Subjectivity and a rant on Comics Scholarship

So, this is a review of a paper that is listed in my bibliography. If you'd like to see more of these, let me know...

Driest, Joris. 2005. Subjective Narration in Comics. Masters Thesis. Utrecht University.

This piece covers a broad overview of the ways in which “subjectivity” is represented in the “comics medium.” Of particular note is its analysis of word/thought balloons. The piece is largely influenced by film theory, and its relationship to comics and writing, however, it does not include citations to John Barber or other relevant works along those lines.

However, the piece didn’t seem to have a directed and focused hypothesis of sorts that it was out to prove. It hovered at the level of “these things are there” without probing that topic deeper. This isn’t necessarily terrible, considering that no other studies really cover this topic previously, except maybe in Saraceni 2000 & 2003 (which also weren’t cited).

It also seemed to comment upon a number of phenomena that occur in the “comics medium,” but didn’t seem relevant to the thesis (such as conventional graphic symbols). This is a trend I’ve noticed a lot in papers about VL & comics. Since they don't have an established a cannon of scholarship (or an recognized field to study them), people often feel the need to insert every interesting thought they have about it regardless of how pertinent it might be to what they’re actually writing about.

Relatedly, most essays on anything comics-related feel the need to define what a comic is in the paper – whether or not the paper is about how “comics” are defined. To me, this just seems to cry out an underlying complex that “nobody knows what comics are, so I need to define it.”

Guess what: whether they actively read comics or not, most everyone in our culture knows what a “comic” or “graphic novel” is to the extant that most scholars write about. People don't need to define what a novel or a film is every time they write about them, nor should they need to be told what a comic is. (Similarly, linguistics papers don’t define “language” in every paper – they just get to the meat of the issue).

At least from my perspective, the less exceptional we treat visual language and comics, the more they can be considered as equal with other forms of communication/literature. To invoke the metaphor: "Separate but equal" does not work, because it’s NOT equal. You need to have complete non-discrimination. By continually defining it where its not needed, “comics” (the social objects, and thereby the visual language associated with it) is implicitly placed into a “minority” position in the realm of criticism and scholarship.

Tis the Season: Happy Bodhi Day!

This will probably only be funny to a few people, but...

Permutations

Today, like all Wednesdays, I've posted another segment of my ongoing "Meditations" at my webcomicsnation site. Since those works were all done awhile ago, I'll try to give some background to them here as I go along.

The current ongoing piece is a visual poem entitled "Permutations," that I wrote in college — gosh — six years ago now (!). It grew out of a journal entry that blended lots of drawings with words into a sort of collage, which I then transformed into a more linear form. At the time I'd been reading a lot of David Mack's Kabuki, so the mixed material nature of it all is reminiscent of that. I was playing a lot with the relationship of the graphic form and phonetics, while trying to dance around the message rather than directly express it. I'd say the finished version became one of my most emotionally driven and experimental pieces of graphic writing.

Besides using just about every artistic implement on my desk at the time (from technical pens to a bamboo "fountain pen"), it was the first major project where I used the computer to put together my pages. Since then I do nearly everything on the computer. We the People started with most line art being scanned, though the further it got the more I drew directly in the computer with my penpad. Now that I have a cintiq, my new stuff is drawn almost 100% on the computer.

Bibliography

Amongst my exuberance to update about the blog and the new essay, I almost forgot that I've put some new entries in my Reference Bibliography. I don't know if people really use it or not, but I intend for it to be a resource for people looking for information related to this field.

I actually quite enjoy finding new material, and I read and own just about everything listed there. Suggestions for more are always welcomed!

Cross-Cultural Space

I have a new essay available at my site entitled "Cross Cultural Space". This paper is not very heavy on theoretical issues, but rather represents my efforts to diversify my methods through the coding of individual panels. For this one, I looked at 300 panels in each of 12 American and 12 Japanese books to compare the way they depict various types of spatial representation.

Another major issue that I'm dealing with here is that of "Diversity." So often the graphic form is assumed to be universal, whereas Language is always thought of as being culturally relative. I think that this is an illusion cast by iconicty. Since the meaningful elements look like what they mean, we immediately assume that everyone can understand them. But, no matter what, graphic images still must pass through the filter of our minds, which allow for relativity far more than they allow for universality (at least on such surface type things). Identifying the structure of various cultural visual languages, and how they might differ from each other, is an endeavor I'd love to see delved into more.

Why a blog?

I've already been updating my news and I have a forum for this site, so why a blog? Well, I figure that a blog can allow me to voice my own thoughts, while the forum can be a more democratic avenue for discussion of comic theory. A blog can also let me discuss thoughts that might not be extensive enough for full essays in a more casual setting.

I plan on using this blog to elaborate on new work, describe what I'm working on, and occasionally plug people whose work is worth spreading around. You can start by checking out the links on the sidebar...