in 『Byeolgeongon』

“Wose is onwise”: Dame Sirith in Context

Dame Sirith is often discussed as the earliest Middle English comic narrative. I argue that this designation is misleading: Dame Sirith is better considered as a distinct representative of a well-developed multilingual tale tradition. This tradition descends from an exemplum in Petrus Alfonsi’s Disciplina clericalis. When considered in the context of its French and Latin analogues, Dame Sirith shows consistent features that recast its central tensions as an opposition between ecclesiastical and mercantile values. In the poem’s use of the rich Middle English term “wis,” the Dame Sirith-poet emphasizes this tension between church and market in a manner consistent with fabliau verbal play.

The Scotsman’s Fearsome Sword: Political Subtexts in a Fifteenth-Century Nouvelle

An important link in the chain of comic narrative that runs from the fabliau to Rabelais, Les cent nouvelles nouvelles represents one of the best examples of late medieval humor—deceitful characters and duplicitous language, a world governed by self-interest and the struggle for supremacy. Issues related to power, and especially to unexpected displacements of power, are central to the entire work, and in particular to the narrative chosen for discussion. To fully appreciate some of the subtle nuances and complexities related to these shifts of power, it is helpful to have a basic understanding of the historical context.

The “Family Film” as Amateur Production Genre: Frank Marshall's Comic Narratives

The “Family Film” as Amateur Production GenreFrank Marshall’s Comic Narratives Ryan Shand (bio) [End Page 1] Frank Marshall (1896–1979) was one of the most well-known figures in postwar Scottish amateur film culture. He was involved in developing the remarkable infrastructure that amateur cinema enjoyed in Scotland as the first chairman of the Scottish Association of Amateur Cinematographers (SAAC) when it was formed in 1949 and as a member of the board of the Scottish Film Council until 1972. Tom Clark, former secretary of the SAAC, compared Marshall’s central role within amateur filmmaking in Scotland to the influence that John Grierson exerted on the professional industry.1 Furthermore, Frank Marshall was one of the most active participants in postwar Scottish amateur film culture, responsible for making approximately seventy-seven short films. One recurring preoccupation within this vast body of work was what then was known to its practitioners as family films, a category featuring family members, close friends, and/or pets, which tend to be shot either at the filmmaker’s home, in his or her garden, or on vacation. Family films can be either fiction or nonfiction. Marshall’s family films, in particular, expand moments captured in private cine recordings into planned linear comic narratives. These films provide an opportunity to examine the intersection between the domestic focus of the family as subject and the aesthetic expectations for the genre that prevailed at amateur cine contests. I will show that the family film was championed as a hybrid form that could be celebrated as the emblematic genre of amateur cinema. Examples of family films, in particular, those of Marshall, were recurrently employed by the movement’s champions and critics to illustrate the distinctive nature of the sector to wider audiences. Marshall’s reputation in turn encouraged other amateur filmmakers to attempt their own variations on the genre as it became a formalized category in amateur film competitions, both in Scotland and internationally. This case study demonstrates that some aspects of methodologies that have been developed to analyze commercially released feature films may also be applied to the creative works of nonprofessional filmmakers. Marshall’s amateur films raise questions of authorship, genre, and pragmatic analysis—approaches that have been well rehearsed in studies of feature films. Dana Polan reminds us that studies of authorship require critical engagement with archival resources to provide historical context: A related aspect of auteurism today has to do not simply with the reincarnation of older auteurist methods but their refinement or even transformation. . . . New advances in historiography (for example, the potentials that gritty archival work offers) have led, in contrast, to a greater concreteness and detail in the examination of just what the work of the director involves.2 [End Page 2] Frank Marshall, accordingly, may be studied as an example of an amateur auteur—that is, as a director who exhibits stylistic continuity but is also significant because he or she influenced a particular genre of film.3 In both the amateur film press and in later archival cataloging, a film “in the Frank Marshall style” is shorthand indicating peculiar personal idiosyncrasies and certain generic qualities that other filmmakers sought to replicate and refine.4 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Frame enlargement from ARP: A Reminder for Peacetime (Frank Marshall, 1940). The Marshall family from left to right: Muriel, Chrissie, Nairn, and Frank. From the collection of the Scottish Screen Archive at National Library of Scotland copyright NLS. Marshall’s films are often centered on his immediate family: his wife, Chrissie, daughter Muriel, son Nairn, and, later, his grandchildren.5 Most of his films are variations on a few familiar themes that give them a distinct authorial signature. The comic narratives that incorporate these domestic preserves are slight tales spun around small incidents that disrupt the tranquility of home life in Whitecraigs (a suburb on the south side of Glasgow) before equilibrium is happily restored. The mode of production specific to amateur cinema meant that “cinedads,” as George Wain called them, could integrate family members into their films as a pragmatic way to recruit and retain actors.6 Children are readily available and often can be...

Vietnamese Foodways and Viet Kieu Postmemory in Clément Baloup's Graphic Narratives

In recent years, more attention has been paid to the cultural contributions of the Vietnamese diaspora as its representatives become better integrated in French and American society. To continue shedding light on this community, the present article explores the efforts of a French cartoonist of Vietnamese heritage, Clément Baloup, who uses postmemorial narrative in comics to transcribe and transmit the varied experiences of the overseas Vietnamese of the '1.5 generation'. While challenging current understandings of transnationalism, hybridisation and patterns of acculturation, this article demonstrates the value of studying the cultural signifier highlighted in Baloup's creations – ethnic foodways, which are sometimes deemed insignificant on account of their associated biological functions. I argue that foodways are symbolically important because they determine insider/outsider status with respect to the group, they facilitate interpersonal communication and the act of testifying and their significance is constantly evolving to reflect new sociopolitical contexts and environments.

Cannibals, carnival and clowns: the grotesque in German unification films

Film scholars interested in the responses to the collapse of the German Democratic Republic and subsequent unification have tended to focus on the comic and/or tragic narratives which reflect the challenges facing the population of the New Federal States, whether as citizens struggling to adjust to the new post-unification order or as citizens of an economically deprived region and all the attendant social and psychological problems. But a number of important films produced during the Wende have largely been neglected. Formally experimental, occasionally cryptic, and sometimes disturbing, these films demand reviewing not only because of their unconventional aesthetic, which distinguishes them from the other better-known films of the time and since, but because with hindsight, as this article makes clear, we recognise that they offer a critical index of the doubts and frustrations resulting from the East German state's collapse and its subsequent union with the Federal Republic. This article focuses on three films in particular (Letztes aus der DaDaeR/Latest from the DaDaeR, Das Deutsche Kettensägenmassaker/The German Chainsaw Massacre and Deutschfieber/German Fever) and considers filmmakers’ recourse to aesthetic forms, namely the carnivalesque and the grotesque.

The Implied Author as an Ethical Buffer: An Argument from Translated and Censored Fiction

If the Implied Author (IA) is the Object of a Belief,1 then let me start by confessing that I am a believer-though an unorthodox one as will become apparent. On the one hand, I will welcome the IA as a tool to analyze a particular comic narrative and its censored translation. On the other hand, and perhaps because I do not belong to any narratological church that takes Wayne C. Booth's notion of the IA as a dogma, I will dare to propose an IA concept that only roughly connects with Booth's and the orthodox believers' many descriptions of the IA. That rough connection is our shared concern for the ethics of fiction, for the role of the IA in this ethics, and for positing an author who is not the flesh-and-bones author (FABA). Yet my proposal should not take its strength as much from continuing a tradition-since my IAguided ethics of reading will also be opposed to Booth's-as from throwing fresh light on the interpretation, translation, and censorship of a comic narrative. To that effect, I will first briefly turn to the concept of the author who seems in need of a conceptual defense too. For both arguments-pro-author and pro-IA-I will mainly refer to the Spanish author Elvira Lindo and her comic narrative Manolito Gafotas (1994), and its American translation Manolito Four-Eyes (2008).It may be true that the IA debate has turned somewhat sterile over time (on which see Lanser, Manifesto 2011 ), but in my view this is mainly so because it has become primarily conceptual. The IA comes to life in specific ethical readings and specific translations of specific literary texts. Indeed, though my argument includes general discussions of genre (viz., fiction and comedy), it is entirely inspired and motivated by a specific censoring translation of a particular work of fiction.The Author Exists-Who Else Does the Comedy?Lindo's Manolito series, of which Manolito Gafotas was the first book to be published, is a comic narrative series immensely popular among Spanish children and adults. Manolito, the protagonist and first-person narrator, is a charming little boy who uses his particular sense of humor as he tells us about life in a workingclass suburb of Madrid. He admits his real name is Manolito Garcia Moreno but also insists that in the suburb everyone knows me as Manolito He then sets out to explain this apparently pleasing fact:I was named Manolito after my dad's truck, and the truck was named after my dad, whose name is Manolo. . . .I like that they call me Four-Eyes. At my school-which is called Diego Velazquezanyone who's a little important has a nickname. Before I had a nickname, I used to cry plenty. When a bully started in on me at recess, he always ended up calling me Four-Eyes or Fat Glasses. Since I've officially become Manolito Four-Eyes, insulting me is a waste of time. (Manolito Four-Eyes 3-5)2The narrator's idiosyncratic explanations and evaluations are not the only source of comedy, as the characters are also responsible for some pretty incongruous behavior-and incongruity is a well-known mechanism of humor.3 We learn for instance that one day Manolito got caught up in a street protest in Madrid. His grandfather, who accompanied him, asked a man to put Manolito up on his shoulders so that he could see what was happening. Manolito then realized that the man had dandruff:I noticed that the guy had dandruff so I decided to brush it off a little. I asked him why he didn't buy one of those shampoos they advertise on TV that gets rid of dandruff (and if you don't watch out, gets you a girlfriend, too). The guy put me down on the ground, all in a huff.... (my translation)4All of this is quite funny, yet so far we have no trouble explaining the comedy without recurring to the concept of the author. The protagonist's actions are incongruous, the dandruff guy feels ridiculed, and Manolito the narrator has his tongue-in-cheek way of telling things.However, as I have argued before (Narrative Humor I, Narrative Humor II), humor in narrative does not spring from the narrator or character only. …