BOBC |
Holbo, John. "Redefining Comics." The Art of Comics. A Philosophical Approach. Eds. Aaron Meskin and Roy T. Cook. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 3–30. Added by: joachim (11/12/12, 11:28 PM) |
Resource type: Book Chapter Language: en: English BibTeX citation key: Holbo2012 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: Definition Creators: Cook, Holbo, Meskin Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (Chichester) Collection: The Art of Comics. A Philosophical Approach |
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Attachments | URLs http://media.wiley ... /1444334646-74.pdf |
Abstract |
“[…] the definition of comics has been a central concern (arguably the central concern) of philosophers who have paid attention to the art form. In his essay, John Holbo returns to this issue and offers a sustained meditation on the implications of Scott McCloud’s famous formalist definition of the medium. That is, rather than once again dismissing McCloud’s definition for its apparent flaws (most notably that it looks to be straightforwardly falsified by a range of counterexamples), Holbo seeks to show that the account provides important insights into a wide range of art works. Holbo starts by arguing that despite McCloud’s best intentions, his definition leads to the radically revisionist conclusion that all (or almost all) pictures are comics since all (or almost all) pictures include spatially juxtaposed images and sequences can consist of just one element. Rather than treating this as a reductio ad absurdum of McCloud’s approach, Holbo treats it as telling us something important about the nature of pictures. Perhaps even more radically, Holbo flirts with the idea that novels may be understood to be a kind of comic (or at least on a continuum with comics) since they are graphic products in virtue of the fact that letters and printed words are images. Ultimately, Holbo suggests that we might best think of McCloud’s definition as picking out the very significant category of the “graphical work” which is designed for visual reading and consists of a mixture of image types.” (Aaron Meskin and Roy T. Cook: “The Art and Philosophy of Comics: An Introduction”, xxxii)
Added by: joachim Last edited by: joachim |