Category: comics

• Spaces of Indecision: Interpreting Foreign Language Texts in Contemporary Non-Fiction Comics – Abstract

  Comics Forum 2017
  Comics and Space
  Leeds, 21-22 Sept 2017

   

  The presentation examines the challenge the readers face when encountering textual elements in comics that are written in a language inaccessible to the reader: such textual parts create spaces of indecision in the surface of the page, and entice the reader to improvisatorially decipher their relationship to the more easily accessible parts. These textual bits appear either in speech bubbles or in caption boxes, which indicates that they are meant to be part of the symbols that “tell” (Hatfield 40), but as they are undecipherable as language, their status as commentary is made uncertain. At the same time, they are not purely part of the symbols that “show” (Hatfield 40): they are not visual in the same sense as the drawn images in the same panel are, or in the same sense as textual bits appearing in the drawn sections (eg. street names) are. Such textual bits exist in a limbo, and I argue that they take part in the redistribution of both actual physical as well as cognitive space between textual and visual.

  These textual sections not only frustrate the reader’s expectations about the roles of text and image in comics, they also question the usual spatial division between the two in a given panel or on a given page. They introduce a productive uncertainty in the experience of reading comics, the reader has to decide to what extent such elements are “decoration” and to what extent they are “language”. The works of comics journalists productively build on this limbo, for example in Rolling Blackouts Sarah Glidden does not give the translation of all textual elements. Multilingual comics artists refuse to translate all their text. With the rise of an increasingly multinational comics market and with contemporary comics non-fiction’s interest in the stories of non-English-speaking communities, such elements become more and more frequent.

  I will show instances from Miriam Katin’s work where Hungarian and English text compete for space over the page, and make the reader conscious of the similarities of drawing and writing. I argue that especially in Letting It Go, Katin deliberately establishes such similarities over the surface of the pages, constantly shifting what brings the narrative forward and what is decoration. At the same time I will also show that the Hungarian text is not purely decorative – the archaic representation of these textual bits in both of Katin’s memoirs creates a special private space of memories and belonging for the protagonist and her mother, both living in exile.

   

  Reference

  Hatfield, Charles. Alternative Comics. An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.

  2017.07.19

• Abstract – Presence and Disappearance: The surface of the page and narrating sexual abuse in the works of Debbie Drechsler and Katie Green

  I’ll be talking at a panel at the 7th International Comics and Medicine Conference in Dundee in a couple of days (link). The topic of this year’s conf is “Stages and Pages”, and here is my abstract:

   

  Presence and Disappearance  – The surface of the page and narrating sexual abuse in the works of Debbie Drechsler and Katie Green

  The paper focuses on autobiographically motivated graphic narratives, namely Debbie Drechsler’s Daddy’s Girl (1996) and Summer of Love (2002) and Katie Green’s Lighter than My Shadow (2013), and examines representations of the violated female body in relation to the surface of the page. Both authors use the expressive power of background, and build on the emotional potential of patterns against which the body is performed. Furthermore, both Drechsler and Green utilize the notions of presence and absence their visual representations of deeply traumatized heroines.

  Drechsler deconstructs the idea of form and background in her tragic and disturbing stories about incest: she often visually disguises her female protagonists by making them blend in with backgrounds. Simultaneously, her work features backgrounds of dark rhythmic patterns, minute strokes, curves as a canvas on which the character’s emotions and moods can be represented. Green uses a system of visual markers of anorexia, anxiety and guilt – such as the gaping mouth or the black cloud of scribble – not only to indicate the emotional state of her protagonist, but on a different level also to structure the pages and the connect layout with content.

  In the works of both Drechsler and Green, emotionally motivated visual markers eventually influence the very structures of the narratives, and in Green’s case, the very format of the published work. The very body of this heavy, more than 500-page long book that promises lightness in its title can be interpreted as a metaphor for the body – think, for instance, about its scrapbook-like design and the disintegration of the protagonist’s body

  Apart from form and pattern, absence will also be studied: Green’s sequence of black (142-145) and white (384-386, 388) pages will be interpreted as performative gestures and performative spaces where the anorexic body is present by its disappearance.

   

  

  2016.07.04

• Absztrakt – Képi testet öltés és önreprezentáció önéletrajzi képregényekben

  Oravecz Gergely Blosszájáról fogok beszélni Kolozsváron. Arról, hogy a vonal nem csak esztétikai tényező, de a narratívában is komoly szerepe van. Sok példával.

  A konferencia neve: Tendenciák a kortárs magyar képregényben és képregénykutatásban, időpontja: május 6–7.

  

  Képi testet öltés és önreprezentáció önéletrajzi képregényekben

  Az előadás Oravecz Gergely Blossza c. stripsorozatában vizsgálja az alkotó önreprezentációs stratégiáit és azt, hogy ezek árnyalásához az alkotó kézjegyét és testi lenyomatát viselő vonal hogyan járul hozzá.

  Elsősorban a rajzolás folyamatára és annak talán legkisebb egységére (ha létezik ilyen), a vonalra fókuszálok. A vonal Jared Gardner megfogalmazásában nyom (trace), mégpedig a rajzoló kezének közvetlen lenyomata (54). A kéz („the hand”) fogalma egyaránt jelenti az aktuálisan megrajzolt panelt vagy oldalt, illetve az alkotó felismerhető stílusát. A vonal és a kéz fogalma egyrészt a rajzolás átéltségére, hitelességére, másrészt az alkotás fizikai, testi aspektutásara utal. A véget nem érő folyamatot, amiben az identitást számtalan önarckép sorozataként hozza létre az alkotó, Elisabeth El Refaie képi testet öltésnek [pictorial embodiment] nevezi (51).

  Egy olyan értelmezési keretben igyekszem tehát Oravecz Blosszáját értelmezni, mely a képregényt – tömeges és nyomdai előállítása mellett – az oralitáshoz közelíti, és a vonal (és stílus) társadalmi és kulturális kódoltsága mellett is annak performatív, átélt, és expresszív jellegét hangsúlyozza (graphic enunciation). Így válik az önéletrajzi ihletettségű képregény az autentikusság fix értelmezésétől lemondva is auratikus műfajjá (Chute 112).

  

  Hivatkozott irodalom:

  Baetens, Jan. —. “Revealing Traces: A New Theory of Graphic Enunciation.” The Language of Comics. Word and Image. Ed. Varnum, Robin and  Christina T. Gibbons. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001: 145-155.

  Chute, Hillary. “Comics Form and Narrating Lives.” Profession 2011: 107-117.

  El Refaie, Elisabeth. Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012.

  Gardner, Jared. “Storylines.” Substance 40.1. 2011: 53-69.

   

  2016.05.02

• EAAS Travel Grant Report

  In 2015 I was researching at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library at Ohio State University with the support of the Postgraduate Travel Grant provided by the European Association of American Studies. The report I wrote on this time has now been published (finally).

  

  2016.02.28