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Issue 4. Gender issue - guest editor: Heike Jüngst

The Language of Comics: Word and Image

Author: Aarnoud ROMMENS
Published: September 2002

Varnum, Robin and Christina T. Gibbons (eds.). The Language of Comics: Word and Image. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

Abstract (E): A review of a Euro-American reader on comics theory.

Abstract (F): Compte rendu d'un nouveau recueil théorique sur la bande dessinée, qui comprend aussi bien des textes européens que des articles américains.

Keywords: comics theory

Comics are a legitimate area of scholarly research. Although this statement may not come as a shock to the European academic world anymore, it is the main contention underlying The Language of Comics: Word and Image. However, this message is as simple as it is true if one focuses on contemporary academic practices in the United States and the Anglophone part of Canada. As Varnum and Gibbons rightly point out in their introduction, there is a discrepancy in comics' research between America and (mainly francophone) Europe. In the US, critical discussion often originates in the field itself, where the works of artists such as Scott McCloud or Will Eisner are assumed to carry theoretical authority. As becomes clear through both the introduction and the essays in this volume, Understanding Comics is still perceived across the Atlantic as a landmark in the development of a comics' theory. It is therefore all the more laudable that The Language of Comics also includes contributions that draw on semiotics and what one may call the 'European tradition' (the introduction refers to Rey, Peeters and Groensteen amongst others). This already hints at one of the main problems concerning comics' research: the lack of communication and exchange (i.e. translations) between both (geographically defined) strands of scholarship. The book tries to bring together different perspectives in an attempt to effect a further institutionalization of the comics' field within an American academic context. This rather programmatic orientation becomes explicit through the formulation of a goal as the book aims "to look at comics as a site where words and images intersect" (x). This semiotic concern is then linked to the works of Panofsky, Gombrich, Barthes and Eco.

However, the introduction to The Language of Comics seems haunted by a contradiction (which is in fact also made explicit on p.xiii). If indeed Scott McCloud's work is "lacking an academic orientation" (xiii), one may ask why an academic publication such as this one still presents Understanding Comics as the standard within the formation of a comics' theory. Although McCloud may have made some interesting observations, it is quite hyperbolic to say that in his work he posed the "central problem of comics", viz. "whether comics is a hybrid or an integral medium" (xiv). Subsequently, the editors take great pains to classify the contributions as either adhering to the one or the other viewpoint. The editors claim that "the essays (.) indicate the advantages of looking at comics as an integral language on the one hand, and as a partnership of words and pictures on the other" (xviii). The former is then to be situated in a 'Euro-Francophone' semiological paradigm, whilst the latter is to be thought typical of an Anglo-American paradigm. However, the phrasing that characterizes the introduction is equally suggestive in itself. But suggestive of what exactly? It is never made clear what is understood by the all-encompassing word "partnership", or what areas the phrase "integral language" covers. Could it be that within the so-called "integral language" of comics the "partnership" is to be seen as a fundamental component? The only thing that this fuzzy terminology suggests is its own conceptual inadequacy. Let us rather have a look at the essays themselves.

In his article "The Comics of Chris Ware: Text, Image, and Visual Narrative Strategies" (174-97), Gene Kannenberg, Jr. stresses that Ware's comics should be seen as a 'visual-literary totality'. Not only words and images engage in a narrative play of their own. Elements such as page layout, blocks of text that undermine the transparency of a larger structure (the so-called "lexias"), etc. should be taken into account as they add to or disrupt the normal reading sequence and processing. In fact the whole make-up of Ware's books is shown to "question the binary text/image opposition" (175). As such, Ware's oeuvre can be thought of as "visual literature". Borrowed from Eric Vos, this term designates - in the particular case of Ware's art - the conflation of two sign systems, which results in an often bewildering co-existence of narrative levels.

A similar concern for a 'visual-literary totality' can be found in Jan Baetens's discussion of Philippe Marion's theoretical work Traces en Cases (pp. 145-55). Marion's analysis and the introduction of the concept of 'graphiation' in particular, allows for a more systematic and theoretically sound approach of such an elusive element as graphic style. Within this framework, a comic is considered an effect of graphic and narrative enunciation. In short, the comic is the product of a 'graphiator'. The latter should be understood as an abstract agent leaving traces of its graphiation on the comics' page and should in no case be directly linked to the author. However, despite Marion's precautions and perhaps due to some of the psychoanalytic premises underpinning some of his theses, his work has allowed for some preposterous autobiographical readings in which graphic style is exclusively seen as symptomatic of the individual author. According to Baetens, this danger that seems inherent in Marion's theory should be averted by renewed efforts to refine the theoretical framework and by circumscribing the concepts more precisely.

Frank L. Cioffi studies what he calls "disturbing comics" (97-122). These are comics that, through a particular "inter-relationship between word and image, or between symbol and icon (.), cause something like a dissonance with the reader" (97). To illustrate his point, Cioffi focuses on the works of Katchor, Mleckzko, Crumb and Spiegelman. In the comic art of these authors Ciofi discerns a disjunction - a 'field of play' - between words and images producing an uncanny effect. The images and the words in these comics all work 'at cross purposes', creating a gap between the understanding of the picture and the words. It is precisely this gap that effects a kind of disturbing 'short circuit' in the reader, as the comics resist an unambiguous interpretation.

This 'field of play' between image and text is equally important in the genre of the one panel cartoon. Robert C. Harvey sketches its historic evolution towards its most effective form as it appeared within the pages of The New Yorker (75-96). The one panel cartoon was perfected into the so-called 'single-speaker captioned cartoon', a veritable visual pun. According to Harvey, the "blend" between pictures and words is vital in this genre (and in comics at large) as it creates a meaning "neither [picture nor word] conveys alone without the other" (75-6). And the better the "blend", the funnier the cartoon. However, it is a rather tall order to establish causal relationships between formal properties and (inter-)subjective categories such as (good) humor.

Not only Harvey's account, but also the essays of Couch and Kunzle are distinctly historical in orientation and are concerned with the evolution of some of the properties of the medium. Christopher Couch examines "The Yellow Kid" and its contribution to the comics' page layout we know today. By considering the contemporary context in which Outcault's work appeared, Couch is able to demonstrate its influence on plate tectonics. The practice of including separate supplements - with their own (changing) layout - to the Sunday papers, and the format of the so-called 'humor magazine' in particular, contributed to the development of comics' lay-out and narrative practices. Outcault published his "Yellow Kid" in such a 'humor magazine', and by changing certain features he made steps towards the now standard sequencing of panels. The work of Outcault could develop freely within the pages of the 'humor magazine', and Couch maintains that his work was pivotal in that he "took the armature of the humor magazine page, combined it to a single unit, and added an ongoing narrative" (72).

David Kunzle's main focus is the 1880's French caricature magazine Le Chat Noir (3-18). In his study of the single page comics of Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen and Adolphe Willette, Kunzle pays ample attention to the contemporary political context and the emergence of symbolism. Both Willette's and Steinlen's art show an affinity with symbolism. Willette's Pierrot stories do not carry a humorous punch line but are dark tales without captions. These one page comics are suggestive and defy any definite closure. The resulting narrative ambiguity can also be found in Steinlen's contributions for Le Chat Noir. Kunzle maintains that the caption functioned as "a kind of censorious social super-ego" (15) in which the hegemonic 'official line' could be incorporated. Eliminating the caption then stands out as an anarchist gesture, allowing both Steinlen and Willette to tell their uncompromising violent fables that comment on the cruelties of social reality.

Other contributors to The Language of Comics include Marion D. Perret, Catherine Khordoc, Todd Taylor and David A. Berona. Although their essays may "celebrate comics" as the introduction so beautifully puts it (xviii), they celebrate the medium in a very uneventful way.

As is always the case in a collection of essays, The Language of Comics contains articles that may seem redundant. But maybe this 'noise' is a necessary step for the English-language intelligentsia to finally reach the heights of a 'true' academic inquiry into comics?

Aarnoud ROMMENS

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