Reviewed by: Serial Selves: Identity and Representation in Autobiographical Comics by Frederik Byrn Køhlert Jenny Blenk (bio) Frederik Byrn Køhlert. Serial Selves: Identity and Representation in Autobiographical Comics. Rutgers University Press, 2019. 231 pp, $29.95, $99.95. Correction: Frederik Byrn Køhlert's name was misspelled in the original publication of this review. The online version has been updated. Even for a scholar of Frederik Byrn Køhlert's caliber, Serial Selves was a significant undertaking. Køhlert has achieved quite a bit in his most recent book, which constitutes an impactful introduction to marginalized identities in autobiographical comics. In Serial Selves, Køhlert seeks to examine a variety of individuals whose stories were and are notably absent in mainstream comics from the 1970s to the present, and to document how the comics form has been especially relevant in rendering those stories and their authors legible through the testing and breaking of formal and narrative boundaries. Recognizing the enormity of that task, Køhlert (wisely) avoids the trap of overgeneralization, which can be especially harmful to underrepresented groups, and takes an approach that allows him to identify individuals, examine how formal boundaries in comics can be effectively manipulated and broken to represent them and their identities, and leave room to not only allow but also encourage future scholarship on the subject. In Serial Selves, "Instead of attempting an exhaustive overview of comics invested in [marginalized] perspectives, each chapter consists of an extensive case study of a single artist's work" (8). Comics, he argues, are an especially useful and relevant form for autobiographical narratives to take "because comics rely on both highly personal hand-drawn aesthetics and a serially networked approach to narrative, [so] the form can challenge conventional representational schemes in a complex dance of appropriation and resignification that is always open to the creation of new meanings" (4). Køhlert takes both these aspects and more into account throughout the book, examining themes of female-ness in the work of Julie Doucet, trauma in the work of Phoebe Gloeckner, queer identity development in the work of Ariel Schrag, disability and masculinity in the work of Al Davison, and racial stereotyping in the work of Toufic El Rassi. Køhlert strikes an admirable balance between drawing on existing autobiographical comics history and recognizing its shortcomings. While he acknowledges influential figures from the underground comix movement (particularly Justin Green and R. Crumb) and discusses how they inadvertently helped create the circumstances that would motivate minority groups to come together to make comics representative of their own experiences, he doesn't get bogged down by them and instead uses them effectively as a launch pad to emphasize the book's main subject. Similarly, there are places in which the vast majority [End Page 125] of scholarship on a matter has come from privileged (read: white, straight, and cisgender male) sources. For example, when he points out the potential usefulness of simplicity and stereotyping in discussing El Rassi's Arab in America, the three sources Køhlert cites are Scott McCloud, Will Eisner, and Art Spiegelman. All of them made substantial and relevant contributions to the field of comics studies and autobiography in particular, but there is a delicate balance to be struck between rehashing the work of majority individuals and using their work to inform and examine that of underrepresented persons. Køhlert achieves this admirably, utilizing their work to provide starting places or counterpoints for examination of the chapter's subject without detracting from or diluting the core matter. To balance out privileged perspectives like the aforementioned, he also draws on a wide range of scholars from various fields that intersect with each chapter's main focus, each well documented in an extensive bibliography, which I can imagine will send many a reader down a bibliophilic rabbit hole of "what to read next." Each chapter in Serial Selves follows the same basic progression: context and background information relevant to the identity being explored, followed by an introduction to the creator and work themselves; next, an assertion regarding the nature of how that identity is expressed through the comics form, and its relationship to a particular theory or...
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Jul 1, 2022
Rida Qadri + 1
Open Access
