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The graphic novel is an artefact of visual images and written words; a complex and expressive form tackling a multitude of issues and themes across the globe. The graphic novel is a tool: of self-expression and personal identity; of cultural understanding and philosophical exploration; of history and hope. Comics and graphic novels traverse themes such as heroism, identity, philosophy, gender, history, and colonialism – and these are just some of the topics encountered on the pages of this diverse collection of perspectives and analyses. Incorporating chapters from authors all over the world, this volume examines and expounds the rich tapestry of meanings, expressions, and cultural insights found in the medium of graphic fiction. From concerns with comics’ definition and history, to examinations of both seminal and neglected works as well as the medium’s future, Cultural Excavation and Formal Expression in the Graphic Novel demonstrates the deeply ingrained relevance of comics to contemporary culture.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Jonathan C. Evans and Thomas Giddens
Part 1: Imagining the Hero
Anna Koronowicz: Loner, Lover, Hero: Superhero Reads Hemingway
Jonathan C. Evans: The Man of Tomorrow is Looking Out for You: Symbolic and Rhetorical Reading of Graphic Novels
Ana Micaela Chua: Enabling Mythologies: Specificity and Myth-Making in TRESE
Part 2: Autobiography and Identity
Valerie Bodell: Comics and Autobiographical Identity
Elizabeth MacFarlane: Self Wrought: The Unreliable Narrator / the Unreliable Self in Pat Grant’s BLUE and Mandy Ord’s Rooftops
Thayse Madella: Otherness in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis: The Autobiography and the Graphic Novel as a Subversion of the Western Gaze
Lukas Etter: The Protagonists’ Many ‘Wedges’: Aspects of Seriality in Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For
Part 3: Coping with Colonialism
Emil Francis M. Flores: Up in the Sky, Feet on the Ground: Cultural Identity in Filipino Superhero Komiks
Carljoe Javier: Filipino Humour and the Filipinisation of Foreign Tropes in Macoy’s Taal Volcano Monster vs. Evil Space Paru-Paro
Mridula Chari: Humour and the Contested City in Indian Graphic Novels
Part 4: The Trauma of History
Simona Porro: Inevitably Postmodern: The Case of Maus by Art Spiegelman
Kotaro Nakagaki: The Atomic Holocaust from the Perspective of Shōjo: From Sanpei Shirato’s A Vanishing Girl to Fumiyo Kōno’s In a Corner of This World
Elisabeth Oxfeldt: Queer Revisionism in Lene Ask’s Graphic Novel Hitler, Jesus and Grandpa (‘Hitler, Jesus og Farfar’)
Erin K. Boone: Rejecting the Generalisation of Maus as a ‘Second Generation’ Text
Sarah Richardson: ‘Perseveration on Detail’: Shame and Confession in Memoir Comics
Part 5: On Alan Moore
Derek Frasure: V for Valerie: Lesbianism in V for Vendetta
Maciej Sulmicki: ‘And All Right, We Need a Woman’: Victimised Heroines and Heroic Victims in Alan Moore’s Quasi-Victorian Graphic Novels
Michael J. Prince: The Individual Subject in Smooth and Striated Space in Alan Moore’s The Ballad of Halo Jones and Saga of the Swamp Thing
Part 6: Philosophy of Form
Julia Moszkowicz: Time, Narrative and the Gutter: How Philosophical Thinking Can Make Something Out of Nothing
Thomas Giddens: Towards a Metaphysics of Comics
Leonie Brialey: Sincerity and Speech Balloons: The Shape and Weight of Words in Autobiographical Comics
Eleanor Kent: Time of the Photograph, Time of the Comic: Documentary and Art in The Photographer
Part 7: Transgressing Boundaries
Simon Bacon: Prequel, Sequel or Equal: The Transmedia Vampire and the Graphic Novel
Anna Wołosz: Space and Time in Graphic Novel Adaptations of Shakespeare’s Plays: A Semiotic Approach
Ana González-Rivas Fernández and Francisco Saez de Adana: Imaginary Lives: Edgar Allan Poe as a Comic Book Character
Barry Natusch: Adoption of Graphic Novel Features in Non-Fiction Genres
Part 8: Changing Boundaries
Bruce Mutard: Viewer as Reader: Modes of Encounter with Juxtaposed Image Narratives
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey: From Comic to Hypercomic
Jayms Clifford Nichols: Digital Pages: Reading, Comics and Screens
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