Comic Book Adaptations Research Articles

Sequentialized Samson: Five postwar (1949–1956) comic retellings of the Judges’’ tale

This essay examines comic book adaptations of the biblical story of Samson within the socio-political context of post-World War II and Cold War America. Challenging the notion that religious narratives in comics are inherently conservative, this study employs a history of interpretation approach to analyze five different adaptations, each illuminating the era’s complex cultural landscape. Themes such as distrust, binary morality, the value of duty over individualism, defiant autonomy, and nuanced masculinity are explored, revealing how these comics were not merely religious retellings but cultural artifacts shaped by the broader societal concerns of the late 1940s and 1950s. The paper argues that comic creators were acutely influenced by Cold War-era ideologies and anxieties, thus adapting the Samson narrative to address contemporary challenges. The essay contributes to the understanding of comics as both interpretive tools for ancient narratives and reflective historical documents of postwar America.

Metafiction, intertextuality, and consumerism in transmedia resemiotization: a postmodern analysis of a comic book adaptation of the Chinese classic Journey to the West

Abstract Classic Chinese novels have frequently been adapted into other media formats. Such transmedia adaptations involve shifts in meaning, which are often shaped by contemporary postmodern culture. This article explores the textual transformations in a comic book adaptation of the classic Chinese novel, Journey to the West, and the postmodern culture behind these transformations. Viewing transmedia adaptation as resemiotization, we analyse the metafictional strategies, intertextuality, and representation of consumerism in the comic book. These three aspects, which subvert the narrative of the original novel, define the postmodern nature of the comic book adaptation. We conclude that the comic book adaptation is not only a nostalgic representation but also a critical rewriting of the Chinese classic, which is shaped by postmodern norms and values. This study enriches our understanding of the adaptation and reception of the classical novel Journey to the West in contemporary popular culture, thus shedding light on the postmodern rewriting of Chinese classics in general.

(Nie)zbędność zmian – serialowe adaptacje komiksów w perspektywie przekładu kulturowego (na przykładzie Sandmana i Wednesday)

A (NON-)NECESSITY OF CHANGE – SERIAL COMIC BOOK ADAPTATIONS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL TRANSLATION (USING SANDMAN AND WEDNESDAY AS EXAMPLES)The article analyses the changes made in adaptations of comic books compared to the original, using the examples of the Netflix TV shows: Sandman and Wednesday. These reflections have their origin in cultural translation and are related to issues important to contemporary (pop) culture, such as: character creation, representation of sexual and ethnic minorities, and the role and position of women in American society. The author examines the types of modifications introduced in intersemiotic and intralingual translations and indicates their possible sources (social need and/or pressure from external institutions).

Poe in Richmond: Celebrating the Poe Museum’s Centennial

Poe in Richmond: Celebrating the Poe Museum’s Centennial

Novel Forms of Rewriting Aristophanes’ Comedies: Comic Book Adaptations and Their Translations

[sic] – a Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation focuses on theoretical, empirical and artistic research in the fields of culture, literature and literary translation. [sic] thus welcomes the submission of works that focus on various theoretical or empirical problems within the fields listed above, as well as original translations. By publishing research papers, video essays, reviews, literary criticism, interviews and literature in translation, [sic] wishes to offer a wide, interdisciplinary approach to dominant, but also marginal and/or currently unrecognized as well as emerging literary and cultural trends and practices and in this way open a dialogue between proponents of different approaches to the said areas. As such, [sic] is seen as an international platform for scholars, practitioners and artists dealing with culture, literature and literary translation.

The Universe-al Storytelling. Towards A ‘Spatial’ Narrative Model in Modern Comic Book Cinema

The aim of the article is to analyze modern superhero films through the specifics of superhero narratives in comics. By referring to the ‘organic’ elements of graphic super-storytelling – like retcon or crossover – the author tries to explain the main shift within comic book adaptations heading towards a ‘universe-al’ mode of narration. By doing so the analysis concentrates on the most succesful recent cases of superhero films as attempts to achieve a narrative ‘remediation’ of comic books’ spatial organization that requires reconsideration of the status of an individual superheroic franchise (or sub-franchise) within the larger universe of pre-existing, future and even alternate texts.

From the dark wood to the asphalt jungle: adaptation and appropriation in Detective Dante

Detective Dante (2005-2007) is a comicbook miniseries written by Lorenzo Bartoli and Roberto Recchioni. The eponymous hero, Henry Dante, is a violent policeman who, haunted by the ghost of his wife, moves from New York to the fictional ‘Paradise City’. The series, composed by 24 issues divided in three cycles (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), is noticeably influenced by the Divine Comedy both in its general outline and in some single episodes; nevertheless, it ultimately tells an original story. Through a close reading of the first issue as well as more general considerations about the series in its entirety, this paper investigates the intertextual relations between Detective Dante with the Divine Comedy. In the context of Dantean comics, this series exhibits a number of unusual traits: its references are thematical and narratological, rather than graphic; it contaminates elements from the Commedia with a modern and noir setting, generating unique combinations; most importantly, it subverts the well-established hierarchy between literary source and comicbook adaptation.

CANLANDIRMA SİNEMADA ÇİZGİ ROMAN ESTETİĞİ: “SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE” ÖRNEĞİ

İnsanın görüntü ile kendini anlatma isteği, mağara duvarlarından günümüze birçok değişim geçirmiş ve bu değişimlerin pek çoğuna teknoloji eşlik etmiştir. Değişim, disiplinler arası etkileşime de sebep olmuştur. Bu etkileşim toplumsal ya da teknolojik olduğu kadar, sanat dallarının birbiri arasında da gerçekleşmiştir. Sinemanın diğer sanat dalları ile olan ilişkisi biçim ve içerik bağlamda pek çok kez değerlendirilmiştir. 2018 yılında gösterime giren çizgi roman uyarlaması “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” filmi ana akım uzun metraj canlandırma filmler arasında kendine has görselliği ile öne çıkmaktadır. Çizgi Romanın anlatım diline ait referanslar filmin temel görsel estetiğini oluşturmaktadır. Bu referanslar, basılı materyalin doğası gereği kullanılan teknikler, matbaa makinelerinden kaynaklı baskı hataları ya da özgün anlatımının bir parçası olarak geliştirilen yansıma sesler, hareket hattı çizgileri gibi görsel yöntemlerin uyarlanması ile filmde yer almaktadırlar. Bu çalışma birçok farklı görsel sanat disiplininin teknik yöntemini kendi içerisinde harmanlamayı başaran canlandırma sinemanın, çizgi roman ile doğrudan bağlantısı olan görsel anlatımını ve filmdeki kullanım biçimini Genette’in metinsel-aşkınlık türleri bağlamında değerlendirmiştir.

Comic Book Adaptations of Shakespeare in Korea: History and Context

Comic Book Adaptations of Shakespeare in Korea: History and Context

L’adaptation de Salammbô en BD en version polonaise – vers une étude éditoriale-péritextuelle

The Polish edition of the comic book adaptation of Salammbô – towards editorial and peritextual study The author of this paper discusses the problem of peritextual and editorial issues, using the French 19th century novel Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert as an example. The following study consistsof peritextual analysis of the Polish version of Druillet’s comic book adaptation, which is the object ofthis research. The methodological approach is based on semiotic analysis. Umberto Eco’s conceptsof model reader and closed/opened texts are also applied. The aim of this paper is to define the role of editorial peritexts of literary comic book adaptations in the world of mass media.

КОМИКС В РОССИИ: ТРАНСМЕДИЙНЫЙ НАРРАТИВ И ИЗДАТЕЛЬСКИЕ СТРАТЕГИИ

Mass culture creates genre-and-style phenomena that possess both the illusion of a simplified understanding and a complex aesthetic nature. Comics is a phenomenon reflecting trends in the development of mass culture at the turn of the 21st century. In comics, the plot and genre are secondary (graphic novel, various adaptations and retellings), the aesthetics is ambivalent (playful and serious; secular, amateurish and professional), the text has a complex artistic nature (creolisation, polycodedness, centaurism, transmedia features) and, at the same time, an essential goal for reaching commercial success and facilitated consumption/perception. The article aims to describe and analyse the genre-and-style features of the comic strip as a transmedia phenomenon of mass culture. These features give grounds for assessing the principles and tendencies of the presence of the comics in the domestic book market, in particular, the ways of forming the publishing repertoire. The general trend of the modern study of comics (in addition to analysing specific samples of the genre) is the reflection of visual aesthetics in the artistic structure of its text. It is the basis for the inclusion of this genre into mass literature. The peculiarity of the poetics of the comic book lies in the transmedia and sequenciality means that organise the dramatic narrative and visual plot as equal artistic spaces. In combination with the experience of visual media, the genre, style, and discourse of mass culture acquire attributes of transmedia, marginality, and transfer, i.e. tendencies to the mobility of the borders of the traditional genre-and-style system and going beyond them with the help of several different media (visualisation). They have an impact on the genre-and-style features of the comics, and the features of the multimedia information space built on repetition and convergence—sequels, remakes—are becoming more and more familiar. The intention to replicate recognisable stories readers demand encourages major publishers to rely on comic book remakes, comic book adaptations, comic book sequels. There is an extensive development “in depth and in breadth” of the already familiar successful plot, character, aesthetic discourse. Publishing houses are not interested in expanding the thematic repertoire of the comic book, but they seek to update and deepen the reading experience through the emergence of national genre patterns, the discovery of new authors’ names. This leads to a non-linear dynamics in both book publishing and book selling practices in the comics industry and in the genre. The change in the range of comic books is mainly due to various types of remakes, including plot (plot and style, when the aesthetics of the narrative changes) variants of a well-known story. Thus, publishers are faced with common problems in their marketing strategies: objective, related to the lack of understanding of the genre nature and existence of comics, and specifically publishing—the emergence of special technological operations in the production of comics as a publication.

Comic-book "Pride and prejudice" by Nancy Butler as an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel

Comic book adaptations of classics have become more and more popular as a genre of mass culture. No wonder, that their creators turned to such a cult author as Jane Austen. In the article, the reasons of the interest to her novel Pride and prejudice by the mass culture, as well as by Butler, who wrote the script for the adaptation, are investigated. The types of the major transformations of the original are defined and the reasons of their introduction, either caused by such genre features of comics as dynamism, visual orientation, segmentation etc., or by the nature of mass literature are described. The comparative analysis of the novel and its adaptation shows that the adaptation lacks the specific style characteristic of Jane Austen’s work as the author’s commentary is reduced to its minimum. The description of everyday life, the psychological depth and plot complexity are contracted all the attention is focused on the love line, the episodes and characters not connected with Darcy — Elizabeth relationships are omitted. The portraits of the characters are drawn in the grotesque “Marvel” production style, which simplifies the characters making them “flat”. However, the adaptations of literary classics become a good way of popularization of the “high-brow” literature: the readers’ responses show that more than 60% of them felt urged to read the novel after getting acquainted with its adaptation.

Тайминг утраченного: рефлексия романного времени в комиксе по Прусту

The article examines the comic book adaptation of the first two volumes of “In Search of Lost Time” by Stéphane Heuet as an example of intermedial translational that reflects perfectly the conflict between “timing” and “chronotope” problematized in Yu. V. Shatin’s works. The comic book narrative, subjugated to the rules of graphic layout, when entering a dialogue with a modernist novel’s nonlinear structure finds ways to overcome its own teleology. Heuet in his comics uses a number of effects imitating the novel’s poetics: inserting the narrator’s image into the visual narrative; representing on one panel distant plot events connected only by associations; destroying unity of characters; visualising leitmotivs. Some of the artist’s solutions are more original and involve creative use of the visual art’s specific nature: literal visualisations of metaphors, complexity of the metapoetic level enhanced by including drawing of texts (from notes and posters to the narrator’s first literary attempt). These effects allow the comic book to deconstruct naïveté of the traditional “ligne claire” style of the franco-belgian “bandes dessinée”, deemed inadequate by the first critics of the adaptation, and to venture outside of limits of a simple illustration.

Homer’s Odyssey: from classical poetry to threshold graphic narratives for dual readership

This article’s focus is some unconventional adaptations of the Odyssey in graphic language, belonging to the threshold literary field and contextualized in different historical and cultural milieus. Since ancient Greek literature in general and Homer in particular, ceased to be considered as sacred scripts, they discarded the centuries-long formalistic and idealistic approach and served as a vehicle for criticism or as a mirror of each receiving culture’s present. The kind of relation established between each adaptation and its pre-text is defined by the inscribed meta-narratives in its body. The graphic adaptations under discussion, countercultural, demystifying or even subversive, participate in the so called “cross-audience phenomenon”, addressing a dual readership, both children and adults. They aim at undermining the heroic ethos, provoking skepticism and criticizing allusively the contemporary politics. They also trivialize the original by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. This way they facilitate dialogue between past and present, by creating a contact zone within which pluralism is the major trait.
 Key words: The Odyssey, classics’ reception, comic book adaptations, threshold literature, pluralism

Epics as cultural commodities: Comics books of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata

This article looks at the transformation of comic book adaptations of the Indian epics from Amar Chitra Katha ( ACK) to present-day representations. The overarching thrust of the article is to assess the stature of comic books as cultural “products” and to examine the ways in which culture, religion, politics, and industry entwine. The essay also works to interpret the trends and reasons behind the iconographic transition of comic books, the publication politics which underlie their production and dissemination, and their status as cultural commodities. Subgenres of comics which could be variously categorized as cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, or superhero styled comics, and evidently have a niche market or readership, are being held as blueprints for oversimplified transference of what has been widely accepted as the “core” story of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Therefore, I also argue that contemporary visual culture in the domain of comic books has seen a gradual shift from ACK’s knowledge-based conservative pedagogy to a more globalized entertainment-oriented, market-centred strategy.

Robert Crumb: Del comix underground al Génesis ilustrado

En 2009 Robert Crumb publicaba una adaptación al cómic del Génesis que era objeto de una amplia atención mediática internacional. En 1968, Crumb vendía por las calles del San Francisco hippie Zap Comix, un tebeo irreverente que le convirtió en icono y modelo del comix underground, un movimiento de historietistas norteamericanos asociado a la contracultura de los sesenta. Crumb sobrevivió al underground y ha seguido dibujando hasta hoy. Su novela gráfica Génesis ilustrado ejemplifica el camino recorrido por el cómic desde la marginalidad cultural al prestigio recientemente adquirido. Entender la trayectoria de Crumb desde el comix underground a la novela gráfica -el cómic artístico y adulto actual- es el tema de este artículo

The ‘Strange Alteration’ of Hamlet: Comic Books, Adaptation and Constructions of Adolescent literacy

This article examines two comic book adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet produced for teenage readers and used in school classrooms. It seeks to understand the ways in which particular kinds of literacy are being implied and constructed through the textual practice of multimodal adaptation. It presents a close reading of sections of the texts and places them within the framework of multimodal theory and adaptation studies. The paper is part of a larger study of comic book adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays based on a series of semi-structured interviews with the producers (publishers, artists, textual editors) involved in the adaptation process. The data are analysed in order to raise questions concerning the assumptions about literacy inherent in educational texts, and to outline the importance of further qualitative research in the area.

Releasing the potential of Shakespearean comic book adaptations in the classroom: A case study of Romeo and Juliet

Abstract The increasing number of comic book adaptions of Shakespeare’s plays is unsurprising given their prevalence within school curricula. Graphic novel adaptations are often seen as a stepping stone to the ‘real’ text, a way of introducing young people to works whose language, settings and complexity may, initially, be off-putting. Retelling Shakespeare’s plays in a comics format has, therefore, become a popular approach to attempt to engage students and to make the work more accessible, especially to ‘reluctant readers’. Romeo and Juliet is among the most frequently taught of Shakespeare’s texts, and is often used as a first introduction to studying Shakespeare. The four adaptations compared in this article illustrate the variety of ways in which Shakespeare can be reinterpreted in a comics format and used to support young people studying his plays. Classical Comics offers the most conventional representation, drawing obviously on long-standing comic traditions of the western hemisphere. A different approach is taken by the Manga Shakespeare version, which is set in present day Tokyo. This incorporates many elements of Japanese manga, while remaining accessible to readers without previous experience of manga, for instance, the action flows from left to right across the page and the book is read from ‘front to back’. The Manga Edition has many similar features, but retains the original setting of the play. Finally, Gareth Hinds’ recent adaptation clearly draws on European comic conventions, but also incorporates elements of manga, most noticeably in action scenes. Comparing these diverse approaches, this article considers how comic book adaptations can do more than simplify the text and make Shakespeare more attractive for young people. It considers ways in which they can act as an effective pedagogical device to support young people of differing abilities and levels of reading experience studying Shakespeare’s play. It also considers the extent to which these texts have a value in their own right, rather than simply being viewed as inferior versions of the original that merely engage and simplify Shakespeare’s plays and can be discarded as soon as they are no longer required.

Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery

Publisher Thomas Pomplun of Eureka Productions has long had a love affair with Edgar Allan Poe. When he decided to launch his now acclaimed Graphic Classics series devoted to comic book adaptations of classic works of fiction in 2001, Volume 1 was devoted entirely to thirteen new and reprinted stories and poems by Poe as adapted and illustrated by some of the best writers and comic artists in the field. Not satisfied with the first effort, Pomplun would return in 2004, 2006, and again in 2010 with three new editions of that first volume. Each time, while some stories were retained, new hands and drawing pens were put to work on fresh selections. As if such unparalleled devotion were insufficient, he has now produced an entirely new title as Volume 21 devoted to Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery.The volume includes fifteen stories and poems by Poe ranging across an interesting cross-section of his most popular works. Probably the best known is “The Tell-Tale Heart,” surely the most frequently adapted from the Poe canon in all of comics literature and a version of which appears in all the earlier anthologies by Pomplun. One would think that the ways of visualizing the story have been exhausted by now, but not so here. Seasoned comic book artist Ronn Sutton changes the game entirely by making the usual male narrator into a woman, but not just any woman—a neo-Nazi punk rock one. Everything else looks different there on out. Sutton alternates purely horizontal panels with vertical ones to create a reading experience that captures the increasing madness of the narrator. The art is stunning. This is a powerful piece of comic art that makes this overfamiliar story seem new again.Another frequently adapted story is “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” many of which fail because they seem unable to reserve the solution to the murder mystery until the last part of the narrative. Writer Antonella Caputo and artist Reno Maniquis avoid that problem. In a semi-realistic style, with effective use of brown and olive colors, Maniquis provides a richly detailed re-creation of Paris in the 1880s, and Caputo uses literary, print, and intellectual references of the time to enrich the theoretical framework of this first detective story.“Berenice,” by Pomplun and illustrator Nelson Evergreen, uses pastel colors to a surprising effect in a basic horror story. But the colors darken as we move across the twelve pages, from a gloomy realism, to an increasingly frenzied set of displaced images, to conclude with a jarring bloody ending. You will not want to visit the dentist again anytime soon.“Hop-Frog,” as adapted by Rod Lott and drawn by Lisa K. Weber, moves to caricature and comic exaggeration to tell the story of the crippled dwarf who served as the court jester to a cruel and corpulent king and body of lords. The lively images and panel arrangements create a sense of watching an animated film as the jester renders his violent but well-deserved justice on them.Artist Brad Teare's “The Man of the Crowd,” adapted by Rich Rainey, combines a ragged wood-cut style with cartoon caricature to capture the strange story about crowds of people who seem to go nowhere. We are forcibly pulled along as the narrator pursues one man in particular for no one knows what reason.“King Pest,” written by Antonella Caputo and illustrated by Anton Emdin in grand cartoon style, is a wild and raucous romp relating the adventures of two none-too-bright seamen during the plague in London. Emdin's weird style and visual hyperbole fit the perverse mood of Poe's story exactly.Additional stories, and their writers and illustrators, include “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” by Pomplun and Michael Manning, “The Oval Portrait” by Pomplun and Craig Wilson, and “The Masque of the Red Death” by Stan Shaw. Also six poems are reprinted with illustrations: “Alone” by Maxon Crumb, “To Violet Vane” by Molly Kiely, “A Dream Within a Dream” by Neale Blanden, “Eldorado” by Roger Langridge, “Spirits of the Dead” by Andy Ewen, and “The Conqueror Worm” by Leong Wan Kok.The cast of creators is truly an international one, demonstrating the worldwide influence of Poe that abides down to the present, with contributors from Italy, the Philippines, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of course. The result is a highly suitable and worthy follow-up to Pomplun's earlier volumes, a continued demonstration of the attractions Poe holds for the graphic artist, and one more sign of the publisher's love and admiration for the imagination of a major American writer.

'Yes, I have gained my experience' (As You Like It, 4.3.23): Kenneth Branagh and Adapting the 'Shakespearean' Actor

The focus within adaptation studies on embracing intermediality should necessitate exploration not only of other mediums worthy of critical attention such as video games, opera and radio, but also of different adaptive sites: in particular, the body of the actor. More so than with any other author, there is a mode of performance associated with Shakespeare's work that is employed popularly and academically to encompass an individual actor's entire career. This association actively erases an actor's diversity and reduces the performance of their body to a single, definitive function. Actors such as Kenneth Branagh thus remain intimately connected with not only their personal interpretations of Shakespeare, but the playwright in general as a cultural, historical figure. Even when Branagh directs Thor, the Marvel studio comic book adaptation, press reactions and reviews of the film demonstrate the inseparability of his Shakespearean persona from his professional identity as a whole. Of interest, therefore, is the way in which the 'Shakespearean' title is used: what implicit values are ascribed through its usage, what cultural systems perpetuate this attribution, but also what new avenues of critical exploration and what new texts are opened up by acknowledging the actor as the site of adaptive encounter and what traditional concepts of the adaptive text are disturbed.