MLA Comics Theory Roundtable: Statement by Barbara Postema

Barbara Postema
Ryerson University
MLA 2015, Session 720

Comics Theory Roundtable: Statement by Barbara Postema


One thing that is essential for Comics Theory is discussion and exchange: scholars need to engage one another's work, especially in their theoretical thinking and writing. We have the luxury of often writing on primary texts, on comics, that have been discussed very little in previous scholarship, if at all. So there is not much secondary literature to cite or engage with on that front. Yet in writing about one particular comic we often have a lot to say more broadly, about the form of comics, or the genres and publication practices. These matters are often relevant to the comic we're discussing, and these things have been discussed in theoretical writings. It is therefore up to a researcher to do their due diligence and engage with that broader literature, and this is something to model in our teaching as well, to set the example.
Thierry Smolderen's recently translated The Origins of Comics is a lovely example of that kind of work. He is discussing a great wealth of artists and works that generally do not get much attention from comics scholars—it's old, it's European, it's debatable whether it's comics. But throughout this study he connects to the work of (mainly French) thinkers about comics theory. What this work demonstrates is that any discussion of comics can lead to theorizing, about the form, the genres, the publishing practices and institutions. Based in his analysis of the (pre)history of comics, Smolderen comes up with several concepts that I find insightful, and more importantly, useful and thought provoking: the notion of readable images, which he suggests in discussing Hogarth's prints, is an interesting way to distinguish intricate, meaning-filled single images from the usually much simpler, abstracted, comics panel. Some individual comics panels may themselves have the same function as a Hogarth print, they contain that kind of signification and require time to decode, but not all comics panels work like that, instead gaining meaning cumulatively from their place in the sequence or on the page amongst other panels. The notion of a readable image gives us a way to discuss the different kind of graphic or pictorial narrative that exist, of which comics is only one form. Furthermore, I like Smolderen's explanation of the development of the speech balloon. While balloon shapes and labels existed in earlier pictorial narratives (in images going as far back as the Middle Ages), Smolderen explains these balloons were only used for that latter function, labelling and identification. Even if such a balloon appeared to contain spoken text, it would not reflect direct speech but a sort of tagline, again, identifying the character. So according to Smolderen, comics don't acquire sound until the very late19th century, when balloons first start to be used for direct speech, slowly and haltingly. At this point comics acquire a sound track, much less far removed from the switch from silent movies to talkies than one might think—about 30 years, instead of 50 or more.
Not every book or article has to focus on form or theory, obviously, and there are plenty examples of excellent work on comics that don't hit you over the head with Thierry Groensteen and restricted arthrology. It is certainly not necessary for every topic, so for example Jose Alaniz's book on Russian comics sets up a quick theoretical framework for the form, but then moves to the history of comics in Russia and the Soviet Union, and readings of particular texts, and theory falls outside of the purview.
I happen to be very interested in form, and it informs the approaches I take and the kinds of texts that I am interested in looking at—for me comics theory is very much tied to form. So in studying wordless comics I have picked a genre of comics that employs clear formal restrictions: I am working on comics that don't employ text in word balloons and captions, which is a self-imposed limitation or constraint on the part of the creators. My readings of these works are based in theoretical understandings about comics, including the inevitable definitions, of course, as well as ideas about how images are able to narrate. Since I am interested in narrative, I've been reading comics scholarship that deals with narrative theory: Nancy Pedri's work on focalization is useful to me, as is of course Groensteen's Comics and Narration. He and I are definitely interested in many of the same issues, and he takes up silent comics explicitly in his work, so—like I was in my previous book—I will be in dialogue with Groensteen once again in my work on silent comics. Groensteen has written extensively on the history of silent comics too, which is a wonderful resource.
But genres are never pure, of course, so I am also learning that these wordless comics often find ways to cheat: some rely on lots of intraiconic texts or iconotexts: writing that is part of the image, like newspaper headlines and leads, public signage, advertising etc. This type of text is used extensively in Peter Kuper's The System, for example, to provide context. Thomas Ott uses the titles of his wordless stories to set the tone and guide the reader. Other comics forego dialogue and captions, but will still employ sound effects, such as Jason's Shhhh and his stories in Almost Silent, or Sara Varon in some of her work. Varon's work also demonstrates other ways in which genres hybridize: she publishes children's comics as well as children's picturebooks, although her texts in both these forms or genres share the same style and a lot of the same visual and narrative qualities. So I am finding that I must expand the kinds of theory that I draw on: I can't rely just on Karin Kukkonen (Contemporary Comics Storytelling) and Hannah Miodrag (Comics and Language: Reimagining Critical Discourse on the Form) to supply narrative-focused comics theory, but I am also looking at theory coming out of children's literature studies, like Perry Nodelman's work on picturebooks (Words about Pictures), and Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott's How Picturebooks Work.
What this demonstrates is that just as the form we study isn't one thing (so attention must be paid to differences between comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, and online formats—as this morning's excellent panel #654 on women and webcomics illustrated nicely), neither is the theory that we use to study that form one thing. For a while there was an anxiety about comics theory, that it should be "pure," it should be its own thing and not be too influenced by literary theory or film studies, for example in its vocabulary. And I think comics theory has done much of that work. We now have a useful critical vocabulary for discussing some of the highly specialized features of comics. Importantly, much of this vocabulary has developed out of familiarity with the practices of making comics. Will Eisner and Scott McCloud have been very important in that regard, because how can we discuss the elements of the comics page (panels, gutters, caption boxes) if we don't know how to identify them by their right names. I've had students start out discussion talking about "boxes" and "labels" instead of panels and balloons, for examples, to even this most basic terminology is not "natural," it needs to be taught. This vocabulary continues to expand, and I think we're at a point where we don't have to be afraid anymore that the field will disappear into some other discipline's theory, so we can take from film theory what seems useful to us, such as considerations about the point of view represented in a panel, is it a close-up or a long shot. Or from narrative theory, such as Pedri's distinction between focalization and occularization in the discussion of perspective in comics. And I can take what I need from the discussion of picturebooks, noting the features that they share with comics, but of course finally working out the differences, so that I am both advancing what we know about comics and what they do, but also about picturebooks.
When we discuss topics in relation to comics—disability in comics, or Jewishness in comics, or the Gothic in comics, all topics that were addressed in publications from this past year—of course we have to engage the existing scholarship on those fields. Just like I get very grumpy when I read someone discussing comics—lets say comics and cosmopolitanism or trauma, without any reference to comics scholarship (beyond perhaps a glancing mention of McCloud)—so we should not write about the Gothic in comics without respecting the long traditions of the Gothic form, and Julia Round does that beautifully in Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels, for example. But comics do work differently from other forms, like novels or films, and so there must always be a sensitivity to that form, and comics theory works to support that sensitivity.
Comics scholars are very aware of the problems of a canon, both in primary and secondary texts, but I think we're also beginning to see the necessity, if not of a formalized canon (is there such a thing anymore), then at least a shared body of knowledge, both in terms of historical and primary texts, and also for secondary material, for theory: there must be a shared sense of the field, the terms, even as the boundaries also continue to expand. This is important to our ongoing scholarship, and also especially important for teaching comics.






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